Entrepreneurship and Co-evolution in Tourism

Purpose The aim of this paper is to verify whether the nature of the relationship between a tourist destination and tourist enterprises operating within its territory can be defined as co-evolutionary. This paper derives from the continuation of previous researches of ours about the topic of destination management and destination governance. Design The theoretical background of this paper is based on the following research question: within the framework of the international tourist scenario, are there tourist hospitality models designed as a prototype of co-evolution between the tourist destination and its territory? Methodology To this purpose, we conduct an extensive literature review on articles and papers dealing with innovation adoption, published in the last 41 years, i.e. from 1976 to 2017. We run content and structural analysis on the collected data. Originality The analysis perspective which is considered the most appropriate to qualify the nature of the relationship among a given tourist destination and its tourist enterprises is the co-evolutionary perspective. Findings The co-evolutionary process implies the identification of a governance body able to exploit and enhance the systemic resources made available by the territory and to inspire the management approach of the different tourist enterprises. Limits The absence of specific case studies represents a limit of the present paper. Hence, with a view to a subsequent future research, we will continue the proposed analysis by enriching it with empirical evidence, which will be useful to foster the debate on the subject matter and for the related entrepreneurial and management implications.