Title: Rethinking tourism destinations: collaborative network models for the tourist 2.0

Authors: Salvatore Ammirato; Alberto Michele Felicetti; Marco Della Gala

Addresses: Department of Mechanical, Energy and Management Engineering, University of Calabria, via P. Bucci, 42\C, 87036 Rende (CS), Italy ' Department of Mechanical, Energy and Management Engineering, University of Calabria, via P. Bucci, 42\C, 87036 Rende (CS), Italy ' Department of Mechanical, Energy and Management Engineering, University of Calabria, via P. Bucci, 42\C, 87036 Rende (CS), Italy

Abstract: In the increasingly saturated tourism market, an effective tourism destination management is essential to support competitive and sustainable growth. The topic becomes interesting in light of the spread of the collaborative network (CN) organisational models and the massive diffusion of web 2.0 and mobile technology. The formers have proven to give concrete opportunities of development in many industrial sectors, the latter has been changing the way tourists experience a destination. Even if several case studies of CNs in tourism are known, a comprehensive study of how tourism destinations can benefit of CN models and enabling technologies is not present; especially in the effort to help tourism destinations in setting up services able to actively support each phase of the tourist 2.0 lifecycle. In this paper we highlight how CN models are able to support the tourism destination management in order to gain competitiveness for local areas, to improve flexibility in services provision and to give tourists the possibility to live an augmented tourism experience. Furthermore, a review of the most suitable forms of collaborative network for tourism destination and their ways to actively support the augmented experience of the tourist 2.0 are proposed.

Keywords: tourism business ecosystems; TBE; collaborative networks; augmented tourism experience; tourist 2.0; tourism destinations; sustainable growth; knowledge-based development; destination management.

DOI: 10.1504/IJKBD.2015.072800

International Journal of Knowledge-Based Development, 2015 Vol.6 No.3, pp.178 - 201

Received: 17 Nov 2014
Accepted: 09 Jun 2015
Published online: 03 Nov 2015 *

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