Building tourism ecosystems for sector sustainability and resilience through peer-to-peer collaboration and open innovation

ABSTRACT

This research letter aims to contribute new critical understandings of the role of peer-to-peer collaborations and Open Innovation in fostering tourism ecosystems co-creation. By using the British Council – Innovation for African Universities project – Accelerating Youth Entrepreneurship and Innovation for Sustainable Tourism in Africa, as an illustrative case, it shares innovative practices. It calls for further research aimed at generating new theoretical and practical knowledge on tourism ecosystems, as a mechanism to enhance sector’s sustainability and resilience and on the role of peer-to-peer collaborations and Indigenous Knowledge Systems informed OI, as enablers of tourism ecosystems to an develop innovative intervention, facilitate youth entrepreneurship, pivot market opportunities and advance strategies for a sustainable and resilient tourism sector in the long term.

KEYWORDS:

• Tourism ecosystems
• sustainability
• resilience
• peer-to-peer collaboration
• open innovation
• youth entrepreneurship

Acknowledgements

Recognition is due to all partners involved, which are: Strathmore University and Sustainable Travel and Tourism Agenda (Kenya), University of Ghana (Ghana), and Africa Tourism Partners and associate Tshwane University of Technology (South Africa). A particular thank you goes to Job Odhiambo for his continued support on the 3 phases of this project.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Ethics statement

The research presented here has received ethical approval by the University of Brighton’s Ethics Committee.

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Additional information

Funding

The work presented here was supported by the Going Global Partnerships - British Council [grant number IAU036].