Journal of Smart Tourism

Smart Tourism Research Center, Kyung Hee University (경희대학교 스마트관광연구소)
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Smart Tourism Design: A Semiotic Affordances Approach

  • Chulmo Koo (Smart Tourism Education Platform, College of Hotel and Tourism Management, Kyung Hee University) ;
  • Jaehyun Park (School of Design at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University) ;
  • William C. Hunter (Smart Tourism Education Platform, College of Hotel and Tourism Management, Kyung Hee University)
  • Received : 2023.05.30
  • Accepted : 2023.07.28
  • Published : 2023.06.30
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Abstract

This paper presents a conceptual approach to Smart Tourism Design based on semiotic affordances theory. This conceptual approach repositions smart tourism from a techno-centric perspective that frames a seamless connection between the device and its software, to a more human-centric perspective that favors the user's needs, desires as perceived through the senses. An updated Smart Tourism Design emphasizes the aesthetic dimension of smart tourism that presents the objects of the travel experience as destination specific rather than universal, through representations as digital artifacts. This theory is based on an empirical and objective understanding of representations and how they can be identified as useful in the digital augmentation of travel experiences. Using Peirce's sign systems and Gibson's theory of affordances, smart tourism can transcend a prefabricated device-oriented experience to a closer dynamic and direct interaction between the user and the travel destination. Researchers and developers can use semiotics as a structural approach to recognizing objects as sign-types, and they can use affordances to better identify the immediacy of digital artifacts and purpose-driven by users' spontaneous and immediate motives.

Keywords

Acknowledgement

This work was supported by the Ministry of Education of the Republic of Korea and the National Research Foundation of Korea (NPF-2019S1A3A2098438).

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