Real and virtual relationships in tourism digital ecosystems

Tourism has been experiencing very relevant changes since when information and communication technologies, in all their forms, have started to pervade the industry and the market. In the last decade, a new concept gained the attention of both researchers and practitioners, that of digital business ecosystem. It can be considered as a technological infrastructure aimed at creating a digital environment to support and enhance networking between enterprises and stakeholders operating within a sector. Aim of this paper is to assess the extent to which the technological connection has affected the structural configuration of the tourism system and, specifically, of tourism destinations. The present study argues that two components can be considered when assessing the relationships among stakeholders within a tourism destination: a real and a virtual one. Further it shows how these two components are structurally strongly coupled and co-evolve forming a single system.

[1]  Anna Grandori,et al.  Interfirm Networks : Organization and Industrial Competitiveness , 1999 .

[2]  G. Chiappa,et al.  Coordinating Relationships among destination stakeholders: evidence from Edinburgh (UK) , 2013 .

[3]  James F. Moore.  The Death of Competition: Leadership and Strategy in the Age of Business Ecosystems , 1996 .

[4]  Luciano da Fontoura Costa,et al.  The web of connections between tourism companies: Structure and dynamics , 2008, 0803.2510.

[5]  Fahri Karakas,et al.  Emerald Article: Welcome to World 2.0: the new digital ecosystem , 2009 .

[6]  R. March,et al.  Conceptual Tools for Evaluating Tourism Partnerships , 2009 .

[7]  Llewellyn D. W. Thomas,et al.  Modeling the ecosystem: a meta-synthesis of ecosystem and related literatures , 2012 .

[8]  L. da F. Costa,et al.  Characterization of complex networks: A survey of measurements , 2005, cond-mat/0505185.

[9]  Hannes Werthner,et al.  Information Technology and Tourism — A Challenging Relationship , 1999 .

[10]  Abraham Pizam,et al.  Destination marketing and management: theories and applications. , 2011 .

[11]  Angelo Presenza,et al.  The use of Network Analysis to Assess Relationships Among Stakeholders Within a Tourism Destination: an Empirical Investigation on Costa Smeralda-gallura, Italy , 2013 .

[12]  S. Siegel,et al.  Nonparametric Statistics for the Behavioral Sciences , 2022, The SAGE Encyclopedia of Research Design.

[13]  T. Bieger.  Reengineering destination marketing organisations: The case of Switzerland , 1998 .

[14]  David J. Sheskin,et al.  Handbook of Parametric and Nonparametric Statistical Procedures , 1997 .

[15]  Vladimir Batagelj,et al.  Generalized Blockmodeling: Titles in the series , 2004 .

[16]  G. Hutton.  Net gain: Expanding markets through virtual communities , 1998 .

[17]  Lucas Antiqueira,et al.  Analyzing and modeling real-world phenomena with complex networks: a survey of applications , 2007, 0711.3199.

[18]  Alessandro Vespignani,et al.  Complex networks: The fragility of interdependency , 2010, Nature.

[19]  Robin Mansell,et al.  Beyond interoperability to digital ecosystems: regional innovation and socio-economic development led by SMEs , 2008 .

[20]  Matti Hämäläinen,et al.  A Digital Ecosystem for Co-Creating Business with People , 2011 .

[21]  H. Boley,et al.  Digital Ecosystems: Principles and Semantics , 2007, 2007 Inaugural IEEE-IES Digital EcoSystems and Technologies Conference.

[22]  Christine A. Hope,et al.  Strategic success in winter sports destinations: a sustainable value creation perspective. , 2001 .

[23]  Mark E. J. Newman,et al.  Stochastic blockmodels and community structure in networks , 2010, Physical review. E, Statistical, nonlinear, and soft matter physics.

[24]  Marián Boguñá,et al.  Epidemic spreading on interconnected networks , 2012, Physical review. E, Statistical, nonlinear, and soft matter physics.

[25]  Rodolfo Baggio,et al.  The web graph of a tourism system , 2006, physics/0606043.

[26]  B. Nooteboom.  The dynamic efficiency of networks , 1999 .

[27]  John J. Sviokla,et al.  Exploiting the virtual value chain , 1999 .

[28]  Osman Yagan,et al.  Diffusion of real-time information in social-physical networks , 2012, 2012 IEEE Global Communications Conference (GLOBECOM).

[29]  Carliss Y. Baldwin,et al.  Organization Design for Business Ecosystems , 2012 .

[30]  G. Chiappa.  Internet versus travel agencies , 2013 .

[31]  Won-kuk Cho,et al.  Correlated couplings and robustness of coupled networks , 2010, ArXiv.

[32]  J. F. Moore,et al.  Predators and prey: a new ecology of competition. , 1993, Harvard business review.

[33]  James A. Narus,et al.  Capturing the value of supplementary services , 1995 .

[34]  R. Freeman.  Strategic Management: A Stakeholder Approach , 2010 .

[35]  D. R. White,et al.  A Normalized and a Hybrid Modularity , 2008 .

[36]  C. Cooper,et al.  Improving tourism destination governance: a complexity science approach , 2010 .

[37]  B. Flyvbjerg.  Five Misunderstandings About Case-Study Research , 2006, 1304.1186.

[38]  F. Nachira.  Towards a Network of Digital Business Ecosystems Fostering the Local Development , 2002 .

[39]  Harry Eugene Stanley,et al.  Catastrophic cascade of failures in interdependent networks , 2009, Nature.

[40]  G. Privitera.  Statistics for the behavioral sciences, 2nd ed. , 2015 .

[41]  Gerard Briscoe,et al.  The ABC of Digital Business Ecosystems , 2010, ArXiv.

[42]  Raphael Amit,et al.  The business model: Theoretical roots, recent developments, and future research , 2010 .

[43]  Carmen Berné,et al.  How ICT shifts the power balance of tourism distribution channels , 2012 .

[44]  David Upton,et al.  The real virtual factory , 1999 .

[45]  Youcheng Wang,et al.  Destination management: challenges and opportunities. , 2011 .

[46]  R. Law,et al.  Progress in information technology and tourism management: 20 years on and 10 years after the Internet - the state of eTourism research. , 2008 .

[47]  Mark Newman,et al.  Networks: An Introduction , 2010 .

[48]  Harry Eugene Stanley,et al.  Epidemics on Interconnected Networks , 2012, Physical review. E, Statistical, nonlinear, and soft matter physics.

[49]  Santo Fortunato,et al.  Community detection in graphs , 2009, ArXiv.

[50]  Douglas Cochran,et al.  Conjoining Speeds up Information Diffusion in Overlaying Social-Physical Networks , 2011, IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications.

[51]  C. Cooper,et al.  Network Science , 2010 .

[52]  R. Baggio.  Symptoms of complexity in a tourism system , 2007, physics/0701063.

[53]  O. Williamson,et al.  Markets and Hierarchies: Analysis and Antitrust Implications. , 1977 .