Successful tourism clusters: Passion in paradise

Abstract

Highlights• We interviewed members of a tourism cluster on the Gold Coast, Australia.• Clusters are an effective way to facilitate destination marketing and development.• Focus on individuals rather than firms to create a successful tourism cluster.• Having passionate and committed cluster members is important for success.Niche tourism clusters are often used by managers of mature destinations to improve competitiveness. Cluster bring together geographically concentrated businesses (Porter, 1998) that have a common interest (Gray, 1985), allowing them to pool their efforts to achieve advantages, such as economies of scale (Palmer & Bejou, 1995). Prior research on clusters focuses on businesses entities as the unit of analysis (Novelli, Schmitz, & Spencer, 2006), through use of concepts of partnerships (Selin, 1999), strategic alliances (Palmer & Bejou, 1995) and networks (Tremblay, 1998). This research note seeks to advance this body of knowledge by concentrating on the characteristics of the individuals involved. The prior literature of clusters emphasises structural properties of clusters as explanatory actors for success, whereas, the results here indicate that certain characteristics of key individuals are also important.The research investigated a case study of the Gold Coast Adventure Travel Group (GCATG), a successful tourism cluster on the Gold Coast, Australia.