This paper presents a collaborative design method for the development of place based digital experiences within tourism destination. The method originates from critical readings of ‘co-creation’ and ‘smart destination’, contemporary buzzwords within tourism development, advocating that their central aspects are not reflected upon enough, thus impacting negatively on sustainable digital development for destinations. Instead they risk reproducing both previous and existing power structures rather than expanding a destination’s narrative. We therefore suggest a method rooted in Lefebvre’s theories on social production of space to acknowledge that a destination is not a fixed entity but rather produced in negotiation between politics, everyday practices, and its representations in mind and media, as well as highly entangled with its past, present and future. The collaborative design method presented in this paper is developed through in-depth studies of two specific places combined with practical inclusive design experiments with stakeholders, visitors, locals and tourism entrepreneurs, all with a connection to these places. We identified that intersecting knowledge, critical thinking and development in these workshops allowed new perspectives to emerge, broaden the destinations’ narrative and encouraged tourism entrepreneurs to peruse new grounds. Destination development thus need to be (1) in dialog with a wider context than, as co-creation suggests, between tourism stakeholders and visitors, (2) able to listen to and capture the diverse narratives and representations a destination carries, (3) understand and engage with ongoing, past, and present power structures, and (4) understand its own role in the production of space.