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Industrial tourists can contribute to the local sites income. Apart from large and well-known industrial units, small industrial units can also introduce their products to the market by organizing tourism tours. This study aims to analyze an industrial tourism business network established in Isfahan, a large, industrial and historic city in central of Iran, as a case study.

Participants were managers and experts of organizations operated in the Industrial Tourism Network in Isfahan city. A sample of 30 participates was selected through purposive and snowball sampling approaches. Data was analyzed by qualitative content analysis and social network analysis using UCINET software.

Twenty-eight organizations participated in the Industrial Tourism Business Network of Isfahan. Macro indices of the network revealed that: density is relatively low; most of the relationships among network member organizations are reciprocal; transitivity is relatively weak indicating low network stability against environmental player; clustering is low, indicating a relatively low tendency of members to form different clusters. Micro indices indicated that in-degree and out-degree centralizations are low; overall centralization is poor. In addition, six actors were in the center and 22 actors were in the peripheral. Finally, the number of interactions of central organizations was triple than the peripheral organizations.

Limitations of this study include: The data obtained in this study only reflected the relationships among the actors studied during a specific period of time; this paper only focused on actors engaged in an industrial tourism network. Therefore, the sample might involve some bias. The results of the study contribute to our understanding of the role of networking in tourism destinations, particularly industrial sites.

According to the results, the authors may be able to advise firms operating in the tourism industry, particularly actors operate in industrial tourism, regarding how to increase their collaboration with both internal and external environment to achieve better performance.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first paper that has addressed an industrial tourism business network.

Coopetition (simultaneous cooperation and competition of actors) is still a relatively new concept in business, management, and tourism. However, several coopetition studies have focused on tourism and tourism destinations. Also, compilation literature reviews of tourism and tourism destinations have been published (Rusko, 2018). This chapter focuses on underlying coopetition networks of tourism and specifically of tourism destinations. Because of the typical features of tourism destinations, multifaceted connections in competition and cooperation – and coopetition – are present in everyday business and activities among actors of the destination. These coopetitive relationships cover several levels, they are present in micro, meso, macro, and meta level interplay of tourism destination. Furthermore, the analysis shows that several studies about coopetitive networks in tourism destinations do not use terms “macro” or “meta” though these seem to be the main levels of the studies. This only reveals the fertile dimensions of coopetitive networks in tourism. These various relationships form coopetitive networks that represent several dimensions and levels of actors, competition, cooperation, and coopetition. This chapter introduces these multifaceted perspectives of coopetition networks, which have been described in the contemporary literature about tourism and tourism destination.

Networks linking tourist attractions or organizations are a major focus of tourism research. Despite extensive research on tourism networks, academic research on the spatial structure and formation of wine tourism networks is limited. This study aims to investigate the spatial structure and factors influencing the development of a network among Ningxia wineries, an emerging wine tourism destination in China.

This study uses social network analysis to uncover “what” the spatial structure of wine tourism networks looks like. Sixteen in-depth interviews were conducted among key stakeholders to explain the “why” of such structural characteristics.

The results show that in an emerging wine tourism destination, popular tourist attractions enjoy high centrality and hold key positions in the wine tourism network. Small wineries exhibit high closeness centrality, and only one winery serves as a network broker. According to the stakeholders, the importance of network actors will increase as their economic and political importance increase, while small wineries that lack differentiation in the network may perish.

Local governments can implement the suggested measures for improving network connections, and wineries are advised to find suitable positions to improve the experiences of tourists.

This study pioneers the identification of the distinct structure and factors influencing the network of an emerging wine tourism destination, thus enriching the understanding of the interplay and roles of different actors.

Building on new trends in tourism and smart city governance, this study aims to examine the degree of interrelation between stakeholder networks involved in tourism governance and smart city development. A model describing the transition towards smart tourism city governance is proposed.

The proposed model is tested through a multiple case study of seven European cities. This choice of sample makes the study highly representative. Data collection is based on an exhaustive search and analysis of available data on smart city initiatives, destination management organisations and tourism plans. Social network analysis using Gephi software is used to build stakeholder networks.

Analysis of the stakeholder networks that shape tourism governance and smart initiatives in several cities reveals a disconnection between the two types of networks. The results show limited progress towards the expected synergies of true smart tourism city governance.

Theoretically, the study contributes to the debate on new forms of governance for the complex evolution of urban tourism. In practice, the relationship between tourism governance and smart city initiatives needs to be redefined to achieve synergies that increase the inclusiveness and efficiency of urban tourism policies.

This study examines the under-researched topic of the interrelation between tourism governance and smart city initiatives. By comparing the networks of actors resulting from these two processes, it assesses the extent to which this interrelation helps the emergence of new governance models (smart tourism city governance).

By adopting network analytic techniques, this paper aims to examine interlocking directorates among firms operating in the hospitality services sector in seven major Italian tourism destinations.

The authors collected information for all the hotel corporations whose headquarters are located in the seven top Italian destinations: Florence, Milan, Naples, Rimini, Rome, Turin and Venice. Data come from the Analisi Informatizzata delle Aziende Italiane database by Bureau Van Dijk and were used to build a network where the nodes are board members (people) and corporations (hotels) and the links represent the membership of individuals in the boards. From this, with a one-mode projection, the authors obtain two networks: people and corporations. The overall networks’ structures are analysed by assessing their connectivity characteristics.

The findings indicate a relatively low number of interlocks that signals a high degree of fragmentation, showing that the interconnections (both within and between destinations) are scarce. This suggests that in absence of formalized cooperation arrangements, corporations might collaborate informally.

