Building Sustainable Smart Destinations: An Approach Based on the Development of Spanish Smart Tourism Plans

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear Author,

I congratulate you on your interesting paper. 

I have only two suggestions:

on the first page of your paper you put the source on caps lock (PERLES & IVARS, 2018). I think that you must write with small caps. 

please properly formatted all the tables. All your tables have different looks, so it would be good that you formated them as it is put in authors' guidelines. 

Author Response

The mistake on the reference "Perles & Ivars, 2018" has been corrected

2. Tables' format has also been revised and unifyed

Reviewer 2 Report

The text is devoted to a very interesting and current topic. The quality of method used and presentation is acceptable. Apart from bringing an important output to scientific knowledge the paper should be also of great importance and interest for the practice.

However to make that scientific output to contemporary science more significant I suggest putting the results and the discussion in more general context. The focus of the research, and actually of the whole text, is on the process of strategic planning in Spanish municipalities. However limiting the conclusions and the discussion purely to Spain is not sufficient. There are numerous countries in the world, and especially in European Union, facing similar troubles. However without references to practice of other countries we cannot estimate how universal and typical for other countries is the problem presented in the text. In the literature review or in the discussion part, several publications presenting the process of strategic planning in other countries should be cited. In many European countries, especially in so called New Europe – countries being net beneficiaries of European funds, it can be visible that at list some strategic documents are being created not only to support local development, but mainly to make easier absorption of European funds. Is the situation similar in Spain?

Another problem with fully understanding of the results is no presentation of Spanish system of strategic planning. We have only the titles of documents being analyzed, but we don’t know what is the role of those documents in local strategic planning, what are the other documents supporting or being supported by those, which were analyzed. Important question: do all analyzed documents play similar role in local planning? Such information should be provided in the text.

Small technical remark: there are abbreviations in the text which are not presented in the full – like DTI or ICT.

Author Response

Discussion has been put in a more wide and comparative context. Comparations between Spanish, Asian and other European countries are considered and discussed in discussion section (pg. 19). Some new references have been added. However I've not been able to find specific references available on impacts of European funds on smart strategies in tourism areas. Bibliography about UE funds and its effects on smart strategies would be welcomed by the author. Spanish system of planning on Smat tourism has been explained in Materials and method section (pg. 5) adding a new subsection "The Spanish National Strategy in Smart tourism destinations". Emphasis is put in the handicaps on sustainable development in urban areas that this strategy approach generates. Documents and planning materials have been identified and it is explained their contribution to smart tourism planning and its hierarchical relation with the National Smart Tourism Panning documents Abbreviations not fully presented have been corrected

Reviewer 3 Report

The article is focused on an interesting topic, which deserves more attention from the literature. The research approach is original: the results offer an insight on the relationship between sustainability and smart tourism plans.

I have a few suggestions for authors to strengthen the paper further.

Abstract: the abstract if far too long. It should be shortened and exposed more clearly (and concisely) the purpose of the paper, the adopted method, and the main results.

Introduction: the introduction should clearly present the aim of the paper and shortly anticipate the adopted method.

Literature review: after the introduction, a second section should be entirely devoted to literature review. Currently, too many sub-sections are proposed and the discourse is fragmented. The last part of the sub-section devoted to Technology solutions and sustainability (from “Our research examines actions …” in forward) should be moved to the section devoted to the Methods.

Methods

It is not clear to which materials the authors refer. At the beginning of this section, a general frame should be given. Then the reason of the choice of this particular case study should be clearly exposed. The hypotheses are not properly hypotheses, as they are not considered in the method and neither in the discussion of the results.

Conclusions

The limits of the research should be discussed.

Author Response

Abstract: As suggested, the abstract has been shortened and goals, method adopted and main results highlighted nad presented more concisely

Introduction: the introduction presents now the aim of the paper and method and main results are shortly explained (see pg. 2)

Literature review: Literature review section has been compiled and sub-sections removed and integrated to avoid a fragmented discourse The last part of the sub-section devoted to Technology solutions and sustainability has been moved to the materials and method sectio.

Methods: A table showing sources and materials is added (see Annex 1 in page 24) in order to identify the documents referenced across the main text (smart tourism and smart city projects). A general frame, and a step-by-step methodology explanation is provided to help to the understanding of the method proposal.

The selection criteria of case studies is exposed, both because operational and analytical reasons (see pg. 16).

As suggested, hypotheses are removed as it are not properly formulated.

Conclusions: Some research limits (data limits on implementing actions and stakeholders role) are now discussed (see pg. 21-22)