Destination social capital and innovation in SMEs tourism firms: an empirical analysis in an adverse socio-economic context

Abstract

This study examines the structural relationships between internal and external resources that explain the innovation of small tourism firms in adverse socio-economic contexts. Specifically, it analyzes two internal resources, human and organizational-technological capital, and the valuable intangible resources derived from social interactions between the agents in the destination (other companies, institutions, and community). The research hypotheses are tested by means of structural equation analysis applied to an empirical study of 180 tourism firms located in Isla Margarita (Venezuela). The findings confirm the importance of external resources derived from relationships with destination agents in the innovation behavior of tourism small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). While business social capital affects innovative behavior directly, other types of internal intellectual capital mediate the relationship between innovative behavior and institutional and community social capital. It is the first to address the local community’s role in the innovation of tourism SMEs. The importance of integrating firm and destination resources should inform SMEs’ innovation policies in adverse contexts where the scarcity of resources make vulnerable the economic, social and environmental sustainability.     

Networking for sustainable tourism – towards a research agenda

This paper proposes a research agenda for networking for sustainable tourism research based on a collaborative workshop of international tourism academics and researchers and an extensive review of the relevant literature. Each year, Building Excellence in Sustainable Tourism – an Education Network (BEST EN) holds a Think Tank on a topical issue in sustainable tourism education. One aim of the Think Tank is to develop a relevant research agenda that draws on the collective knowledge of participants and acknowledges the interdependent economic, environmental and social objectives in sustainable tourism. Six main areas were identified as important for a research agenda on networking for sustainable tourism and its implementation: theory, methodology and conceptual issues; actors, culture and power; lifecycle, evolution and dynamics of networks; knowledge transfer; macro-perspectives and strategic action, vision, innovation and management of networks. This paper presents and discusses these research themes in the context of a literature review on networks and networking for sustainability in tourism. It is found that substantial progress has been made in the investigation of private sector networks at the destination levels; research on networks involving public sector stakeholders and networks across sectors and levels of governance, however, remains limited.     

文化旅游创新体系的结构与性质研究

如何提升创新能力是中国旅游业实现产业转型和升级需要解决的关键问题.因为旅游业产业结构的复杂性,所以产业内部创新行为的表现形式也会有很大差异.文化旅游创新主要不是技术创新,而是要以文化创新为基础,达到旅游的创新与发展.文化旅游创新体系在结构和运行机制上都体现为文化与旅游融合的二元复合体系,具有创新目标与成果的双重性、二元核心创新主体、双重价值导向,是双重核心模式.鉴于此,应注意文化创新和文化旅游产品创新的差异,建立协调市场机制和公共管理机制的创新管理体制,充分发挥旅游地居民与旅游企业的积极性.     

Urban bicycle tourism: path dependencies and innovation in Greater Copenhagen

Abstract

During the latest decade, a renaissance of bicycling in urban transportation has occurred in many Western European cities. This opens up for a development of bicycle tourism as a form of urban sustainable tourism, taking advantage of improved infrastructure and facilities for cycling tourists. The aim of this study is to conceptualise the dynamics behind the development of urban bicycle tourism. This development may be viewed as an innovative process based on incremental changes in local socio-technological mobility systems. An analytical framework is proposed, based on the following categories: urban planning, bicycle tourism services, communication, and place making. In the analysis, evidence from the Greater Copenhagen region is used to contextualise particularly these perspectives of the development of urban bicycle tourism. In each of the four categories, evidence of innovative services or procedures supporting bicycle tourism was found. However, the most important source of incremental innovation is likely to be found on a systemic level, between the actors in the destination. It is also argued that the development of urban bicycle tourism is highly path dependent, related to the local bicycle culture. Bicycle tourism should not be viewed as isolated from the locals’ everyday cycling.     

Leadership and Innovation Processes—Development of Products and Services Based on Core Competencies

SUMMARY

The new challenge for destinations is to professionalize the continuous development process of innovative products and services. In this context, innovation is regarded as a bipolar process between market and resources. From the resource-oriented perspective, the concentration on regional core competencies will therefore become a source of innovation for destinations while the customer is the source of innovation from the market-oriented perspective. Resulting from the nature of the destination product, the innovation process is interpreted as an inter-organizational network process. The aim has to be the implementation of continuous innovation processes in the form of networks within a system of a learning destination. Given the fact that, especially for innovative activities, networks play a minor role in tourism at present, the question is raised of how to overcome the obstacles of cooperation and to initiate network activities to foster innovation networks within a destination. A study was conducted that focused on the identification of forms of cooperation that strengthen and reinforce innovative behavior in a destination. The article aims at discussing the enhancement of the attractiveness and the quality of innovative network activities by increasing the value of cooperation for the providers of the destination.     