This work extends previous research on complexity in business settings, focusing specifically on service companies whose output depends on multiple interactions and helps clarifying coopetition practices of hospitality service firms. Policymaking perspectives are discussed as well as managerial viewpoints.

Not many studies of the interlocking directorates in the hospitality domain exist. This paper uses network analysis for a better understanding of the cooperative practices and the formal social structures of the Italian hospitality industry and derives a series of implications important for both researchers and practitioners while also looking at potential future studies.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the information flows, in terms of content and process, underpinning the sharing of knowledge by managers and owners. Such an examination reveals similarities and differences that will influence the generation and dissemination of knowledge used in tourism business operations and contribute to innovation.

This paper examines information flows within the theoretical and methodological framework of social network analysis. The findings were derived from a quantitative study of tourism managers and owners of a tourism hub in South-West England.

The main finding was that network structure characteristics determine the flow of information within owners’ and managers’ social networks. The owners of smaller businesses received information from several sources and, therefore, had fewer structural constraints and reported larger structural holes. In comparison, the managers had more brokerage opportunities to disseminate the information within their social networks.

This paper highlights knowledge sharing between tourism business managers and owners in an open network structure. First, an open network structure builds innovation through the provision of nonredundant information. This is determined through the effective size of structural holes and the dissemination of information through brokerage roles. Second, the knowledge capability of a destination is built up through the social networking of managers and owners. The generation and dissemination of knowledge in a tourism destination are facilitated by the social networking activities of managers and owners.

Managers and owners of tourism businesses require knowledge through information to assist with innovative business practices. The practical implication of this is that the social networks of managers and owners have different network characteristics, and that these differences result in consequences for the innovation of business practices. Another practical implication relates to the importance of managers in knowledge dissemination based on having several brokerage roles in the tourism destination.

These findings are important because an understanding of social networks and the flow of information is one of the keys to determining the influences on knowledge sharing within tourism destination knowledge networks of owners or managers and their potential contributions to innovation.

Building on social media and destination brand-related literature, this study aims to explore World Heritage Sites’ (WHSs) brand diffusion and formation process from long-term and short-term perspectives, which includes brand diffusion, user-generated content (UGC), opinion leaders and brand events’ impact.

This study uses a mixed-method including text mining, keyword analysis and social network analysis to explore the brand formation process of four popular WHSs in Beijing, namely, the Palace Museum, Great Wall, Summer Palace and Temple of Heaven and more than 10,000,000 users’ data on Sina Weibo has been implemented to uncover the underlying social media branding mechanism.

The results show that the number of postings keeps in a stable range in most months, but, in general, there are no common rules for changing trends among the four WHSs; long-term high-frequency keywords related to history and culture account for a higher percentage; different kinds of accounts have varying impacts on information diffusion, in which media accounts lead to a bigger influence. However, more followers do not necessarily mean more interactions and most of the interaction ratio is much lower than 0.01000; brand events facilitate brand dissemination and have an impact on the creation of UGC.

This study is valuable for destination marketers to deeper understand brand diffusion and formation and provides valuable insights for developing effective destination marketing strategies.

Unlike previous studies that only concern a few parts of destination brand formation via social media (e.g. brand diffusion, brand events or opinion leaders’ impact), this study takes a more comprehensive perspective by systematically analyzing the brand formation process of WHSs on social media. By considering both long-term diffusion and short-term representative events, this study provides a more holistic understanding of the branding mechanism.

This study aims to investigate how and to what extent structural network properties affect dyadic negotiation behavior in tourism destination ecosystems. Specifically, this study addresses negotiation behavior in terms of problem-solving and contending, because these two key strategies reflect the integrative and distributive aspects of dyadic interactions.

This study relies on network data and dyadic survey data from nine mountain tourism destinations in Southeastern Norway. The structural network properties the authors research are triadic closure – the extent to which a dyad has common ties to other actors – and structural equivalence – the similarities in networking patterns that capture firms’ competition for similar resources. In addition, the authors also study a possible effect of relationship duration on negotiation behavior.

Triadic closure and relationship duration have positive effects on problem-solving, and structural equivalence tends to decrease problem-solving, although the effect is inconsistent; none of these three independent variables was found to affect contending negotiation behavior.

This study shows that a dyad’s structural network embeddedness has implications for negotiation behavior. Further research is encouraged to develop this theoretical perspective.

This study is a pioneering investigation of how structural network properties affect dyadic negotiation behavior in ongoing coproducing relationships in real-world destination ecosystems.

The significance of social media in our lives is manifold. The tourism sector closely interacts with existing and potential tourists through social media, and therefore, social media analytics (SMA) play a critical role in the uplift of the sector. Hence, this review focus on the role of SMA in tourism as discussed in different studies over a period of time. The purpose of this paper to present the state of the art on social media analytics in tourism.

The review focuses on identifying different SMA techniques to explore the trends and approaches adopted in the tourism sector. The review is based on 83 papers and discuss the studies related to different social media platforms, the travelers' reactions to a particular place and how the tourism experience is enriched by the way of SMA.

Findings indicate different sentiments associated with tourism and provides a review of tourists’ use of social media for choosing a travel destination. The various analytical approaches, areas such as social network analysis, content analysis, sentiment analysis and trend analysis were found most prevalent. The theoretical and practical implications of SMA are discussed. The paper made an effort to bridge the gap between different studies in the field of tourism and SMA.

SMA facilitate both tourists and tourism companies to understand the trends, sentiments and desires of tourists. The use of SMA offers value to companies for designing quick and adequate services to tourists.