A Multi-Level Analytical Framework for Smart Tourism Technologies: A Systematic Review of Decision-Relevant Mechanisms and Sustainable Outcomes (2015–2025)

Smart tourism technologies (STTs) have transformed tourism into an increasingly data-intensive and sustainability-relevant system, in which service provision, user interaction, and destination management are shaped by interconnected technological and behavioural factors [1], [2]. Central to this transformation are smart technologies, including the Internet of Things (IoT), big data analytics, mobile applications, immersive technologies, and Artificial Intelligence (AI), which enable travelers to access real-time information, personalized services, and engaging experiences [3], [4], [5]. STTs provide smart services such as navigation, itinerary planning, mobile payments, recommendations, and virtual tours, enabling seamless interaction between travelers and tourism service providers [6], [7]. Over the past decades, smart technologies have significantly changed tourists’ behavior. As a result, smart tourism can be interpreted not merely as a technological trend but as a complex decision environment in which multiple attributes, user conditions, and contextual influences jointly determine tourism outcomes [8], [9], [10]. Scholars have identified the opportunities offered by smart technologies and expect that the prospects of STTs will be highly in demand in the near future [11], [12].

Across the pre-trip, on-site, and post-trip stages, STTs influence how tourism experiences are formed, evaluated, and translated into cognitive, emotional, and behavioural outcomes [7], [13]. Within this transformation, STTs enable co-created, data-driven, and digitally mediated experiences and support more sustainable tourism practices [14], [15]. Tourism experience in smart environments extends beyond service satisfaction and involves multiple outcome dimensions, including emotional response, memory formation, engagement, and perceived quality of interaction [16], [17], [18]. Mobile technology supports this transformation by enabling data-driven services that enhance tourist experiences and contribute to sustainable and competitive tourism development [19]. Similarly, secure location-based services support smart transportation systems while protecting users’ location privacy [20]. Social networking sites also encourage tourists to adopt sustainable and responsible behaviors across all stages of travel [13]. Research on digital technology adoption in sustainable tourism destinations is rapidly growing, with strong interdisciplinary collaboration and emerging research themes [21]. Moreover, travel experiences can improve emotional and mental well-being, influencing overall experience quality [22]. At the same time, the growing dependence on digital connectivity has introduced digital well-being as a critical evaluative concern, as technology-rich travel environments may generate both experiential value and psychological burden [23]. Accordingly, the effects of STTs cannot be understood through isolated technological features alone, but require structured interpretation of how service attributes, user characteristics, and contextual conditions interact across tourism settings.

Despite the rapid expansion of STTs research, existing studies remain fragmented across technology adoption, tourist experience, sustainability, and well-being perspectives, with limited effort to organise these strands into a structured analytical framework. In particular, prior research has rarely interpreted STTs as a system of decision-relevant components in which technological attributes, mediating mechanisms, and contextual conditions jointly shape tourism outcomes under complexity and uncertainty. This gap limits the analytical clarity of current smart tourism research and weakens its contribution to structured evaluation and future decision-support modelling. To address this limitation, the present study synthesises a decade of STTs literature (2015–2025) and develops a multi-level analytical framework that organises core technological dimensions, experience-shaping mechanisms, and sustainability-related outcomes into a coherent interpretive structure.

The present study is guided by the need to clarify how STTs can be analytically structured in relation to tourism experience formation and sustainability-oriented outcomes. To achieve this objective, the review addresses the following research questions:

RQ1: What are the key technological dimensions in contemporary smart tourism ecosystems?

RQ2: What multi-level mechanisms, including mediating, moderating, and contextual factors, shape STTs-enabled travel experiences?

RQ3: What types of tourism outcomes are generated through STTs across different contexts?

Overall, the study aims to systematically organise STTs-related dimensions, multi-level mechanisms, and contextual enablers into an integrated analytical framework that explains how tourism outcomes are formed in complex digital environments.

The remainder of the paper presents the review methodology, theoretical framing, thematic synthesis, analytical interpretation of decision-relevant mechanisms, research gaps, implications, and conclusion.

This study adopts a Systematic Literature Review (SLR) guided by PRISMA 2020 to ensure methodological rigor, transparency, and reproducibility in synthesizing STTs research [24]. The review is designed not only to achieve systematic coverage of the literature but also to support the identification and organisation of key analytical elements, including technological attributes, experience-shaping mechanisms, and contextual conditions discussed across STTs-related studies. A structured multi-database search was conducted across Scopus, Dimensions, and Google Scholar, ensuring comprehensive and balanced coverage of the relevant literature [25], [26].

