Beyond FOMO: Building Smarter Tourist Destinations
By Federico de Arteaga Vidiella – Tequila Inteligente Head of the project
FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) has become a sociocultural phenomenon fueled by digital hyperconnectivity. What began as a concept applied to the psychology of social media users now also permeates the agenda of governments and tourism agencies. Many destinations, pressured by the need to appear modern and integrated into the global narrative of smart tourism, want to be Smart Tourist Destinations (STDs) or the questioned and questionable Smart Cities without a clear or sustained vision. This is not a minor issue; the same thing happens with sustainability, where adjectives are constantly used instead of consistent action, another FOMO that is not entirely marginal.
FOMO reflects an anxiety to belong. In the urban and tourism context, it generally translates into a rush to adopt technological trends without evaluating their relevance and to be part of a movement that they may divert or slow down.
Philosopher Daniel Innerarity offers a critical view of this hyperconnectivity. He states that “digitalization provides extreme visibility, but not cohesion.” The pressure to be visible, he says, fragments collective projects and pushes actors to compete for appearances rather than real impact. This logic contaminates the planning of cities and tourist destinations when the urgent displaces the important.
The effects of FOMO on the DTI model can be significant:
• Superficial adoption of the model: Some destinations implement technology without a plan for interoperability and obsolescence, just to align themselves with the dominant narrative.
• Ephemeral projects without continuity: Applications and sensors remain pilot projects without maintenance or evaluation.
• Disconnection from the community: When the model is implemented without governance, citizen participation, or local roots, it loses legitimacy.
• Discrediting of the DTI brand: The lack of tangible results undermines confidence in the model and the institutions that promote it.
The Ibero-American Network of Smart Tourist Destinations, made up of more than 60 members, seeks to prevent FOMO from dominating the DTI agenda through a systemic, practical, and collaborative approach.
It is not just a matter of aligning discourses, but of ensuring that each destination advances from its own capabilities and realities with a defined plan and ongoing technical assistance.
The Network promotes:
• Comparable diagnostics: Promotes context-specific assessment tools, avoiding misaligned or imitative implementations.
• DTI Awards: Recognizes real best practices in sustainability, innovation, and accessibility, discouraging empty marketing or simulated achievements.
• Technical roundtables: On topics such as governance, financing, training, and communication, they strengthen local capacities and prevent mistakes due to improvisation.
• Continuous training: Develops profiles of auditors and consultants trained under the same methodology, ensuring consistency and scalability.
• Financing: Manages partnerships with international entities to support projects with measurable territorial impact.
This ecosystem allows for the consolidation of a community of practice that transforms FOMO into structured motivation based on data, collaboration, and real sustainability.
Strategies to Minimize FOMO in Tourist Destinations
Minimizing Fear of Missing Out in the context of DTIs requires intentional measures that prioritize strategy over trends. Some of the most relevant include:
Designing a clear strategic vision: Avoid reactive decisions by using local roadmaps that respond to real challenges.
Impact assessment and prioritization: Analyze the relevance of each technological innovation based on its usefulness, scalability, and alignment with the destination’s objectives.
Participatory governance: Involving the community, private sector, and academia in decision-making reduces the risk of unsustainable impositions.
Transparent internal communication: Explaining the reasons behind each decision strengthens institutional cohesion and reduces organizational anxiety.
FOMO can be a driver for action, but also a trap for appearances. When a destination sets out to “be smart” without a strategy, strong local governance, or a shared vision, it is more concerned with appearing than with being.
The Ibero-American DTI Network represents an opportunity for destinations to walk this path in a supported, critical, and sustainable manner. The challenge is not to jump on a bandwagon, but to build a future with collective intelligence. That is what learning and implementation networks are for.
In the world of Smart Cities, the consequences of excessive enthusiasm for “being part of the future” have become apparent. Cases such as Songdo (South Korea), Masdar City (United Arab Emirates), and PlanIT Valley (Portugal) reveal how cities conceived as technological laboratories become “ghost towns” when technology is imposed without building community. Projects that promised green or hyperconnected utopias ended up with minimal occupancy and social disconnection.
The case of Columbus (Ohio) is also paradigmatic. After receiving US$50 million to transform itself into a smart city, its main technological initiatives (digital kiosks, planning apps, autonomous vehicles) had little real impact. Despite this, institutional learning is highlighted as a key value. This example shows how FOMO can lead to oversized promises without structural support or citizen validation.
This type of planning, framed within what has been called “unicorn planning,” represents an ideology that overvalues technology as a panacea, ignoring governance, territory, and people. Cities such as Yachay (Ecuador), projected as hubs of innovation, also failed by building on discourse rather than reality.
In an era of uncertainty and increasingly frequent risks, knowledge hubs—as spaces where experience, evidence, and reflection are shared—are powerful tools for counteracting the false expectations generated by FOMO. Participating in these collaborative environments allows destinations not only to access best practices, but also to understand the risks of implementing without context or vision. In times of maximum uncertainty, the collective intelligence shared in these hubs becomes an anchor of realism and strategy in the face of fashion.
