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Innovation is critical to the tourism industry. Living Labs (LLs) are innovation ecosystems which are becoming popular in tourism. LLs are a model of open innovation characterized by a networked approach to innovation. Local communities and businesses are usually excluded from processes of decision-making concerning the management of tourism. LLs enable local communities' participation in the sustainable development of tourism, thereby providing them the opportunity to increase their share of benefits. This chapter focuses on a case study of an LL recently created in Portugal and discusses LLs as an environment for tourism innovation where the local community is stimulated to explore competencies to cocreate value.

This chapter focuses on clarifying the cooperation and convergence between tourism and audiovisual (AV) sectors in Hamburg and Riga. In light of increasingly easier and more accessible travel, the tourism sector is a growing trend in most countries and regions. To what extent does this affect cooperation with the AV sector? The chapter gives an overview of different types of cooperation in these regions and brings out the main obstacles for innovation. When describing the innovation systems, focus is put on institutional frameworks in these two regions. We end by arguing that raising the demand for innovation in the tourism sector is a real challenge and demonstrating that the public sector plays an important role in driving the cross-innovation processes between the observed sectors.

The main aim of this chapter is to show the paramount role that both creativity and innovation have in order to state competitive advantages in tourism.

The approach is based both on literature review and on various business cases to underline the ideas derived from the literature review.

An entrepreneurial mind must be creative and innovative. This simple idea takes a special value in tourist businesses because of the need to survive in a global market full of competitive actors, dynamism and volatility of preferences in consumers’ attitudes.

This chapter is an approaching essay based mainly on a general literature review supported with several case studies.

Tourism entrepreneurs must take into account the role that creativity and innovation have for their business plans. These two dimensions are the head and tail of the same coin that will help them not only to create value for tourist customers but also to make the difference between them and their competitors.

This chapter shows the connections between creativity, innovation and competitive advantages, and their critical value for any entrepreneur who wants to deploy a successful business venture.

The importance of diversification and innovation in strengthening of global competitiveness has been emphasized in both tourism and local development literature. The aim of this chapter is to define the factors (company type, company size, intra-industry investments, collaboration with other companies, and associations) that influence the product- and service-diversification of hotels. This chapter addresses the diversification and innovation strategies of hotels, not only in the light of tourism literature, but also of local development literature, and it provides empirical evidence based on a company-level survey. The findings of the study show that company type, company size, sector-specific knowledge (intra-industry investments and experience of hotel workers), and collaboration with other companies and institutions matter for product- and service-diversification of hotels.

The COVID-19 pandemic has substantially affected China’s tourism industry. Tourism small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), with limited crisis response ability, might be difficult to recover after the pandemic. Regarding the impacts of the pandemic on rural tourism, income for rural attraction sites was almost zero; sightseeing, agri-tourism activities were ceased; and large amount of rural bed-and-breakfasts (B&Bs) faced business closure. However, through three cases, our study found that through either content innovation or process innovation, some B&Bs are able to recover speedily from the pandemic and develop sustainably. These innovations are important for their business strategy adjustment. Innovation creates more value for tourists and stakeholders by developing new service products or adjusting existing products. This chapter discusses the linkages between innovation and leadership. Through the investigation and analysis of three cases, the researchers found that the advantages of transformational leadership were reflected in the post-crisis management in different ways and effectively improved the innovation ability and sustainable development of post-crisis organizations. This study has enriched the literature on transformational leadership and post-crisis recovery of small tourism enterprises and has practical reference value for managers of small rural tourism companies.

This chapter argues that substantial potential exists for service encounter-based innovation in tourism. However, there are also a number of obstacles. Based on theoretical discussions on potentials and obstacles, a Knowledge Chain Model of service encounter-based innovation in tourism is developed. It suggests how weak or broken knowledge chains limit companies’ potential for benefiting from service encounter-based innovation. The relevance of the model is illustrated by a comparative case study of four tourism companies. In light of the theoretical frameworks and empirical findings, the chapter suggests how experimental methods can join research and practice to enhance the innovative potential of tourism companies while providing the research community with valuable knowledge.

