Patenting patterns in the tourism industry: Evidence from Italy

Abstract

We study patent applications in the Italian hospitality sector. We analyze (a) the determinants of patenting behavior in the Italian accommodation sector and (b) the impact of innovation-measured through firms' patenting activity-on firms' performance. Using microdata from the Orbis database (Bureau van Dijk), we find that the firms' innovative performance in the Italian hospitality sector-measured through the number of successful patents applications-varies based on firms' size, age, intangible assets, and legal form. Moreover, patenting activity is positively and significantly associated to different measures of firms' performance.

New technology and tourism industry innovation: evidence from audio-visual patented technologies

“…Table 1 presents the results of that comparison suggesting not only the presence of a positive trend in tourism audio-visual patents, but also that this trend is growing much faster than the total amount of patents, showcasing an increasing interest in innovation in tourism. These results challenge some researchers' perception which underestimate the current level of innovation research in tourism (Valenca et al, 2020), but echo Succurro and Boffa (2018) findings on patented innovation in the hospitality sector in Italy.…”

“…The findings of the study suggest that there is a strong interest in innovation in tourism, which is currently growing faster than most of the other sectors explored such as transportation and pharmaceuticals. This innovation trend, however, is in contradistinction to tourism innovation research which is still in its infancy (Divisekera and Nguyen, 2018;Succurro and Boffa, 2018). Positioned second only after nanotechnology, tourism is the sector with the highest level of increase in number of patents (in terms of percentage growth per year), with a continuous increase up to the year 2016 when data were collected.…”

“…A number of scholars, however, have highlighted that rigid innovation research in tourism is lacking in general and called for additional empirical evidence generated through quantitative studies rather than a case-by-case approach (Divisekera and Nguyen, 2018;Hall and Williams, 2008;Succurro and Boffa, 2018), as the latter fails to provide rigid classification of the critical areas of development in the industry (Pantano et al, 2017). Recent studies justified the still scarce research on innovation in tourism as prompt by the adoption of approaches developed for manufacturing industries that are inadequately applied in tourism (Valenca et al, 2020).…”

“…Such studies called for further investigations in understanding how tourism might benefit from innovation (Romao and Nijkamp, 2019), via longitudinal research aiming to better capture the dynamic and complex nature of the innovation process specifically in the tourism industry (Rodriguez-Sanchez et al, 2020;Williams et al, 2021;Singh et al, 2020). Similarly, Succurro and Boffa (2018) have argued that the patenting behaviour in tourism has received little academic attention and attributed this lack of research to a wider belief that innovation in tourism commonly involves improving the services (Truong et al, 2020) in ways that are hardly patentable (Hall and Williams, 2008), leading scholars to assume that patenting is scarcely relevant in the tourism industry. Also, studies on innovation in tourism mainly focused on processes, stakeholder involvement and management, role of frontline employees, context configuration, knowledge, technology and eco-innovations (Baradarani and Kilic, 2018;Ozseker, 2019;Sundström et al, 2017).…”

Capacity-, system- and mission-oriented innovation policies in tourism – characteristics, measurement and prospects

“…Therefore, they are not likely to be able to comply with requirements in the financially attractive and mostly rigidly structured innovation support programs. Another critical issue is that products and services from tourism are not easily patented or otherwise standardized, as the knowledge content cannot be codified (Cooper, 2014;Succurro, & Boffa, 2018). In addition, tourism innovations often change continuously and incrementally, and the product and service properties often differ from the original designs (Souto, 2015).…”