The review includes empirical, conceptual, theoretical, and case-based studies from both developed and emerging economies. These studies are organised across multiple domains, including tourism and hospitality management, information and communication technologies, transportation, logistics, supply chain systems, marketing, and commerce. Within these domains, the literature addresses topics such as digital transformation, intelligent transportation systems, tourist behavioural outcomes, and destination management strategies. This cross-disciplinary coverage enables the identification of recurring analytical elements and structural relationships within STTs-related research.

Literature searches for this review were conducted from June to December 2025. Following the PRISMA protocol, as illustrated in Figure 1, the initial search retrieved 2,800 records. After removing 500 duplicates, 2,300 titles and abstracts were screened, resulting in the exclusion of 2,100 irrelevant studies. Full-text assessment of 200 articles led to the removal of 122 studies due to non-peer-reviewed status, inaccessible full texts, or thematic irrelevance. Following this rigorous screening process, 78 studies published between 2015 and 2025 were selected for synthesis, representing both developed and emerging economies and encompassing empirical, conceptual, theoretical, and case-based research.

A database-specific Boolean keyword search was designed to capture studies on STTs and travel experience (Table 1). Searches in Scopus and Dimensions were conducted in title, abstract, and keyword fields, while Google Scholar searches were applied to full-text records due to platform limitations. Duplicate records were removed using manual verification.

This review applied predefined inclusion and exclusion criteria to ensure methodological rigor and thematic relevance. It included peer-reviewed, English-language studies published between 2015 and 2025 on STTs and travel experiences, while excluding non-peer-reviewed, inaccessible, or irrelevant studies (Table 2).

STTs operate within a complex system in which technological attributes, user perceptions, and contextual conditions jointly shape tourism experience outcomes [10], [27]. From an analytical perspective, existing theoretical approaches can be interpreted as complementary mechanisms that explain how these interactions occur [28].

Technology engagement theories, including TRA, TPB, and TAM, can be understood as behavioural decision mechanisms that explain how users respond to STTs attributes through perceived usefulness, ease of use, and behavioural intention [3], [29], [30]. Experience-based frameworks further extend this perspective by emphasising that tourism value emerges through emotional engagement, memory formation, and subjective evaluation processes rather than purely functional service delivery [4], [31], [32]. In addition, co-creation and service logic perspectives conceptualise tourism experiences as the result of continuous interaction among travellers, service providers, and digital platforms, highlighting the relational dynamics within STTs-enabled environments [27], [33]. Psychological and well-being theories, including PERMA, self-determination, and flow theory, introduce evaluative dimensions such as autonomy, competence, and intrinsic motivation, which influence both experiential outcomes and digital well-being [23], [34], [35].

These theoretical perspectives can be organised into a multi-level structure in which technological attributes, behavioural responses, and contextual conditions interact to determine tourism outcomes. Within this structure, mediating mechanisms such as perceived value, satisfaction, and memorable experience, together with moderating conditions such as security, trust, and user characteristics, shape the pathways through which STTs influence travel-related outcomes.

Based on this interpretation, Figure 2 synthesises these theoretical perspectives into an integrated analytical framework that organises STTs-related dimensions, multi-level mechanisms, and contextual enablers in a unified structure. As illustrated in Figure 2, STTs influence tourism systems not through isolated technological effects, but through interconnected mechanisms that shape cognitive, affective, behavioural, and well-being outcomes across different tourism contexts.

This review synthesizes diverse STTs scenarios by integrating fragmented themes into a holistic, multi-level STTs experience framework, illustrating the transition from smart technologies to intelligent sustainable tourism (Figure 2). The emergent themes identified through the review are organized into four areas: evaluation and dimensions of STTs, multi-level mechanisms shaping STTs-enabled travel experiences, STTs-enabled travel outcomes, and the evolution from smart technologies to intelligent sustainable tourism ecosystems.

STTs refer to the integration of advanced digital technologies into tourism systems to enhance personalization, memorability, and overall quality of travel experiences [3], [5], [36]. Conceptually, smart tourism emphasizes integrated and systematic travel management, optimizes resources and enables value co-creation among traveler, destinations, and service providers [37]. STTs are commonly characterized by four core attributes: informativeness, accessibility, interactivity, personalization and security [3], [38], [39], [40], [41]. Informativeness reflects accuracy, relevance, and timeliness of information; accessibility refers to ease of use and availability; interactivity enables two-way communication and support; and personalization tailors’ content and services to individual preferences [3], [38]. Tourists are more likely to trust and engage with digital tourism services when they perceive that their personal information is secure, which enhances their overall travel experience [42].