The chapter aims at advancing existing knowledge on innovation-oriented public-private partnerships for developing smart tourism services at destination level. Recent research has emphasized to the importance of collaborative arrangements involving public sector organizations and private companies for the development of new or improved ICT-enabled tourism services towards the smart transformation of destinations. However, knowledge on public-private partnerships specifically set up for realizing smart innovations is still scarce. This chapter develops a framework for understanding the nature and functioning of this type of partnerships at destination level by integrating literature on tourism partnerships, smart tourism, and innovation in services with a case study of a successful partnership in the Italian destination of Siracusa.

Purpose: The main goal of this discussion is to explain how competitiveness could be an important source of knowledge and economic power in a society, especially in the period of higher demands on knowledge, innovation and organisational base growth. Our focus of the discussion will be tourism as an important service sector economic activity in countries all over the world.

Methodology: The chapter will be conceptually based on its goal to develop the theories of competitiveness and to discuss how competitiveness influences knowledge, organisational processes and forms with a focus on tourism services.

Findings: Competitiveness in tourism depends on many factors. As an intangible source of knowledge, organisational culture processes and organisational forms generally influences tourism activity. For this reason, not only is comparative advantage important in the competitiveness concept, but also competitive advantage and the way of deploying resources play an important role.

Significance: Resources are not only based on labour, capital and land (neoclassical theory approach), but resource-advantage theory underlines the importance of financial, physical, legal, human, organisational, informational and relational capital. In this process, new processes and organisational forms must be created, as well as innovative approaches to processes and the importance of knowledge capital.

Practical Implications: New ideas about this process could be helpful for researchers and practitioners to recognise the importance of competitiveness for their work and research.

The aim of this chapter is to discuss the experience-centric strategy from the aspect of innovation management, its contribution to designing and managing valuable tourism experiences, especially in context of guided tours.

The study reviews literature on experience-centric approaches and innovation, it discusses the concepts of experience-centric innovation and experience innovation, particularly the role of experience design and market intelligence in experience-centric service processes. It analyzes empirical data from interviews with eleven tour providers.

Creating novel experiences through product innovation was found as the most common type of innovation on frames of guided tours. The group size was identified as an influential feature of the experience design, and imitation has proved to be a major threat. The role of knowledge management and dynamics of knowledge were explored, too, and tour guides were identified as experiential knowledge collectors and/or creators; thus their role in knowledge management is crucial alongside the market intelligence. In contract with theoretical proposition, costumer-driven innovation is not seen by tour providers as a crucial issue in creating memorable experiences.

The chapter studied only traditional guided tours where the customer meets the service provider, and the data was collected only in Budapest.

The chapter emphasized the role of market intelligence and experience design in the process of experience-centric service provision for a successful innovation – in frames of a theoretical model. The empirical results identified some main issues and obstacles in implementation of the experience-centric approach and innovative tools and processes in context of guided tours.

This study aims to understand the development of Barcelos tourist destination, analyzing the progress of technology in local handcrafts. eTourism is a development alternative for many localities. These alternatives, when they have integrated tourist products and a defined geographical area, form a tourist destination. Focusing on tourism and its evolution, concepts and successes are investigated in the tourist market of Barcelos, proving the increase in the local economy. Before a qualitative study and through the direct observation and semi-structured interviews to some regional handcraftsmen, the forms of the innovation of the technology in the tourism of Barcelos are analyzed and what their contribution to the increase in the tourism in this territory. The study shows that, in this tourist destination, the development of handcrafts had a great social and economic impact, developing the offer and standing out in front of the tourist market. The study also concludes that the new Information and Communication Technologies’ (ICTs’) tools promote new skills, which consequently provide new opportunities as well as great challenges for all users. In the Barcelos handcraft, ICTs will revolutionize the promotion of this tourism offer, through the innovation of networks and the Internet, with all stakeholders, sharing information and knowledge of Barcelos products and services, thus increasing their fluency in tourism demand and developing the market in order to create a greater economic impact on the destination.