ICT AS AN INSTRUMENT FOR MORE EFFICIENT ADMINISTRATIVE CONTROL 401 able to transform, with relative ease, their business models. The adaptation to digital has been amazing. For several years now, it has been standard to book a package trip, a plane ticket or a hotel room through the Internet. This digital transformation has especially benefited tourism businesses and consumers of their services: prices have been adjusted and demand has increased. In addition, new business models have been born under the umbrella of the digital economy: the collaborative economy, which in the tourism sector has had a particular impact. In fact, if we analyse this digital transformation carefully, we can conclude that the use of ICT – which has facilitated the increase in the number of tourists in some areas of Spain – is behind the environmental and social stress of some specific destinations. Therefore, the use of these technologies has not precisely helped to achieve the goal of sustainability that is found in most of the regional tourism regulations in our country; and neither has the liberalisation to which the sector has been subjected in recent years, allowing the increase in supply and demand without such rigorous control as has been traditional in Spain10. Well, the use of ICT cannot be left alone to increase supply and demand, but must be a catalyst to achieve sustainable tourism development. A tourism development that foresees and prevents the deterioration of the environment, by encouraging the participation of visitors and residents in decision making, by achieving more efficiency in the use of energy or by improving mobility and the integration of infrastructures, just to give some examples. In this scenario, which is what is intended, we can talk about smart tourism as a broad concept, that is, as something more than the mere use of technologies. 3.1. The development of Smart Cities as a necessary preliminary step to the development of smart tourism One of the main achievements of the proper use of ICT, from a social point of view, is what has been called “smart city”. Despite being a somewhat imprecise concept, we can define the smart city, following Professor José Luis PIÑAR MAÑAS, as “one who uses technological innovation to offer a more livable 10 The digital transformation of companies has not gone in parallel with the public administrations that have the obligation to monitor their activity (at the beginning and during the exercise of the same). Thus, standards such as the Services Directive or Law 20/2013, of 9 December, on the Guarantee of the Market Unit, have meant a huge change in the way of supervising tourism activity by the competent administrations, since they have generalised the posterior control through responsible declarations and previous communications in detriment of the authorisations. See CORRAL SASTRE, A., La liberalización del sector turístico ¿Hacia un modelo de turismo sostenible?, Reus, 2017.
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