• Journal of Service Research and Studies
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• v.14 no.3
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• pp.19-45
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• 2024

As smart tourism cities are being actively introduced, efforts are emerging to understand the current situation and devise improvements from the perspective of services actually experienced by travelers. This study aimed to present directions for improving the overall service environment of smart tourism cities by introducing the servicescape perspective. It defined servicescape elements within smart tourism cities and analyzed how tourists' servicescape experiences affect their value perception, emotions, and satisfaction. The research model was designed by dividing servicescapes into physical servicescapes (cleanliness, convenience, electrical facilities) and communicative servicescapes (aesthetics and practicality of apps). A survey was conducted on 309 tourists who visited Suwon, a smart tourism city, and analyzed using Smart PLS. The analysis results showed that among physical servicescapes, cleanliness and electrical facilities had a significant impact on the evaluation of tourist destination value, while convenience had no effect. The communicative servicescape, namely the tourism app, had a significant impact on smart tourism value and overall destination value assessment. The tourism app and smart tourism value played a significant role in increasing tourists' positive emotions and decreasing negative emotions, which ultimately affected tourism satisfaction. This study confirmed the importance of tourism apps in smart tourism cities along with the importance of basic physical environments. Through this, it provides useful implications for establishing service improvement strategies for smart tourism cities.