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RESOURCES: PAPERS & PRESENTATIONS

Author : Jack Carlsen, Janne J. Liburd & Deborah Edwards
School/Work Place : Curtin Sustainable Tourism Centre, Australia (Jack Carlsen), University of Southern Denmark, Denmark (Janne Liburd), University of Technology Sydney, Australia (Deborah Edwards)
Contact : j.carlsen@curtin.edu.au
Year : 2010

This paper highlights the importance of new and established networks that underpin the innovation processes in sustainable tourism. It will draw on published literature as well as case studies to describe the various types of networks that have developed as an integral part of the innovation process (Carlsen et al, 2008). Innovation rarely occurs in isolation. Invariably, collaboration between like-minded individuals or agencies is essential in order to transform an idea or opportunity into a reality. In some cases, the links are not always intuitive or apparent and may come about through serendipity rather than strategy. In other cases, the formation of new networks gives rise to further innovation, creating a virtuous circle of process, product or service innovation. Established networks, such as those developed between government, industry and universities, are also a substantial source of innovation through research, knowledge development and dissemination.

True innovation in tourism businesses is nebulous and often driven by external forces such as changing customer needs, demographics, technology, government policy, environmental conditions, social imperatives or the supplier chain. Innovation in tourism can occur at different operational and sectoral levels and apply in a range of geographic locations. It can take the form of product, process, management or institutional innovations (Hjalager, 1996) and may be a disruptive or an incremental process (Schaper and Volery, 2007).

Innovation “remains fundamentally an application of knowledge” (Schaper and Volery 2007:64), which is best achieved through networks that serve as both repositories and generators of innovative ideas and information. There has since been a proliferation of product, process, managerial and institutional innovations that have embraced sustainability and this paper describes and analyses just a few examples of these. Hjalager (1996) indicates that networks are an integral part of the process of innovation, which often involves ‘redefinitions of interrelationships between actors’ (Hjalager, 1996, p. 202), although these relationships may be cooperative or confrontational, both still stimulate innovation (Tremblay, 2002). Hausman (2005) also finds that ‘ideological innovations, such as new management practices’ involve new partnerships as well as new ideas. Laing et al suggest that partnerships provide a means for the diffusion of innovations (Laing et al, forthcoming). Liburd and Hergesell (2007) recognise the importance of training, education and employee retention and succession to improve learning and innovation for sustainable tourism in the European North Sea Region.

People, as customers or operators, are at the core of innovation in tourism. Hence networks are critical and the social and cultural environment has to be supportive of innovative ideas and opportunities if they are to be realized. To shed light on this conversation cross-case analysis (Patton 1990) was applied to eight case studies to compare and contrast the different types and contexts of innovation and for an integrated overview of the network drivers, processes and barriers for innovation.


List of Articles
No. Subject Viewssort Date
134 Think Tank V Managing Risk and Crisis for Sustainable Tourism: Rese... file 5908 Dec 14, 2013

Many tourism professionals are afraid to speak about terms such as tourism security and tourism safety. There is a common feeling among tourism and travel professionals that these terms will frighten customers and that the less said the bett...

Author: Peter E. Tarlow 

Year: 2005 

OPA: Keynote Speech 

133 Think Tank XII Opportunities and Obstacles for Sustainable Tourism Mo... file 5922 Nov 06, 2013

Cross border destination management is characterized by some extra challenges: national, district or county interests, different administrative structures, a high impact of politics and policies, inequality of tourism infrastructures, power ...

Author: Tatjana Thimm 

Year: 2012 

132 Think Tank XIII Striving for Environmental Sustainability through Soci... file 6024 Nov 06, 2013

The question how native societies cope with the increasing pressure of global values, such as sustainability, westernization and democratic institutions has been asked in the last decades (Smith, 1989; Honey, 1999; Nash, 2001; Honey, 2008). ...

Author: Peter Varga 

Year: 2013 

131 Think Tank VII Volunteer Tourism: Sustainable Innovation in Tourism, ... file 6074 Oct 13, 2013

This is a study of the relationships between two volunteer tourism host communities and the volunteer tourists who visit them. One is a declining rural community located in the Appalachian mountains of the United States. The other is in a ra...

Author: Nancy McGehee 

Year: 2007 

130 Think Tank XII Creating Tourism Transport Flow Maps with GIS: A Pract... file 6113 Nov 06, 2013

This paper explores various options to visualize tourism transport flows with spatial analysis tools and show them on maps. To facilitate implementation of these options, procedures for data preparation and map creation are explained through...

Author: Martin Landré & Paul Peeters 

Year: 2012 

129 Think Tank XVII From Sustainability to Resilience: Understanding Diffe... file 6168 Aug 17, 2017

The tourism literature on the relationship between resilience and sustainability is still in its infancy. Some argue that resilience planning has emerged as an alternative to sustainable development to provide new perspectives on socio-ecolo...

