Tourism and Smart Cities: The Case of the Municipality of Trikala

In recent years, there has been a fast growth of smart cities around the world and in Greece. They are the result of digital transformation and rapid technological development and are directly linked to the Sustainable Development Goals, especially those for Sustainable Cities and Communities and Industry, Innovation, and Infrastructure. They contribute to improving the quality of life of their inhabitants and the sustainability of cities. Smart cities’ tourism is considered to be the tourism of the future. It is assumed that it can be enhanced by the new Internet of Things (IoT) technologies with tools such as smart ticketing, security services, better transport services, virtual reality and digital twins, environmentally friendly policies, automatic translation into other languages, and finally, the use of smart robots to guide the visitors of smart cities. The aim of the study is to highlight the link between smart cities and tourism policies for the sustainability and development of cities. In order to achieve this objective, a combination of methodological tools will be used, and more specifically, the literature review, the bibliometric analysis, and the presentation of a case study, and more specifically, the Municipality of Trikala. The conclusions are particularly important, and any exploitation of them will contribute substantially to the upgrading of smart cities as a tourism product in Greece.