Management challenges with the maintenance of tourism experience concept innovations: Toward a new research agenda

This article suggests a new research agenda within the debates about tourism, the experience economy, and innovation. Knowledge about innovation and value co-creation within experience-based sectors has increased, but most studies focus on the initial steps of the innovation process. We argue that there is a need to focus on challenges that tourism management faces over time when it wishes to maintain innovations in an experience concept. Maintaining such innovations needs to be investigated from an organisational perspective. There are many reasons why it can be challenging to maintain innovative experience concepts over time. We address three important reasons and suggest an analytical model which employs four theoretical constructs namely, the experience concept, the experience system, internal engagement, and external engagement. We illustrate the model by applying it to three case vignettes from experience-based tourism. The case vignettes illuminate how “maintenance” is an important construct within experience innovation research.     

Prospects for Innovation in Tourism

SUMMARY

The tourism product is a composite one with its production, distribution and marketing being configured along a value chain involving many activities which are vertically, horizontally and diagonally related and integrated in varying degrees. Both orthodox and non-orthodox economists agree that innovations will only be undertaken when there is a sufficiently high innovation dividend which pays for the added cost and risk of innovation. Thus profitability appears to be the strongest explanatory variable both behind investment and innovation. Based on the notion that expected profitability from innovation can serve as the primary independent variable determining innovation behaviour across different economic sectors and/or sub branches of tourism, the paper sets out to establish the innovation potential for each of the tourism value creating economic activities from the provision of information to prospective customers (tourists) in the sending region to post-trip (after sale) services. In addition to the usual profit-generating forces of costs and revenues, such dimensions as firm size and economics of scale, proximity to relevant science and technology (know-how for innovation) through human capital and forms of organisation (e.g., network-organisation and/or clusters) will equally be taken into consideration. This analysis will therefore help in pinpointing those areas of the tourism value chain where innovations are most likely to occur. The paper concludes with the presentation of a model aimed at empirically testing innovation behaviour across the tourism value chain.     

Wonderment in tourism land: three tales of innovation

ABSTRACT

The paper uses an unconventional story format to report on three cases of tourism innovation, using the literary genre of nonsense to also contemplate narrative expression in academic research. Case materials principally derive from open in-depth interviews. The analysis highlights the importance of knowledge in innovation, also illuminating an important relationship to entrepreneurial passion. Notably, passionate interest inspires a learning habit that builds enabling stocks of knowledge; these knowledge stocks render the necessary technical knowledge and situational awareness to see and seize innovation opportunity. By using their vast stock of knowledge, entrepreneurs can identify needed resources and know-how and ways to fill in the gaps. In prosaic terms, this ingrained learning habit depicts a story of incremental innovation at personal scale. Use of the literary nonsense genre overtly positions narrative as a rhetorical form, inviting contemplation of alternative forms of scholarly expression. In this respect, novel forms of expression open the way to new insight into social phenomena. Polyvocality enhances our knowledge of the social world.     

Selling Anthropocene space: situated adventures in sustainable tourism

Abstract

The Anthropocene is a proposed technical term for a new geological timeframe, but it is also a conceptual tool with the potential to redefine the stakes of contemporary environmental politics. One facet that is often overlooked is that the Anthropocene is a concept with commercial potential, even if the term itself has not been widely adopted. This article presents an investigation of the commercial potential of the Anthropocene idea through the lens of self-described sustainable tourism ventures in The Bahamas. These examples demonstrate some of the ways in which Anthropocene imaginaries participate in the recreation, redesign, and rebranding of specific spaces as emergent “tourism products”, specifically the small island farm and the anthropogenic coral reef. The goal is twofold: (1) to explore the symbolic and material creativity of the Anthropocene idea as its themes are used to extend capitalist innovation, and (2) to examine the Anthropocene idea as a strategy that builds upon existing histories of inequality to enable transnational accumulation in particular locales. As a situated adventure, this article articulates a reflexive mode of political ecological research for the Anthropocene that is equipped to critically articulate emergent practices at the intersection of postcolonial tourism, environmental conservation, and sustainable development.     

The importance of human-related factors on service innovation and performance

Firm size, collaboration, foreign ownership and the level of formal training for employees are just some of the key inputs considered to be important in the amount of Service innovation in Tourism firms. However work has called for a greater empirical understanding on service innovation in Tourism and deeper consideration of employment focused practices as front line employees are crucial to innovation. The relationship customers have with service providers is a key determinate of satisfaction and as such the aim of this research is to unpick further the human-related factors associated with this area of study. Data for this research paper were gathered from 201 tourism service firms located throughout Japan. Whilst the results indicate that committed front-line employees and leadership are found to be the primary antecedents of service innovation, knowledge management and instilling creativity through the firm are also key. Our results suggestion that organizations can leverage the benefits associated with human-related factors to enhance service innovation behaviours and increase business performance.     

