Understanding hybrid future for smart destinations

In recent years, there has been an increasing amount of literature on the concept of smart tourism and what are the elements that distinguished a smart destination as a result of the impact of information and communication technologies (ICTs), which is constantly shaping a new scenario for destination management (Buhalis and Amaranggana, 2014; Gretzel et al., 2015; Hunter et al., 2015; Li, Hu, Huang and Duan, 2017; Ivars-Baidal et al., 2019).

However, while some research has been carried out focusing on tourism, e-tourism, and destination management in the post-COVID environment (Gretzel et al., 2020, Sigala 2020) a proper piece of research of what strategies smart destinations implemented during the different lockdown phases to respond to the pandemic and how they are changed is still lacking.

In detail, although smart destinations are more advanced compared to others (Boes, Buhalis and Inversini, 2015), the situation requires to think outside the box and offer new solutions in a way that blurry online and offline to make destinations resilient to deal with crisis like the pandemic in the future.

Moreover, there has been little discussion about hybrid solutions in the tourism industry and how visitors can possibly engage with the destination and digital solutions in a post-COVID environment. Therefore, it is evident the necessity to extend and reconceptualise smart destination in a post-COVID world.