STTs have evolved across different stages (Figure 3). First, early research focused on the internet, mobile apps, and social media for information sharing and social integration [17], [43], [44], [45]. Second, operational technologies like RFID, IoT, and cloud computing improved backend efficiency and destination management [1], [6], [20]. Third, emerging studies emphasize smart well-being, digital balance, wearable tech, and phygital experiences [22], [23], [46]. Finally, recent research highlights AI, the metaverse, and immersive technologies for personalized, predictive, and engaging tourism [2], [10], [47], [48]. Overall, STTs are shifting from access-driven tools to well-being-oriented and data driven ecosystems.

This review examines 78 STTs-focused studies published between 2015–2025, extracted from global research databases. This timeline-based SLR allows observation of thematic evolution, and digital emerging trends (Table 3).

STT experiences operate through multilevel mechanisms, including moderators, mediators, and contextual enablers. As summarized in Table 4, prior literature demonstrates how these mechanisms shape tourist experiences and behavioral outcomes.

The impact of STTs on tourist experiences depends on several factors. Moderators like security and privacy concerns, technology readiness, growth mindset, emotional arousal, and place dependence shape how STTs attributes translate into experiences. At the same time, mediating mechanisms, such as perceived value, trust in technology, memorable experiences, user competence, and self-gratification, explain how these tools lead to satisfaction, loyalty, and future behaviors. Beyond individual factors, the broader digital environment plays a crucial role. Elements like digital well-being, online media engagement, authenticity, digital detox, and social media induced travel anxiety further influence outcomes. Together, these insights show that STTs do not produce direct effects. Instead, Tourists’ experiences and behaviors result from the mix of psychology, personal traits, and context.

Cognitive, affective, and behavioral outcomes are the three aspects of response; these outcomes represent what a person thinks (cognitive), feels (affective), and does (behavioral) following an experience [29]. The cognitive outcomes refer to changes in knowledge, intellect, thoughts, and beliefs [29]; affective outcomes concern feelings, emotions, attitudes, and values [71] and behavioral outcomes are observable actions, reactions, or skills, that occur as a result of cognitive appraisals and affective states [30].

The reviewed literature reveals that STTs shape travel experiences through interlinked cognitive, affective, behavioral and wellbeing outcomes, reinforcing the view of smart tourism as an experience-driven and outcome-oriented ecosystem (Table 5).

The review pointed out that recent literature goes beyond the cognitive, affective and behavioral perspective. Well-being is now viewed as a broader life outcome, reflecting overall quality of life, life satisfaction, and a healthy balance between technology use and daily life [23], [46]. Unintended or unmindful technology use can cause digital challenges such as technostress, information overload, and digital anxiety [61], [74]. This highlights the need for human-centered and ethical STTs design. Promoting digital well-being and mindful technology use is an important direction for sustainable and responsible smart tourism.

Existing literature demonstrates a clear evolution in the conceptualization and application of STTs. Rather than merely expanding in volume, STTs research has undergone a qualitative transformation. STTs have transformed from technological tools to experience systems and, ultimately, to intelligent and sustainable tourism ecosystems. Early studies primarily focused on the foundations and adoption of smart technologies, emphasizing ICT infrastructure, mobile tourism, and online travel planning [36], [38], [43], [50]. During this phase, technology was largely viewed as a functional support tool for tourism services.

Subsequent research shifted toward the experience and smart destination era, examining how STTs enable personalized experiences, enhance tourist satisfaction, and influence behavioral outcomes such as revisit intention [3], [39], [42], [56]. Technology thus evolved from a functional tool into an experience enabler.

More recent studies emphasize tourists’ mindful use of STTs to support digital well-being during travel experiences [22], [32], [46]. The concept of phygital tourism further integrates physical and digital environments to create seamless and context-aware experiences [75], [76]. Contemporary research also highlights the emergence of intelligent, responsible, and sustainable tourism driven by artificial intelligence, extended reality, and the Internet of Things [2], [73]. These technologies contribute to sustainability by improving resource efficiency and reducing environmental impacts [21]. STTs further support the achievement of key sustainable development goals (SDGs). Digital tourism platforms promote sustainable and inclusive economic participation [77], smart tourism destinations enhance urban sustainability [1], [72], and intelligent systems encourage efficient resource use and responsible tourist behavior [6].

