Post Modernism and Designing Smart Tourism Organization (STO) for Tourism Management

Tourism literature is devoid of a concept by the name of the Smart Tourism Organization (STO). Given the lack of research into this concept, some questions arise around it. For instance, given the advances in tourism in the new millennium, what has changed in the structure of tourism service organizations? Considering the competitive nature of the tourism industry and the technologies advancement, can the traditional structure of tourism organizations satisfy tourists, managers, stakeholders, and employees? The present study was conducted with a comprehensive approach to organizations in the postmodern era (Hatch, 2018) and seeks a new type of organization for the subject of STO. This new type of organization recognizes the different dimensions of intelligence in the external environment of organizations and seeks to train them. The primary purpose of this study is to select the dimensions of intelligence in tourism organizations and the effect of these dimensions on the development of a smart tourism organization according to the situation of this industry. The Delphi method of the panel of experts was used to reach a consensus about the dimensions of smart tourism organization and to design the questionnaire. Fist, the literature on the subject was fully reviewed. The variables related to the topic were then extracted, and the Delphi method was used to confirm these variables and their relevant questions. A total of 24 management faculty members (Ph.D.) and senior tourism officers were selected as members of the Delphi panel. Twelve people with specialist organizations and 12 people with tourism expertise were also selected for the panel. After four Delphi rounds, the consensus was reached on the questionnaire and its variables. In the next stage, the questionnaire validity and reliability were measured, and their data are presented in the quantitative analysis section. The research population consisted of all the experts working at tourism organizations in South Khorasan Province, including Iran, tourism agencies, hotels, and experts of cultural heritage, handicrafts and tourism in this province. The census method was used to determine the statistical sample of the research. The questionnaires were distributed among 37 tourism organizations and 356 experts (See Table 1). In the last step, for the quantitative analysis of the data, Smart PLS and SPSS software were used.
  According to tables R2 values of 0.536 are substantial for the proposed model. Tanenhaus et al. (2004) suggest the Goodness of Fit (GoF) test for a PLS path model validation globally and specifically (Henseler and Sarstedt, 2013:569). The GoF is defined as follows:R2: 0.536 To determine the quality of the GoF of the overall PLS-SEM model, Witzels et al. (2009) suggest the following criteria: GoF small (0.10), GoF medium (0.25), and GoF large (0.36). Accordingly, the GoF of the model is confirmed with a value of 0.616. The model is confirmed and the hypotheses are tested in Table 6. The present study is thus the first step in expanding the field of smart tourism organization in tourism literature that has contributed to the design of a model and presented dimensions that can be further developed and transformed in the future by other researchers. STO can be considered an introduction to a new form of tourism business. This study is the first attempt at developing STO and identifying the diverse dimensions of this concept. The findings may help tourism organization managers and other researchers better identify and develop intelligence in tourism organizations and research, especially given the limited works of research dedicated to tourism organization and management.