A Consumer-Based Measurement of Tourism Innovation

Abstract

The present paper reviews the innovation literature related to tourism and examines the twin problems of operational definitions and measurement of innovation in the tourism sector. A conceptual model is then proposed by which the most relevant aspects of innovation and the most relevant aspects of the "tourism experience" can be integrated conceptually, and which can guide the development of related operational definitions and measurements and lead to a standardization of, and therefore an ability to aggregate, tourism innovation statistics across products, providers, markets and geopolitical regions. The model first categorizes innovations along two dimensions: an "invention-adoption" continuum and an "impact-on-the-tourism-experience" dimension, which includes accessibility, affective transformation, convenience and value. How the use of these categories can direct attention to important definitional and measurement issues are discussed as is how their use can improve the comparability of tourism innovation data collected from disparate sources. Finally, a third dimension, the economic impact of the innovation, is introduced to the model. The paper concludes with impli-Serena Volo is Researcher with the

Innovativeness and business performances in tourism SMEs

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Climate change mitigation among accommodation providers in the South West of England: Comparisons between members and non-members of networks

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