Modern Social Science Research

Promoting high-quality development in rural tourism constitutes a vital measure for implementing the rural revitalisation strategy. Presently, China's rural tourism sector faces widespread bottlenecks including imbalanced coordination of interests, product homogenisation, and inefficient management. Taking Yongzhou City in Hunan Province as a representative case study, this paper employs stakeholder theory to analyse the practical challenges in its rural tourism development. It subsequently constructs a theoretical framework for enabling high-quality rural tourism development through smart technologies. The research proposes that smart technologies, through three core mechanisms – ‘data-driven decision-making, experience-reimagined interaction, and platform-reconstructed connectivity’ – create systemic empowerment across four key dimensions: government oversight, enterprise operations, community participation, and visitor experience. Tailored to Yongzhou's context, this paper designs an integrated implementation pathway comprising a ‘smart management platform, smart service scenarios, smart marketing system, and smart sharing mechanism’. This aims to provide theoretical reference and practical guidance for resolving multi-stakeholder conflicts in rural tourism and achieving sustainable regional tourism development.

Smart tourism; Rural tourism; Yongzhou city