Sustainable tourism and its use as a development strategy in Cambodia: a systematic literature review

Governments in many developing countries endorse sustainable tourism, despite associated practical limitations and challenges as a development strategy. Using the case of Cambodia, this paper illustrates how sustainable tourism issues in a developing country may be better understood through a systematic review of scattered relevant peer-reviewed and grey literature. This can help in identifying emergent themes and challenges, gaps in knowledge, and opportunities for future research. Analysis of 77 documents on Cambodia's sustainable tourism revealed themes and challenges relating to: (1) an emphasis on nature-based tourism (ecotourism); (2) calls for greater community engagement for sustainable outcomes; (3) stakeholder perceptions and values as drivers of tourism success; (4) cultural heritage as a key tourism attraction; and (5) foreign investment shaping Cambodia's tourism future. Unequal emphasis is given to key government policies for tourism development and there is limited practical guidance on how to realise a vision of sustainable tourism. There is a lack of consideration of how the socio-economic and cultural context affects sustainable tourism. The evidence suggests that sustainable tourism in Cambodia is questionable until fundamental economic, social capacity and policy issues are addressed, along with greater emphasis given to the tourism system's demand side.     

Bringing a politics of hope to the tourism classroom: exploring an integrated curriculum design through a creative and reflexive methodology

ABSTRACT

The university classroom as it has traditionally been structured is ill-equipped to prepare the creative, problem-solving, socially engaged, and ?exible young adults that today’s employers demand. Hierarchical approaches to university education dominate, and students frequently fail to make the connections between what they are learning and real-world scenarios. In this paper, we present an Integrated Curriculum Design (ICD) project initiated by three professors at varying stages of their careers in two tourism classes in a Canadian University. While much of the scholarship on ICD to date has focused on its bene?cial aspects for students, here we employ Critical Analytic Practice (CAP) in order to critically re?ect on our own pedagogic values, questions, and learning as we experienced them over the course of this project. Through our creatively re?ective writings, we better understand how ICD has positively impacted our own ability to co-design and co-deliver meaningful learning experiences in the tourism classroom. Our research makes three contributions to: the limited scholarship on ICD in tourism, the limited scholarship focused on re?exivity in tourism pedagogical scholarship and we draw attention to the use of CAP as an innovative way to represent data in tourism in order to broaden our audience and impact.     

The Effect of Trust on Quality in the Culturally Diverse Tourism Industry

Abstract

Tourism can be interpreted as a system of different companies, which are often situated in different regional, geographical, political, economic and cultural backgrounds. Because of the tense interaction between customers and employees in tourism firms, understanding of the system plays a significant role to establish a high service quality. Furthermore customers have to offer trust to tourism firms, since the tourism product is characterized by high intangibility before consumption. Additionally trust building is hampered due to the diversity of people in tourism and the different firms in tourism, which have to cooperate. This paper analyzes trust building in tourism and presents strategies to improve trust.     

Innovation Management in Cultural Heritage Tourism: Experience from the Amphawa Waterfront Community,Thailand

This paper examines how innovation management could bring greater opportunities for cultural heritage tourism at the community level. A two-stage investigation using in-depth, semi-structured interviews with key informants and random, on-site, short, structured interviews with tourists was conducted to uncover the preconditions and categories of innovation that support cultural heritage tourism in the Amphawa Waterfront Community, a renowned tourist destination in Thailand. The results from the study suggest that the “willingness” and “capability” of those involved in a community-based cultural heritage initiative are key to fostering a multitude of innovations but may not guarantee its long-term success. A mind-set towards sustainability that considers economically, socially, and environmentally viable innovations is required for sustainable growth. A call for innovation management from this sustainable angle is proposed at the end.     

