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Cross-cultural differences must be taken into consideration for tourism development. The purpose of this study is to shed light on the importance of cross-cultural differences in a location which is emerging from a dark period after a prolonged war caused by ethnic differences.

While the existing tourism models deal with the impact of cross-cultural differences, it is difficult to apply them in certain situations, such as postwar Sri Lanka. The study therefore adopted an inductive, qualitative approach where information has been obtained from all stakeholders.

The conflict in Sri Lanka in the North and East has been interpreted differently by many individual stakeholder groups. This study reveals how economic development can bring communities together. The project elaborated in this study represents an investment of over US$6m. Given that the location of Jaffna was a focal point of the 26-year long civil war from 1983 to 2009, the risk of failure would have been extremely high.

The study ascertained qualitative perceptions from a cross-section of perspectives: the investor, local residents and employees. The project is shown to be a viable example of how to address socio cultural differences in the creation of a profitable venture.

This paper aims to provide answers to the question: “What are the key innovative strategies needed for future tourism in the world?” At the outset, this paper redefines the word “innovation” in the context of the hospitality and tourism industry. It then captures the essence of 13 proceeding papers on innovative initiatives in 17 countries and presents concluding remarks to this Worldwide Hospitality and Tourism Themes (WHATT) theme issue on innovation (v. 11 n. 2, 2019).

This paper draws from a wide spectrum of innovation types, concepts, strategies, suggestions and solutions written by 24 authors, who cumulatively have valuable and diverse experience in managing, operating, teaching, researching and consulting on innovation.

Innovation is relevant to all macro- and micro-level aspects of all industries. In conclusion, to identify common elements in all 13 papers, the author presents a shorter definition: “Innovation is the art of implementing new ideas to improve productivity, products and services, while enhancing customer satisfaction, revenues and profitability”. In addition, he emphasizes that innovation needs vision, mission and passion!

This research contributes to the emerging research theme of innovation in the hospitality and tourism industry and extends/re-defines the word: “innovation”.

There are significant practical implications in terms of industry approaches to use innovative strategies across the world.

Readers who are interested in international best practices of hospitality and tourism would benefit from this paper.

This paper aims to profile the Worldwide hospitality and Tourism Themes (WHATT) issue “What are the key innovative strategies needed for future tourism in the world?”, with reference to the experiences of the theme editor and writing team.

This paper uses structured questions to enable the theme editor to reflect on the rationale for the theme issue question, the starting point, the selection of the writing team and material and the editorial process.

This paper provides a framework to facilitate discussions between international scholars in hospitality and tourism to re-define a buzzword. For this theme issue, the buzzword was “innovation”. Summaries of 13 papers written on innovative strategies in hospitality and tourism around the world were then analysed to fine-tune the definition.

The theme issue outcomes provide lines of enquiry for others to explore and reinforce the value of WHATT’s approach to collaborative research and writing.

The collaborative work reported in this theme issue offers a unified but contrarian response to the theme’s strategic question. Taken together, the collection of articles provides a detailed picture of the key innovative strategies needed for future tourism.