Challenges of Open Innovation in the Tourism Sector

ABSTRACT

This study shows how the tourism sector is applying the new paradigm of open innovation (OI) supported by social media. We drew on a sample of 135 companies from the sector in the south of Portugal and Spain to perform a cluster analysis. Currently, OI is a challenge in tourism, and social media are a strategic tool. The main objective is to evaluate the impact of customer involvement in innovation performance. The results show positive impact of OI in new product development, moreover results derived in terms of turnover and competitiveness improve; however, it all depends on the innovation management model. Anyway, even today, formal adoption is still pending to achieve the desired outcomes but this research highlights how the sector is advancing in the direction of OI.

KEYWORDS:

• Open innovation
• new service development (NSD)
• social media
• tourism sector
• co-creation environment

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Patricia P. Iglesias-Sánchez http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5591-2248

Marisol B. Correia http://orcid.org/0000-0002-1788-6114

Carmen Jambrino-Maldonado http://orcid.org/0000-0001-8444-0967

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Junta de Andalucía (Andalusian Goverment) under grant number SEJ-314.