ABOUT SCITHOS

Tourists generate income for cities and create opportunities for its
businesses and employment for its residents. However, it can also lead to overcrowding, pollution, noise and numerous other problems, thus reducing quality of life for residents and other local stakeholders and potentially leading to public discontent.

This project introduces Smart City Hospitality as a concept that consists of guidelines and tools to help cities find solutions to make the transition towards environmentally and socially responsible tourism that simultaneously contributes to long-term prosperity. A key element is involving the public, since improving the livability of a city for its residents cannot be done without taking their needs and wants into account.
Ultimately, this the aim is to change city tourism into something that
benefits tourists, residents and the environment.

Within SCTHOS this is done by combining hospitality principles, simulation tools, apps and serious gaming techniques to support policymakers and other stakeholders in generating deep reflections about barriers to sustainable urban tourism and the need for transition or adaptation strategies. Examples include digital smart tools (e.g. apps, actor- and system dynamics models) as well as the SCITHOS challenge where stakeholders physically come together to jointly take on the challenge to develop tourism in a sustainable way by discussing tourism development in a playful way. In this way the project supports the assessment of intervention strategies based on an interactive simulation-supported multi-stakeholder approach that triggers social learning and behaviour change, while stimulating shared governance and smart citizenship.

Guidelines/ tools and the full concept are developed through a series of living labs and field experiments in participating cities. What is more, a Smart City Hospitality network is set up to ensure accessibility to this concept, including all tools and experiences with using them, for other cities and to facilitate collaborative learning.

The final results of the projects are to be presented at a conference, which is due to be held 10 and 11 September 2019 in Vienna, just before the popular annual Tourism conference.