Author: Girish Prayag & Caroline Orchiston & Mesbahuddin Chowdhury 

Year: 2017 

128 Think Tank XV A vacation from capitalism; what happens when the ‘mas... file 6244 Jul 27, 2015

Philosophical and theoretical debates in tourism must be situated not just within economic and cultural contexts, but also political and social ones (Ataljevic, Pritchard & Morgan, 2007). Tourism is more than an ‘industry,’ Freya Higgins...

Author: Amy Savener 

Year: 2015 

127 Think Tank X Innovation of and in Informal Actor Network file 6257 Oct 13, 2013

How the informal sectors create and share innovation in gaining competition is very important in tourism development. Commonly, informal sectors are embedded in their routines and lack of innovation capacities. Based on the case of pedicab ...

Author: Maya Damayanti 

Year: 2010 

126 Think Tank V Using Theories of Stigma Management and Impression Man... file 6258 Oct 13, 2013

Researchers have noted that impression management is key to tourism crisis management planning and recovery (Ritchie et al., 2003:201); indeed, some have suggested that “crisis management is as much about dealing with human perceptions about...

Author: Bonalyn Nelson 

Year: 2005 

125 Think Tank IX The elusiveness of sustainability in tourism: The cult... file 6281 Oct 13, 2013

Sustainable tourism is perhaps the most prominent feature of contemporary tourism discourse. However, despite its prominence for several decades, achieving sustainability remains as elusive as ever. This paper explores the concept of the cu...

Author: Freya Higgins-Desbiolles 

Year: 2009 

124 Think Tank XIII Measuring Tourism: Developing a Regional Level Framewo... file 6310 Nov 06, 2013

In the field of tourism impacts research it is often assumed that certain characteristics of tourism are related to the nature and extent of tourism impacts on the destination’s community well-being. However, a standard set of measures for t...

Author: Elena Konovalov, Laurie Murphy & Gianna Moscardo 

Year: 2013 

123 Think Tank VIII Responding to Climate Change in Australian Resort Hote... file 6336 Oct 13, 2013

Extensive infrastructure and client expectations of luxury will mean that their carbon footprint and water usage is likely to exceed significantly that of average urban households. Often located in coastal or riverine settings, they are vuln...

Author: Charles Arcodia & Chantal Dickson 

Year: 2008 

122 Think Tank XIV The Roles of the Public, Private and Voluntary Sector ... file 6351 Jun 26, 2014

Social tourism refers to initiatives that aim to include groups into tourism that would otherwise be excluded from it. The earliest definition of social tourism by Hunzicker (1951) described social tourism as ‘‘the relationships and phenomen...

Author: Lynn Minnaert 

Year: 2014 

121 Think Tank X Sustainable Destination Management and the Marketing-P... file 6380 Oct 13, 2013

A traditional and widely held view is that a sustainable approach to destination planning and management ideally requires that marketing and product development are undertaken in an integrated manner. However, if we take just two activities...

Author: Tazim Jamal & Dianne Dredge 

Year: 2010 

120 Think Tank XIII Understanding Sense of Place in Tourism Development: T... file 6424 Nov 06, 2013

This paper introduces the rationale for a study which explores the relationship between sense of place and sustainability at Tunku Abdul Rahman National Park (TARP), Sabah. Sense of place encompasses an understanding of the meaning bestowed ...

Author: Paulin Wong Poh Lin & Balvinder Kaur Kler 

Year: 2013 

119 Think Tank X New Media for Climate Change Communication and Collabo... file 6473 Oct 13, 2013

The Climate Change Collaboratory1 aims to strengthen the relations between Austrian scientists, policy makers, educators, environmental NGOs, news media and corporations - stakeholders who recognize the need for adaptation and mitigation, b...

Author: Arno Scharl 

Year: 2010 

118 Think Tank XIII The Paradox of poverty amidst the plenty of nature: co... file 6476 Nov 06, 2013

Rural communities in South Africa have not been active stakeholders in tourism development. Community awareness and involvement in the preservation of natural and cultural heritage through sustainable tourism development in selected areas ad...

Author: Felicité A. Fairer-Wessels 

Year: 2013 

117 Think Tank IX The role of values in sustaining the hospitality labou... file 6517 Oct 13, 2013

The role of human resources in sustaining hospitality enterprises has long been recognized (Hjalager und Andersen 2001; Baum 2007). Personnel are considered vital for the delivery of touristic experiences, thus being a central ingredient of ...

Author: Anja Hergesell, Ulrike Bauernfeind & Dagmar Lund-Durlacher 

Year: 2009 

116 Think Tank XIV The Development of a National Tourism Research Agenda ... file 6543 Jun 26, 2014

A national research agenda identifies the research priorities that need to be addressed to “inform future policy and service delivery” by government and “for use by academics and practitioners to stimulate research, partnerships and collabor...

Author: Leo Jago & Margaret Deery 

Year: 2014 

115 Think Tank XIII Exploring the Relationship between Cultural Capital in... file 6578 Nov 06, 2013

There is substantial literature on the impacts of tourism on culture, both positive and negative, however, there are relatively few articles that explore the relationship between cultural capital and sustainable tourism. This paper will repo...

Author: Laurie Murphy & Andrea Schurmann 

Year: 2013 

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