Smart Destination Branding: The Need for New Capability and Opportunities for Entrepreneurship

Instead of utilizing the unique heritage and construction of iconic buildings to get tourist attention and inward investment, the positive and strong image of a smart destination can be used as a branding strategy and a useful tool that can create competitive advantage However, this branding strategy of smart destination won't work well if it's not followed by stake holders 'capability to keep up with changing technologies, and explore new ways to create and deliver new value which transform the city into a more livable place and sustainable tourism. To date the model and academic research in the literature is inadequate with regards to branding strategy through experience co-creation in smart tourism destination. Thus, the objective of this paper was to examine questions: 1) how smartness in tourism smart destination influence city branding, 2) what capability needed by the stakeholders to improve city brand equity, and 3) how entrepreneurship opportunity will be created. To answer these questions, an integration model of interconnection capability based on brand equity has been proposed. Next step is the model is to be empirically tested by research on living lab collaboration from samples of smart tourism places in Indonesia and Malaysia. Theoretically, the findings of the study will help tourism destination and ecosystem recognize opportunity to exploit city branding, create competitive advantage and opportunity for entrepreneurship.