Networks in urban tourism; A multi-method study in the Flemish Art Cities

The tourism sector is known for its fierce competition. Destinations compete to attract visitors by various means, but there are indications that within destinations a strong competition between entrepreneurs is present as well. The literature suggests that this competition for the attention, time and spending of the tourists could harm the tourist experience, and thus the quality of the destination. Cooperation within a destination, is suggested, could enhance innovation and cause an improvement of service quality, enhance information provision and induce a more positive destination image among visitors. This study will look into the effects networked cooperation can have on the quality of services within Flemish cities, and how co-created innovation could lead to quality enhancement through a higher appreciation and/or a favorable spatial behavior by visitors. However, there is no such thing as a perfect management approach for the tourism sector, because of the large number of small-scale and heterogeneous tourism enterprises involved and the lack of a formal chain of command. Yet, tourism too important for society to leave its development to natural forces and coincidence alone. In this thesis, we departed from this paradox and aimed to find out to what extent tourism networks would be able to provide a scientifically valid and practically useful approach to the development and management of urban tourism destinations. The theoretical literature on relational approaches to tourism management proved to give a solid base to the empirical work in this thesis. In particular Porter's (1990) conceptual work on nations (or regions, see Begg, 1999) as complex systems with multiple actors and a variety of interrelationships and interdependencies, which are found to be more competitive when there is a balance between competition and collaboration, proved to be valuable for the framing of our research questions. From this point of departure, various other approaches (a.o. by Ritchie & Crouch, 2003; van den Berg & Braun, 1999; Enright & Newton, 2004) towards managing urban destinations have been studied and operationalised into the present thesis. These works, together with the observation from Chapter 2 that important stakeholders are often left out when it comes to tourism development and destination management, were the main sources of inspiration for the schematic representation of a tourism management as the 'Destination Triangle'. This concept was developed as the general theoretical framework that encompassed the various research questions addressed in the separate papers in this PhD-thesis. Urban tourism destinations were conceptualised as multi-party, layered systems, leaving an important question on how to manage these entities successfully. Provan & Kenis (2008) provided useful insights by explaining how networks can only develop when a certain set of requirements are met: being goal consensus, reaching a certain level of trust, and the need for specific network-level competencies. Many authors have drawn attention to the fact that the literature consistently shows high expectancies for a network approach in the development of tourism on theoretical grounds, but, unfortunately with only few empirically proven successes. Our study showed that this is at least partly caused by the simple fact that most network managers don't practice what they preach but usually stick to their traditional top-down power-based tasks, such as marketing and the production of promotional material. Collaborative networking by soliciting ideas and seeking feedback in horizontal relationships, aligning tourism entrepreneurs in common goals and shared planning, involving and engaging local stakeholders and providing clear information about the costs and gains of participating in a joint endeavour, proved to be highly valued, but little applied. This sheds new light on the persistent gap between the theoretical debates about collaborative networks as alternative approach to tourism management and the often disappointing empirical examples. If you don't practice what you preach, you cannot expect to pick the promised fruits.The various sub-studies of this PhD-thesis have provided more knowledge about the 'what's and why's' of successes and failures, which is hopefully valuable for science and society. One thing has become particularly clear in these studies: Tourism management cannot be done by just one party. Many parties are involved and influential. This starts with the observation that without collaborative networking between public and private parties, projects easily end in disappointment. Also in tourism, it takes two, or more, to tango. Next, we were able to show that with the worldwide introduction of Web 2.0 and growing importance of social media as an influencing factor on tourism behaviour, tourists do have an increasing influence on the development of tourism, which is a force in its own, independent of destination management. Tourists attract tourists, which is shown by the empirical results from Chapter 3, and therefore their important role needs to be taken into account in future tourism development and destination management studies. But it does not stop there, at the end of the journey which has led to this PhD-thesis, we have become increasingly aware that even more parties are involved in tourism management. A fourth party consists of the local inhabitants who may be involved in pointing to interesting places to visit and may produce the stories that make neighbourhoods outside the city centre attractive to visit (see Chapter 4), but who also may be the ones who block further tourism development out of negative emotions around the noise and nuisance when tourism puts a too heavy load on the city (see e.g. Colomb & Novy, 2016). And researchers may be seen as a fifth party involved in tourism development, who may support policymakers and network managers with data-driven analyses that support policymaking as this PhD thesis showed in Chapter 3. All of these parties together bear the responsibility to move beyond a presently often heard, but daunting quote: "the tourist destroys what he seeks by finding it" (Hans Magnus Enzensberger in Novy, 2018). Policymakers, entrpreneurs, academics and people in general benefit from tourism and its many possibilities and have a stake in a sustainable future development. The time has come to see tourism as a constellation of many relations, in which all stakeholders should take their responsibility to make it work.

Jaar van publicatie:2019