As a result, intelligent and sustainable tourism ecosystems are emerging in which technology, tourist experiences, behavior, and sustainability jointly shape tourism outcomes that benefit both visitors and destinations. Within this transformation, Smart Tourism 2.0 represents a new paradigm where AI-driven systems, gamification, blockchain, digital twins, and metaverse technologies reshape tourism interactions and enable “better-than-real” experiences [2], [62]. Overall, STTs operate within a socio-technical ecosystem in which technology, user behavior, experience, and sustainability interact to co-create tourism value.

The studies in Table 6 show the evolution of decision analytical approaches in STTs research from 2015 to 2025. Early research focused on usability and content quality. Recent studies emphasize AI-driven, personalized, and well-being-oriented frameworks. This reflects the shift of STTs into digital ecosystems that support meaningful travel experiences.

A key observation from the reviewed studies is that most empirical research on STTs adopts behavioral decision-analysis approaches rather than classical optimization models. It is observed that Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) is the most commonly used method to examine relationships between smart tourism service attributes and travel experience outcomes. These models allow researchers to analyze multiple interconnected variables simultaneously, such as informativeness, accessibility, interactivity, and personalization. Previous studies have used SEM to explain how STTs attributes shape tourists’ engagement, satisfaction, and loyalty [3], [39], [42], [56].

Another important research stream focuses on technology adoption and decision-support models, often grounded in the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) and smart tourism ecosystems. These studies demonstrate how digital tools assist tourists in planning and navigating trips through real-time information and contextual recommendations. For example, mobile information services improve travel planning efficiency [38], while location-aware platforms enhance destination interaction [44]. Recent research extends these models by incorporating AI-driven recommendation systems and predictive analytics, enabling personalized services and real-time decision support [2], [10].

A third emerging direction examines experiential and well-being outcomes of STTs. Current literature shows smart technologies influence emotional engagement, happiness, and overall quality of life. Digital well-being introduces new responsibilities for destinations, platforms, and tourists in smart tourism [23]. Social media communication further enhances value co-creation, online experiences, and customer well-being [14]. Online travel media shape tourists’ well-being through cognitive, emotional, and behavioral mechanisms [12], while STTs more broadly have positive effects on psychological well-being [22] and perceived well-being outcomes [18]. Digital detox and technology-free tourism practices offer alternatives to intensive technology use, supporting well-being [46]. Finally, research on extended reality (XR) consumer experiences emphasizes technology and immersive experiences, though attention to consumer welfare remains limited [73]. Together, these studies underscore that STTs can enhance both experiential satisfaction and broader well-being, highlighting the need for responsible and human-centered technology design.

Overall, STTs research has evolved from examining adoption and functional decision-making toward understanding experiential, psychological, and well-being outcomes. The trend toward AI-powered, personalized, and ecosystem-oriented solutions reflects the growing emphasis on responsible, engaging, and sustainable smart tourism.

Research on STTs spans diverse countries, reflecting differences in technological maturity and tourism ecosystems. Developmental studies have provided global conceptual frameworks for understanding STTs-related systems [2], [28], [36], [43].

In technologically advanced contexts, STTs research tends to emphasise experience personalisation, smart technology trends (e.g., gamified STTs and smart devices), and destination competitiveness [43], [49], [62]. In contrast, studies in China have focused on social-aware place identification, secure location-based services, and sustainability-oriented adoption processes [20], [56]. Research in emerging economies, including Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam, Iran, and Thailand, has explored value co-creation, gamification, and the integration of STTs within smart city environments [14], [41]. European studies, particularly in Spain, France, and Norway, have highlighted issues related to digital well-being, online engagement, and rural smart tourism experiences [45], [54].

These findings suggest that STTs-related attributes and mechanisms do not operate uniformly across contexts, but are shaped by variations in infrastructure availability, digital literacy, and tourism development priorities. In particular, technological maturity and institutional conditions influence how STTs attributes are translated into behavioural and experiential outcomes. Moreover, while developed countries lead in advanced STTs adoption, emerging economies are increasingly exploring their potential. For example, recent research in Bangladesh indicates that STTs can influence tourists’ psychological well-being within evolving digital environments [22].

Overall, the cross-country evidence indicates that STTs should be interpreted as context-dependent systems, in which similar technological components may produce different outcomes under varying socio-technical conditions.

Despite the rapid growth of STTs research, existing studies exhibit several analytical limitations that constrain both theoretical development and practical interpretation. These limitations are not only related to data availability or application scope, but also reflect the way STTs-related systems are conceptualised and analysed.

Geographical scope: Most studies have concentrated on technologically advanced regions such as North America, Europe, and East Asia, where digital readiness, infrastructure maturity, and governance conditions are relatively stable. As a result, existing frameworks are often implicitly based on high-capacity systems and may not adequately capture variations in less-developed or transitional contexts. This creates limitations in the generalisability of STTs-related analytical structures, particularly in explaining how technological attributes and behavioural mechanisms operate under different infrastructural and cultural conditions.

