| Abstract |
Purpose Tourism is one of the largest industries in the world subject to strong innovations in the last years essentially due to globalization and availability of new ICTs. In a tourism destination operate autonomous entities whose business is related to the sector and whose aim is the tourism destination growth. We introduce the Collaborative Network Organization (CNO) model to reach both competitiveness for the destination and sustainable development for the territory and local operators. In particular, we propose: - a model to highlight forms of collaboration in the tourism sector; - a characterization of supporting ICT services and mobile applications. Design/methodology/approach - After identified two kinds of short term CNOs in a Tourism Destination: the TEE - Tourism Extended Enterprise, and the TVO - Tourism Virtual Organization, we use a methodology made of 3 steps:. Characterization of the CNOs in a TBE: the TEE and TVO models;. modelling the coalition's types that can be recognized within a CNO on the basis of the different levels of integration among members. characterization of the ICTs that support each coalition type, with a focus on different functional classes of networking information services and mobile applications that are currently adopted in a CNOs Originality/value - Scholars approach the issue of collaboration in tourism from different points of view: social benefits and sustainable development (Graci, 2013; Jamal and Stronza, 2009), organizational supports for collaboration (March & Wilkinson, 2009), characteristics of ICTs tools (Buhalis & Law, 2008; Zach et al., 2008; Ndou & Petti, 2007). The originality of this study consists in composing different perspectives in literature to propose an original framework to characterize forms of CNOs in tourism, taking into account the effects of ICT in reengineering the sector. Practical implications - First results of the study highlights the importance of setting CNOs within a tourism destination in order both to answer to the new demand of personalized tourism, and to give local tourism players an opportunity to reach economy of scale, competitiveness and sustainable development in the effort to overcome limits oftouristic organization's size and contrast big players power. The original framework we propose aims to support the operationalization of the collaboration concept in the tourism sector and the setting up of CNOs in a tourism destination at different level of collaboration |
