Towards the Construction of Territorial Intelligence Tourism Concept in Latin America

The variables to assess community resilience in tourist the concept and tools of TI originated in the late 1980s in response to the needs of a group of territorial stakeholders working on projects to combat poverty [9]. In 1989, the absence of territorial plans based on participation, the demand for critical approaches in the field of sustainable development, the revolution of information and communication technologies, led to the emergence in Europe (Besançon, France) by the "Catalyse" method [10], whose main objective was the creation of collective intelligences through various tools (diagnostic and evaluation), in order to enable the actors to elaborate, argue, animate and evaluate sustainable development projects [1]. The two fundamental aspects that will mark other definitions: the scientific approach and the actors-territorial community [11-19].

The scientific approach in territorial intelligence has the function of integrating and developing multidisciplinary knowledge and methods necessary to understand territorial structures, territorial systems and territorial dynamics [20]. It follows that IT cannot be seen as a discipline, it is not the simple sum of knowledge, but is shaped as a set of knowledge obtained through observation and structured reasoning [1].

Tourism destinations, as spaces whose competitiveness depends on the overall quality of their territory (environment, landscape, business fabric, infrastructure, public facilities and services, heritage, etc.), have not been unaware of this concept, and the expression tourism governance has gained strength [21].

In this regard, in recent years there has been a growing number of scientific approaches to the application of the TI approach to tourism activity [22].

The actors-territorial community suppose the second pillar of IT; in fact, this is defined as a process that is based on the understanding that articulates knowledge, being essential the co-participation, co-construction and collaboration carried out by the different actors [15, 17, 23].

The definition used by ENTI states that "Territorial Intelligence is the science aimed at sustainable development and whose subject is the territorial community" [14]. Frediani [17] also proposes that territorial intelligence is a way of doing science. However, authors such as Girardot [24], Devillet and Breuer [13] and Sánchez et al. [18], who propose that territorial intelligence is a scientific approach due to its multidisciplinary nature, do not propose it as a science.

The tools and methods developed from territorial intelligence are based on the close collaboration of territorial actors and research teams, focused on a research-action dynamic to provide real solutions to current problems. Most of the tools that have been developed by ENTI and by the interdisciplinary research team Territory Actors and Governance for Transformation (TAG) in Latin America, have been designed to be used by a group of actors acting on the same problem or space. Such tools are characterized by combining qualitative, quantitative and spatial techniques based on ICT's [1].

From this perspective in Latin America there are already some TI initiatives as is the case of Argentina, Colombia and now Mexico is incorporated from the tourism vision to TI [25-27]. However, at the global level the conceptualization of this TI in question and the ways of how to interrelate the tourism dimension for the development of such territory continues to proliferate [1, 28].

In Latin America, the TAG team bases its tools on the Understanding, Intelligence and Territorial Development (UITD) Methodological Perspective, whose objective is to build among local actors research methods and territorial intervention instruments that systematically accompany the: image of the future, strategy that will lead to it and obtaining collective achievements [15].

2.1 Territorial intelligence and tourism

As recognized by Luque et al. [29], tourism has been a sector scarcely addressed by the methodologies of territorial intelligence; there are only a few projects in this line in Uruguay, Argentina and Morocco, framed in the development of tools for the promotion of sustainable tourism initiatives at the local level.

Tourism projects have been scarce, in fact, only five actions have been found that combine territorial intelligence and tourism:

(1) Uruguay (Punta del Este) in 2009, where work was carried out to generate employment, promote ecological and social innovation, and enhance the value of the destination's natural and cultural resources;

(2) Uruguay (Lavalleja) in 2010, where tourism was addressed with the aim of conserving biodiversity and cultural heritage, and investigating its impact on the quality of population life;

(3) Argentina (La Plata) in 2012, it is about rescuing heritage assets that are linked to the city and its social practices;

(4) Argentina, the "Parador ecológico La Posada" is carried out to revalue cultural and natural heritage and generate links with local stakeholders;

(5) Argentina (Santa Fé and Paraná) in 2011, the project "Organization of Territorial Intelligence, for Sustainable Tourism in the RMSP" was carried out [1].

Of this series of territorial intelligence initiatives focused on tourism, the last two have been analyzed in detail, which, like the others, seek to be promoted and developed by the host communities themselves [19]. Despite this scarce interest in the field of tourism, it is interesting to plan the development of a tourist destination from the perspective of TI, in which the actors are the main "intelligent entities" capable of shaping a strategy, monitoring the results and implementing lines of future action; capable of enhancing the value of tourist destinations [8].

