Strategic Partnerships, Tourism Performance, And Destination Competitiveness: Empirical Evidence from Hospitality and Destination Management Organization Collaborations in Guizhou

The global tourism industry is transitioning toward high-quality, sustainable development, making cross-organizational collaboration between hotel enterprises and Destination Management Organizations (DMOs) essential for optimizing service systems and enhancing regional competitiveness. Despite its importance, existing research largely overlooks the multi-dimensional structure of these strategic partnerships and their internal mediation mechanisms, particularly within less developed regions like Western China. To address this gap, this study investigates Guizhou Province, a prime example of cultural and tourism integration. Employing a quantitative cross-sectional design, data were collected from 358 stakeholders, including hotel managers, DMO staff, tourists, and residents. Grounded in synergy, service innovation, and resource-based theories, the research evaluates a theoretical model utilizing Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA), correlation analysis, and group comparisons. The empirical findings reveal that hotel-DMO strategic partnerships comprise four core synergistic dimensions: information sharing, benefit distribution, innovation cooperation, and resource integration. These collaborations directly enhance tourism performance and indirectly elevate service quality, fostering sustainable growth through continuous service innovation. Notably, the effectiveness of these partnerships remains consistent across diverse regional types, indicating that unified provincial policies successfully mitigate regional disparities. This study advances multi-stakeholder collaborative governance literature and refines synergy theory applications in sustainable tourism. Practically, it delivers actionable, standardized cooperation strategies for regional stakeholders and offers a valuable framework for other resource-rich inland provinces pursuing high-quality tourism development.