Multi-disciplinary integration: Current research largely emphasises STTs attributes and their direct relationships with satisfaction and loyalty outcomes. While recent studies have begun to incorporate emerging dimensions such as technostress, social media–induced anxiety, digital well-being, and sustainability-related behaviours, these elements are often treated in isolation. There remains limited integration of these dimensions into a coherent analytical structure that explains how multiple mechanisms interact within STTs-enabled systems.

Research design: Most empirical studies rely on cross-sectional data, focusing on single-stage observations of user behaviour and experience outcomes. This restricts the ability to analyse dynamic processes, such as how STTs usage, behavioural responses, and well-being outcomes evolve over time or across different phases of travel. As a result, the temporal dimension of outcome formation remains underexplored.

Policy and business impact: Existing studies predominantly focus on individual-level behavioural outcomes, with relatively limited attention to system-level implications, including organisational performance, destination-level dynamics, and financial outcomes. This creates a gap in understanding how STTs-related mechanisms scale from individual experience to broader system performance and strategic decision contexts.

Overall, these limitations indicate that current STTs research remains fragmented in its analytical structure, with insufficient integration across attributes, mechanisms, and outcomes. Addressing these gaps requires a more systematic approach to modelling the interactions among technological, behavioural, and contextual components within smart tourism systems.

This systematic review synthesizes a decade of research (2015–2025) on STTs and organises existing studies into a multi-level analytical structure. The findings show that STTs can be interpreted as experience-oriented systems in which technological attributes, mediating and moderating mechanisms, and contextual conditions jointly shape tourism outcomes across the travel journey. The analysis also clarifies how these elements have evolved over time and how they are linked to cognitive, affective, behavioural, and well-being outcomes.

The evidence indicates that the effectiveness of STTs cannot be attributed to technological features alone, but depends on how these features interact with user characteristics, service configurations, and contextual conditions. In this sense, elements such as infrastructure availability, digital skills, system usability, and trust function as critical variables influencing how STTs-related mechanisms translate into observable outcomes. Similarly, advanced technologies, including artificial intelligence (AI), play a role in shaping experience formation across different travel phases, particularly when combined with user preferences and situational factors. These patterns suggest that STTs should be interpreted as system-level configurations rather than isolated tools.

STTs are also associated with broader sustainability-oriented developments in tourism systems. The integration of digital technologies contributes to economic activity, service coordination, and tourism-related employment, as reflected in prior studies [7], [28], [43], [67]. At the same time, STTs support the development of data-informed governance and destination management practices [21], including the integration of tourism systems with smart city infrastructures and mobility solutions [6], [48]. These processes influence how tourism systems operate in relation to resource use, environmental impact, and urban development.

In addition, STTs are linked to changes in consumption patterns and user behaviour, including the emergence of digital well-being, digital detox practices, and technology-related psychological responses [22], [23], [46]. While these developments highlight the potential of STTs to support more sustainable and balanced tourism systems, they also reveal challenges such as technostress and information overload, which may affect user experience and behavioural outcomes [60]. Overall, the findings indicate that STTs-related outcomes emerge from the interaction between technological, behavioural, and contextual elements, and therefore require analysis within an integrated system perspective.

This study synthesises a decade of research on STTs and interprets them as a structured system in which technological attributes, behavioural mechanisms, and contextual conditions jointly shape tourism outcomes. Rather than treating STTs as isolated tools, the analysis organises existing evidence into a multi-level framework that explains how experience formation emerges across different stages of the travel journey.

The findings indicate that the effects of STTs are not determined by technological innovation alone, but depend on how technological attributes interact with user characteristics, service configurations, and contextual environments. In this process, mediating and moderating mechanisms play a central role in translating technological features into cognitive, affective, behavioural, and well-being outcomes. This interpretation highlights the importance of analysing STTs as an integrated system rather than as a set of independent components.

At the same time, the review identifies several limitations related to data scope and the pace of technological development. The focus on English-language, peer-reviewed publications may restrict the representation of emerging practices, while rapid advancements in artificial intelligence, immersive technologies, and phygital systems suggest that empirical evidence may not fully capture ongoing changes in smart tourism environments.

Overall, the study indicates that STTs-related outcomes emerge from the interaction between technological, behavioural, and contextual elements. Understanding these interactions requires a systematic analytical approach that considers both the structure of STTs systems and the conditions under which they operate.