Tourism Destination Development and Industries' Scale-Free Distribution

Abstract

Successful tourism destination development rests upon how actors internalize and integrate a shared strategy. In general, tourism enterprises can manage inter-firm integration on a continuum from conventional and individualistic collaboration with ad hoc coordination, to collaboration administered through common ownership. An advantage of the latter form is that the actors can act in a coherent and unified way. This research note argues how a scale-free distribution – with one or a few dominant and numerous small actors – can enable a destination to achieve an integrated and shared strategy. It also calls for future studies on scaling behaviour in the tourism industry.