WeChat for smart tourism destination. Take project smart taining as an example

In tourism industry, Smart Tourism Destination is an emerging concept which expanded from the idea of Smart City. This concept represents an environment where technology is embedded on the components of the destination. It enables a strong connectivity among tourism stakeholders, locals as well as tourists which allow them to gain more engagement with each other. In China, the understanding of Smart Tourism Destination put a lot of emphasis on the scientific and manager’s perspective. People work on how to apply the Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) into tourism destinations while few researches are conducted in how the information should delivered to the users, and how to engage all the stakeholders. Lately, a lot of China’s traditional industries are greatly interrupted by the Internet, O2O is becoming a new trend. The Chinese largest instant message application WeChat has also played a role within the O2O market with its functions, such as WeChat Payment, WeChat Service account, and etc. As a service designer in WeChat Pay department, this thesis aims to explore how WeChat could provide a new perspective to Smart Tourism Destinations, which is engaging, friendly for the tourists and efficient and competitive for the tourism destinations.