Scientific Research on Smart Tourist Destinations: A Bibliometric Analysis and Outlook for Puerto Vallarta, Mexico (2022-2026)

A wide range of literature addresses scientific research on this topic, focusing on the implementation of AI technologies in sustainability and tourism. The objective is to describe the scientific research on smart tourism destinations (STDs) from 2022 to 2026, based on: document type, analysis category, publishers, year of publication, countries, and language. Method: A bibliometric analysis was conducted in the Web of Science database using the English search query “Research on smart tourist Destinations” across all fields from 2022 to September 2026. Results: 523 publications were found by document type, of which 460 were original articles, 38 were procedural documents, 24 were review articles, and one fell into other categories. The categories are Hospitality, Leisure, Sport and Tourism (237), Environmental Studies (55), Environmental Sciences (52), Management (51), and other categories. The publishers are Taylor and Francis (83), Emerald Group Publishing (74), MDPI (65), Elsevier (52), and Springer Nature (50), among others. The countries with the highest scientific output include People R China (112), Spain (84), Malaysia (42), India (30), and South Korea (26), among others. The years with the highest output are 2025 (119), followed by 2022 (106), 2024 (104), 2023 (100), and 2026 (96). The predominant language is English (497), followed by Spanish (16), Portuguese (8), Italian (1), and Russian (1). Conclusions: Publications in Mexico are not reflected here, there are a negligible number of publications in Puerto Vallarta (1), and it is proposed that research on this topic must be increased. Furthermore, Smart Tourist Destinations (STD) are typically coastal and require a high investment cost to qualify for this designation. On the other hand, Puerto Vallarta is a significant coastal tourist destination in Mexico and needs to adapt to digital global context.