Measuring meetings industry stakeholders cooperation from an embeddedness perspective

Resumen

According to comparative data on the diversification of destinations, in 1950, 97% of international tourism market share was concentrated in 15 countries (UNWTO, 2015). Today that percentage has dropped to 51.8% (UNWTO, 2015), and there is greater diversification thus opening opportunities for other regions and cities worldwide. It is believed that the expansion of international tourism will create a new market structure that will provide opportunities for subnational tourism destinations, while international competition will simultaneously increase (UNWTO, 2015). The meetings industry, from an association point of view, certainly echoes this pattern (Crouch & Louviere, 2004). Therefore, cities, as a form of subnational tourism destinations, where the meetings industry is relevant, are meant to measure and analyze the elements that make them remain competitive. The city’s image, infrastructure, accessibility, cost, intellectual capital, all of these components among others are part of the analysis process. Moreover, numerous authors point out the significance of cooperation among meetings industry stakeholders for enhancing the destination performance and hence its competitiveness (Araujo & Bramwell, 2002; Beritelli & Laesser, 2011; Buhalis, 2000; Crouch, 2007; Go & Appleman, 2000; Timothy, 1999; UNWTO, 2007; Wilkinson & March, 2008). However, the methodologies for measuring and analysing tourism and the meetings industries at subnational levels are not trivial and INRouTe and the UNWTO are currently drafting the proper international recommendations. Therefore, unsurprisingly, there is a significant void in the literature concerning how to address the measurement of cooperation among stakeholders within the meetings industry of a given city destination (Locke, 2010). Precisely, the present research work fills the void, taking an embeddedness perspective. The study proposes, tests and validates a methodology to measure cooperation among meetings industry stakeholders within a set of international city destinations where the meetings industry is present. Moreover, the network topography of a set of cities is studied based on the construct cooperation.