The main objective of this manuscript is to illustrate the metatourpolis and aerotainment concepts, which have hitherto been understudied, to empower tourism and travel activities in smart cities to enhance tourism experiences and environmental sustainability.
This viewpoint adopts a narrative review related to the metatourpolis and aerotainment concepts and is supported by real examples to illustrate the relevance of these two conceptual definitions in smart cities in the short and medium terms. Also, we used the Web of Science (WoS) and Google Scholar databases to find the most recent research (2019–2025) and gathered researchers to investigate artificial intelligence (AI) and metaverse technologies in tourism and travel activities.
Findings suggest that the implementation of metatourpolis and aerotainment, supported by AI and metaverse technologies, provides ubiquitous information and tailored suggestions and offers for tourists, enhancing their tourism experiences and reducing CO2 emissions. Moreover, the results suggest that smart cities can make better decisions about marketing strategies and promotion campaigns to encourage tourists to visit their cities and tourist attractions with a greater environmental consciousness and social responsibility to mitigate climate change under the paradigm of aerotainment and metatourpolis.
Smart cities, DMOs and travel companies should develop promotion campaigns and marketing strategies focused on products and services with zero and low CO2 emissions to empower their brand image on digital platforms and their high commitment to the environment as an added value in their business portfolios.
This research also helps researchers, companies and governments have a better perspective of metatourpolis and aerotainment terms to develop future studies in a technological context linked to digital consumers that demand immediate information and services with low environmental impact when they are on holidays.