From the perspective of the relationship between territorial intelligence and tourism, we are witnessing a paradigm shift linked to the valorization of the tourist territory by tourists and tourism producing agents, generating tourist attractions in which there is a tendency to connect history, tourist identity, environmental characteristics and, in general, resources and activities disjointed from the economic activity of the territory [8].

Table 3. Codes of the responses of the expert groups

Codes (25)	Colombia	Costa Rica	Mexico	Totals	Grounded	Density
● Academic institutions	8	8	7	23	15	5
● Artificial intelligence	4	0	7	11	8	4
● Big data	4	3	2	8	6	5
● Circular economy	3	8	2	12	7	3
● Colombia	4	0	0	4	4	6
● Community and its habitat	16	8	9	33	24	5
● Companies	0	13	2	14	6	3
● Costa Rica	0	5	0	5	2	6
● Covid-19	3	5	4	12	7	3
● Cultural	2	3	4	8	5	3
● Cultural transformation	4	8	2	13	8	5
● Development of science, technology, and innovation	11	3	4	17	14	14
● Digital education	7	8	6	20	13	5
● Economic	5	5	7	18	11	5
● Entrepreneurship	0	5	2	7	3	5
● Environmental	2	3	6	10	6	3
● Gig economy	7	5	7	20	13	5
● Global community	13	13	9	35	23	19
● México	0	0	6	6	3	6
● Quality of life	4	10	11	25	14	5
● Social	3	8	11	22	12	5
● Sustainable development	6	8	6	19	12	18
● Territorial intelligence	1	3	2	5	3	3
● Tourism	21	5	13	39	30	17
● Urban development	5	3	4	11	8	16
Totals	133	133	133	399	257	174

Source: Own elaboration

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Figure 1. Linking network of codes for the construct of the concept of tourism territorial intelligence in Latin America

Source: Own elaboration

Part of the construct of the concept of tourism IT in the three participating countries (Mexico, Colombia and Costa Rica) of this study are located around IT, where the categories are directly related to the three countries, these being: sustainable development, global community, tourism, urban development and development of science, technology and innovation. From these categories in the network, the codes that were generated were in the sense of the perspectives of the group of experts in the analysis of their responses.

4.1 Colombia

In the group of experts from Colombia, their results showed that IT has to do with the management of space, the transformations of the social conditions of the community and its habitat, of which they seek to improve the living conditions of urban communities and rural, in turn, the benefit of IT must be supported by technology and innovation, since they are important elements that manage to transform cultural traditions and at the same time change social relations in all areas. Likewise, they redefine the current thinking of water waste and waste management, emphasizing green cities, specifically the circular economy and agroecology.

Regarding the capacity of the IT construct for the articulation of the agents involved in the development of a territory, they mention that one of the essential elements is the work in coordination for the fulfillment of collective objectives, where the community acts as an important pillar for obtaining information, joining efforts and the main strategists in favor of tourism for the benefit of the communities, these being important in the knowledge of the territory and promotion of their tourist activities.

In addition, they consider that knowledge in IT requires understanding and planning different dynamics from each region, as well as their techniques for creating knowledge, being the fundamental people in this process, because their intelligence is closely linked to the rational condition of the human being. Therefore, the plans that are designed and intended for the tourism sector and like any economic activity, a strategic direction process must be considered so that its analysis identifies and evaluates the impact of all exogenous and endogenous variables of the sector.

Therefore, they mentioned that there must be a political agreement or collective agreement between the actors of the territory for the efficient use of natural resources through legal mechanisms and territorial planning, which lead to social and economic use for the well-being of the community, local community, Equally important, institutional conditions must be fostered so that people can access technical, technological and higher education, allowing the activation and collective participation of community actors, without neglecting critical and scientific thinking.

4.2 Costa Rica

The group of experts from Costa Rica, IT must be linked to the interaction between the different entities of the State and society, who disclose their strategic plans and the actions to be followed in compliance with the different actions in regarding tourism, giving as an example the official institutions, where their strategic plans are contemplated, their programs aimed at companies and that people from local communities are included, adding all efforts for a superstructure, carrying out their laws and incentives for benefit to the actions of its resources, without leaving aside the responsible accompaniment of all the people involved in the action plans in the face of real needs and the effects of COVID-19.

