Developing a “Smart Village” through the Implementation of Mobile Applications

The future of rural tourism development has been shaped by the new wave of technological possibilities. The concept of smart village emerged as an innovative model that includes technology-based tourism experience in a rural area. This model has been established considering the advantages of mobile tourism applications, among the other technologies, designed to help tourists in decision making process when choosing a rural destination, and to augment their enjoyment during the stay. Hence, the subject of this paper is to determine the role of mobile applications in the development of rural tourism and to define the future direction of academic research related to smart villages and mobile-based tourism. The research is based on the secondary data analysis of various academic publications related to the rural tourism and information communication technology (ICT). Research results indicate that implementation of mobile applications in rural tourism has positive influence on the rural tourism development, thus creating valuable opportunities for service providers in this tourism niche. The significance of this study has been presented as a theoretical contribution to literature regarding the rural tourism, as well as the practical contribution to the process of creating the updated version of rural tourism destinations.