Abstract
Value creation in tourism is at a real crossroad. The effects of the COVID-19 pandemic have not only significantly damaged the ability of tourism service providers to continue creating value, but their potential to recover and return to pre-crisis levels raises serious concerns.
Solving the value creation equation is something that will surely take years and will leave many companies by the wayside. However, for the most daring firms, the current crisis offers numerous opportunities that might allow them gain long-term competitive advantages if they are aware of the critical variables that influence value creation and know how to take the appropriate steps.
In this context, the guest editors of this Special Issue wanted to offer a constructive insight on how the academic and professional communities are perceiving these challenges to create value, and collect new ideas that could lead to reflection, be it practical or theoretical, about the opportunities that these moments offer for tourism, transport and hospitality providers.
This Special Issue is the result of various contributions in which the authors address the challenges of value creation from different perspectives and analytical frameworks that help enrich the debate.
In this issue is ‘An Interview with UNWTO’s Executive Director Manuel Butler about the Challenges for Creating Value in Tourism’ by Francisco J. Navarro-Meneses. The interview, so kindly granted by Dr Butler, largely exemplifies the goals pursued by the guest editors and particularly highlights the crucial moment the tourism industry is going through. Besides being optimistic and confident in the still relevant role that tourism will continue to play in the future of world economies, his message is also critical of the role played by many decision-makers in this pandemic and the operational limitations found by UNWTO to overcome the situation. During the interview, Dr Butler is proud of the path travelled so far by the tourism industry in recent decades, and he also throws important messages that point in the direction that value creation should take in this important industry in the coming years.
Bruno Alencar, Gui Lohmann and Luke Houghton in their article ‘The Role of Collaboration in Innovation and Value Creation in the Aviation Industry’ showcase how collaboration plays a relevant role in fostering innovation and value creation in a highly competitive global industry. Based on a systematic review of the literature carried out in the main research databases on the subject, the authors conclude with a conceptual framework that includes 15 categories and 43 indicators for collaborative innovation and value creation. Their article is relevant because it provides best practices that could help decision-makers in aviation companies to develop alliances and collaboration models that might unfold real value for their businesses.
Adding to the idea of collaboration, Pijls, Groen and Termaat explore the role of hospitality as a key enabler to value creation in the article ‘Hospitable Nonverbal Staff Behaviour as a Means to Create Value to Customers’. The authors address the often elusive concept of ‘hospitable’ through four user-centered case studies that delve into the human aspects that influence it, mainly those of a non-verbal nature, a previous step in making this important intangible element of the customer experience operational.
In addition to value creation in companies, this Special Issue includes two articles dedicated to creating value from the perspective of tourist destinations. First, Clarinda Rodrigues and Holger J. Schmidt contribute with ‘How the Creative Class Co-creates A City’s Brand Identity: A Qualitative Study’, an article in which the authors bring light to the key role that the creation of brands has for the competitive development of tourist destinations and how the so-called ‘creative class’ naturally provides meaning and genuine value to city brands. The development and enhancement of creative cities has been behind some mediatic urban promotion strategies on the five continents and, therefore, their article is timely to improve understanding of how the identity of a city is created and, especially, the role played by value co-creation processes with stakeholders.
Second, Aki Shimbo, Amna Javed and Youji Kohda report their findings on a destination marketing organization’s value creation strategy in ‘The O-Bento Principle for Successful Multi-sector Collaboration: A Case Study of DMO Roppongi’. The article is an empirical research focused on how the Nogi Shrine, located in the district of Roppongi in Tokyo, can serve as a venue to attract tourists. After the extensive fieldwork and analysis carried out by the authors, they argue that the key to value creation is based on the principles of multisectoral collaboration and their own interpretation of the effectual theory of entrepreneurship, which they call the ‘O-Bento principle’: always use the resources that are already there and available for use.
The Special Issue closes with the article ‘A Conceptual Characterization of Value Creation in Hospitality and Tourism Firms from a Complexity Perspective’ by Francisco J. Navarro-Meneses, which introduces a value creation framework that highlights how tourism and hospitality firms behave as complex adaptive systems aimed at creating and exchanging value in hyperconnected networks. The purpose of the article is to foster a more open debate among academics and professionals about the need to incorporate increasingly complex elements into the analysis of value creation that facilitate the transition towards more realistic models that can be used operationally by tourism and hospitality managers. Although still at an early stage of development, Navarro-Meneses complexity-based view of value creation promises new avenues to improve value analysis and support decision-making.