论当代旅游发展理论的构建:理念、框架与要点

随着大众旅游初级阶段的到来,我国旅游业也相应进入了国家战略体系,加上旅游教育和人才培养层次的提升,基于中国学术立场和现实诉求的理论创新已是当务之急。在分析总结旅游发展阶段特征和当代旅游发展的核心价值取向的基础上,文章提出了当代旅游发展理论的核心观点:构建以旅游法为核心的国家意志体系,以旅游经济监测与预警为中心的宏观调控体系,以游客满意为导向的微观监管体系。     

A Consumer-Based Measurement of Tourism Innovation

SUMMARY

The present paper reviews the innovation literature related to tourism and examines the twin problems of operational definitions and measurement of innovation in the tourism sector. A conceptual model is then proposed by which the most relevant aspects of innovation and the most relevant aspects of the “tourism experience” can be integrated conceptually, and which can guide the development of related operational definitions and measurements and lead to a standardization of, and therefore an ability to aggregate, tourism innovation statistics across products, providers, markets and geopolitical regions. The model first categorizes innovations along two dimensions: an “invention-adoption” continuum and an “impact-on-the-tourism-experience” dimension, which includes accessibility, affective transformation, convenience and value. How the use of these categories can direct attention to important definitional and measurement issues are discussed as is how their use can improve the comparability of tourism innovation data collected from disparate sources. Finally, a third dimension, the economic impact of the innovation, is introduced to the model. The paper concludes with implications and guidelines for future research aimed at validating the model described.     

Communicating across tourism silos for inclusive sustainable partnerships

Abstract

Overcoming traditional tourism silos to develop long-term relationships with stakeholders is essential for transformational change. Adopting broader networks connects researchers to pertinent issues facing society, develops reciprocal capacities for learning, and creates inclusive sustainable partnerships. As critical tourism scholars and not-for-profit employees, we illustrate the journey of how we engaged collaboratively with diverse stakeholders, from businesses, not-for-profits and the university, to tackle issues of economic disadvantage and social exclusion. Critical hospitality and dialogue theory were adopted to provide a framework for the processes of collaboration, research, networking, and advocacy work for inclusive sustainable spaces. Drawing on our involvement with co-founding a collaborative research network, the Network for Community Hospitality, and analysis of data from two Ketso workshops and interviews with 41 network members, we present reflections on setting up and facilitating the network. In addition, two examples of collaborative Network activities are presented to illustrate the techniques and dialogic communication processes for doing critical hospitality. The article thereby contributes by providing empirically informed and reflexive understandings into the experiences of working and communicating within long-term inclusive partnerships with diverse stakeholders to create traction for positive social sustainable change.     

Sustainable human resource management as a driver in tourism policy and planning: a serious sin of omission?

This paper focuses on the neglect of an employment or workforce focus in policy engagement and planning for sustainable tourism. Tourism is of interest here because there is an established role for government and the private sector in policy engagement and strategic planning with respect to product development, infrastructure, marketing and human resource capacity and the focus has increasingly emphasised sustainable goals within this process. The discussion addresses the central role of people and work within concepts of sustainability and sustainable communities and questions why this has been, substantially, ignored in tourism. The paper starts by recognising the interconnectedness of employment in tourism and its workforce concerns with a wide range of inter-linked policy and operational considerations. This, in turn, points to the utility of the sustainable HRM model as a means by which to frame tourism work. Thereafter, this paper introduces new approaches through the proposal of sustainability indicators that have both theoretical and practical policy formation value in relation to the workforce. These sustainable employment capacity, service delivery capacity and service quality capacity with which policy-makers can gauge their readiness for sustainable growth in tourism employment. The research and application implications for this approach are discussed.     

Active engagement with nature: outdoor adventure tourism,sustainability and wellbeing

Abstract

This article draws on the conflicting arguments surrounding outdoor adventure tourism activities to determine if such activities might usefully be considered beneficial for humans and nature, and how they might offer avenues for sustainable tourism practice. Research in the field has often examined outdoor adventure activities through a lens that either highlights their negative environmental impacts or has sought to conceptualise motivations and/or experiences. In this article, we argue that through practices that are often seen as destructive, there is the possibility to think differently about human-nature relationships and pro-environmentalism. To explore these issues, we draw on data collected from a series of semi-structured interviews with outdoor adventure tourists. Our analysis highlights how outdoor adventure tourism facilitates reconnections to nature, offering potential wellbeing impacts and pro-environmental attitudes and behaviours. We conclude that outdoor adventure activities as a form of sustainable tourism have potential implications for our understanding of, and engagement with, sustainability, mental health and wellbeing.     

Understanding small firms in tourism: A perspective on research trends and challenges

Although small firms in tourism have featured on the agendas of policy-makers for several decades, academic interest over the same period has fluctuated. Certainly the flurry of activity that occurred during the early 1990s became a steady flow of somewhat fragmented output rather than the ambitious and coherent programme of research that was anticipated at the time. The paper traces progress in this field by reviewing inter-, multi- and disciplinary studies that contribute to current understanding of small firms in tourism and how this understanding articulates with wider debates within tourism studies. In so doing, it challenges some conventional wisdom and provides an agenda for future research.