The Willingness of Tourism-Friendly Cities’ Representatives to Share Innovative Solutions in the Form of Open Innovations

Abstract

The tendency of enterprises to use open innovations can be seen in the literature in many areas of research and practical application. However, the use of the concept of open innovation in local administration entities is less noticeable. The research gap in this area prompts the authors to examine such a tendency among city representatives in the example of the Tourism Friendly Cities (TFC) group. TFC is a group of nine tourism destinations that are also European cities struggling with the impact of modern tourism. They take part in the URBACT program under the European Territorial Cooperation program. The goal of the article is to identify the basic problems of TFCs with the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and to assess the propensity of TFC representatives to transfer innovative solutions in the form of open innovation. The article presents findings based on interviews with 104 experts from these cities, consisting of representatives of the public and private sectors. Research results indicate that the key problems of modern tourism in TFCs include constraints related to the lack of parking spaces, high rents and high prices of land, and short-term rental housing. The experts recommend measures to increase resilience and competitiveness initiated by business owners and at the initiative of the local administration. Key tools in this regard include and local community communication and engagement, creating attractions that benefit both residents and visitors, and measuring and monitoring tourism. In all, 92.8% of the experts believe that the right solution for the development of methods and tools for stakeholder cooperation in TFCs is to share the developed solutions in the form of open innovation.

Visiting national parks during the COVID-19 pandemic - an example of social adaptation of tourists in the perspective of creating social innovations

“…This problem has not been addressed by researchers so far, therefore the research results described in the article contribute to the recognition of opinions on the acceptance of these substitutes and the use of this knowledge in the implementation of innovative forms of tourism management in protected areas. Due to their structure, these solutions should adopt a social dimension, and at the same time be open to their universal access ( Szromek et al, 2022 , Szromek et al, 2023 ). Therefore, at this point it is worth introducing the concept of Open Social Innovation (OSI), which in this regard is becoming a key perspective of the observed social changes.…”

European historic cities and overtourism – conflicts and development paths in the light of systematic literature review

“…Some scholars (Kowalczyk-Anioł et al, 2021; Szromek et al, 2022) also point to stakeholder cooperation as an effective tool for minimizing the negative effects of overtourism. The importance of this postulate is rooted in the fact that overtourism in all destinations involves conflicting interests of particular stakeholders (Szromek et al, 2020; Zmyślony et al, 2020).…”

“…The initial list of cities found in the previous step was shortened by eliminating cities studied only in big comparative studies, for example, presenting more than five cities, as the depth of information in such cases was not satisfactory for the presented research. Because of this limitation, several cities were rejected from further analysis, such as Braga, C aceres, Druskininkai, Dun Laoghaire, Genoa and Rovaniemi (Szromek et al, 2022), Regensburg (Bouchon & Rauscher, 2019), Bruges (Amore et al, 2020) or Cordoba and Salamanca (Perles-Ribes et al, 2021). The detailed procedure is presented in Appendix.…”

“…As a result, short-term rental systems are perceived in historic cities as an even more dangerous engine for the spread of tourism to residential areas, as these areas remain contemporarily relatively free from tourism pressure (Celata & Romano, 2020). Some scholars (Kowalczyk-Anioł et al, 2021;Szromek et al, 2022) also point to stakeholder cooperation as an effective tool for minimizing the negative effects of overtourism. The importance of this postulate is rooted in the fact that overtourism in all destinations involves conflicting interests of particular stakeholders (Szromek et al, 2020;Zmy slony et al, 2020).…”

Netographic narratives of user-generated travelogues on tourist destination image of Thailand

“…During the visit of Chinese outbound tourists, the image of the tourist destination should focus on creating comfortable infrastructure [116], convenient transportation [117], friendly tourist attractions [118,119], creating a good tourism hardware and technological environment [120][121], and providing high-quality tourism service experience to improve the quality of tourism services [12]. These demands have been shown to be represented in the study findings, as Chinese tourists who travel outside the country exhibit a significant interest in friendship (90), restaurants (72), breakfasts (70), durian (67) and the quality of the life.…”