Digital Technologies and Systems

Tourism ecosystems emergencies and crises are most often due to problems related to overtourism. Overtourism appears in many forms, almost all linked to the presence and movements of more tourists than a particular destination can cope with comfortably. The management of tourist flows, through measures that mitigate and change these flows, has thus become a goal common to many of the strategies proposed for dealing with the problems caused by overtourism. New digital technologies offer us a wide array of tools for collecting and analysing data on tourist movement and behaviours and, more generally, data useful for managing flows in tourism ecosystems. According to the logic of information systems, their use should be planned on the basis of the strategies and measures to be applied, while also taking managerial and organizational aspects into account (Laudon & Laudon, 2020). On the technological level, the Internet and its protocols and services underpin almost all the flow management strategies. The most important is the (World Wide) Web, which made digital systems accessible to everyone, on and in conjunction with all sorts of devices, as now happens with the internet and the web of things. In this chapter we also propose a method for designing a web strategy for the adoption of measures aimed at preventing, mitigating, or eliminating the effects of overtourism, which Destination Management Organizations (DMOs) and the actors involved in tourist offers can apply, following a 7-step process, with one or more activities, supported by specific models, corresponding to each step.