Beyond the Tool: AI Adaptation & Value Creation in Destination Management Organizations of Secondary European Smart Cities

Sammanfattning

Background: The rapid spread of artificial intelligence has created both opportunity and complexity for destination management organizations in secondary European smart cities. As post-pandemic tourism demand continues to surge, DMOs face increasing pressure to adapt and leverage AI technologies to create organizational value. Purpose: This study explores how destination management organizations in secondary European smart cities adapt and leverage organizational capabilities around AI initiatives to create value. Value creation is examined from the perspective of the DMO itself, focusing on organizational and sectoral outcomes. Method: A qualitative multiple case study design was adopted, with semi-structured interviews and written responses with eight employees across DMOs in four cities, Tartu, Gothenburg, Tampere, and Dubrovnik. As a secondary data collection, this study adapts a website analysis to enable triangulation between the findings. These cities were selected to maximize analytical variation across destination context, national digital maturity, governance structures, and tourism intensity. Data was analysed thematically across six dimensions covering destination characteristics, AI initiatives, governance approaches, data and collaboration, value creation, and secondary city constraints and enablers. Conclusion: The findings demonstrate that DMOs in secondary European cities adapt and leverage AI initiatives through a context-dependent combination of destination pressures, governance arrangements, collaborative networks, and organizational values. Value creation is predominantly indirect and consistently difficult to formally measure across all four DMOs regardless of size or resource capacity. Governance position emerges as the most consequential determinant of what AI adaptation is possible, while the secondary city context produces a paradox of simultaneous constraints and enablers. A human-centric imperative is consistent across cases where DMOs have purposefully positioned human judgment and relationships as the foundation upon which AI creates value, reflecting a broader recognition that tourism is fundamentally an experience that technology can support but not replace.