Another point mentioned was ICT, where they mentioned that its impacts influence the strategic direction of companies and people, being a necessary element for the operation and internal administration of the company, where different marketing strategies can be carried out and among others. Actions with a direct interaction between client-company. Therefore, current companies, as of the pandemic, sanitary security measures were implemented for safe destinations and actively participated with local communities, not only in promoting them, but also in verifying and providing incentives to those who formulate and execute the actions proposed in their plans.

There must also be an active link with the universities, in this way their interrelationship can be strengthened in favor of considering smart tourist destinations. Therefore, this new normality requires reinventing itself for the adaptation of companies and their workforce, as it is in the Gig Economy, being the human talent that chooses where, how much and when they want to work through mobile applications, allowing companies to adapt and not die, also activate a collaborative economy in local development.

Part of this, they mentioned that the present capacities of the territory are considered the elements of knowledge, experiences, cultural, social and historical heritage, since they are the people who carry out the activities and it is they who shape the territories, taking advantage of and enhancing the conditions endogenous IT that is integrated into the community in co-construction processes. Also, its importance of applying accessible instruments that collect cultural historical bases, geographical conditions, natural heritage, ecological, socioeconomic, political and entrepreneurial ecosystems, these indicators being to generate opportunities for the creation of locally-based tourism products in territorial co-creation and ecosystems of entrepreneurs in the territory.

4.3 Mexico

Lastly, the group of experts from Mexico argued that IT is the understanding of the interrelationships that occur between the actors in a territory that seek their own development and that part of the premises of the knowledge of said actors should be incorporated into the processes of formulation and management of development plans for the territorial space. In turn, ICTs are an important element for supporting work and intelligent territorial development itself, thus reaching the basic construction of the IT concept, which are people or local actors, basic pillars to sustain themselves on intelligence manifold of the human being.

In addition to the interrelationships and interactions between the people who cohabit in the territory, they affect cultural diversity and worldviews towards development that are integrated by their identity and their relationship with nature in their local communities. In this sense, from its construct of IT, from the phenomenon of tourism, it is embedded in its spaces and the resources that allow it to develop from human interaction between foreigners and hosts, enabling the tourist experience from the spheres of life of the human being that impacts on the economic, social, cultural, environmental and political aspects, mainly.

Such impacts allow their intelligent territorial development to nurture the local sphere of the communities and, where ICTs serve as essential tools to streamline the processes of detecting the needs of the local population and at the same time generate the necessary information to project proposals of local development, starting from the bottom up so that they are the tenants who provide the precise information about what they want and what is required for the benefit of the local community.

In addition, the perception of the responsibility and seriousness of each individual in promoting intelligent development enters, in turn, the support of the scientific optics that are the academic institutions for the theoretical and methodological support for the analysis of social reality. Therefore, people from the local sphere must rethink that tourism positively impacts their quality of life and that the territory is not only a container of complexities, but also a series of living relationships between the impacts to society and nature, that is the development of IT.

At this time, where the valuation of different spaces by tourism tends to reproduce attractions, often disconnected from their history and identities, from their environmental characteristics and disjointed from other economic activities, it is proposed that IT provides a theoretical-methodological basis robust and proven. IT can be applied to any tourist destination, regardless of the degree of maturity, the tourist segment, etc., helping to improve the planning and management processes of tourism and the destination. In this way, there would be a more holistic and consensual vision that would have a positive impact on all the actors involved [1].

Therefore, its importance in the knowledge dedicated to the study of innovation and its thinking to satisfy the needs of the people who benefit their territory from the local, determining the various social strata and the differentiations that may exist. Therefore, their relationship generates a series of activities related to the economic, social, cultural and environmental aspects, where from a generation of enterprises they can be strengthened in their sector, as long as it is planned correctly and does not affect irregularities or is only exclusive to a few.

The construction of its concept alludes to other countries in the world reflecting on the various problems within their territories and, such effects of IT are a priority and that digital platforms are decisive in exercising a base support or, where appropriate, the causes for the opinions of consumers and make possible the opinions of the tourist influx, thus taking advantage of the spaces measuredly under the concept of IT and rethinking the load capacity, diversity of its tourist products and its local regulations of the communities.

The themes identified from the theory are in two aspects, the European school has three programmatic axes, theoretical references; design of methods and the development of technological tools, in this sense, the findings of this research differ with these axes, since the results reflect that, for the three countries studied, what is important is community knowledge, sustainable development, tourism aspects and strategies, people and territory, which coincides with the Latin American school whose axes are: sustainable development of territories, people and identities.