Política turística e innovación en España: teoría y práctica

Abstract

Despite the fact that innovation is rapidly emerging as an important topic in tourism policy there is still a gap between work on tourism policy and that on innovation outcomes which tend to be disconnected. In particular, this study bridges that gap by bringing together knowledge on tourism, innovation and policy. It connects a range of concepts from these fields and brings them into tourism studies using them to explore a number of significant innovation practices and processes. The aim of this research was to gain insight into the innovation outcomes of the tourism policy process and governmental strategies to encourage innovation by observing the implementation process and innovation outcomes of selected tourism innovation programmes in Spain. The study approaches this aim from different angles. It examines from a longitudinal perspective the outcomes of tourism policy changes in order to identify innovation. It also observes the expectations and limitations of governmental stimuli for tourism innovation. Additionally, it examines the relationship between innovation policy and tourism policy, particularly where they intersect. Finally, more specific and operative aspects of programme implementation and innovation outcomes are addressed through the exploration of two tourism innovation programmes targeting different agents and forms of attaining innovation: one is a clusters programme targeting cooperative innovation and the other a young entrepreneurs programme with innovation being at the heart of enterprise startups. The entrepreneurs’ case study additionally addresses a major gap in understanding the process of innovation. The study adopts a multi-methods approach combining different methodologies according to the research aims: contents analysis, supervision and policies evaluation and a participatory methodology for the selected case studies. It employs different qualitative research methods to actively engage policy programmes’ participants and, where possible, policy administrators in order to construct an in-depth portrayal of innovation outcomes and policy programmes’ effectiveness. Through this multi-methods approach, the study makes a number of contributions. First, it provides evidence of how innovation outcomes of tourism policy are difficult to attain and therefore infrequent being highly influenced by factors such as crisis or periods of significant change. The analysis also confirms the rarity of policy innovation and the predominance of incremental adaptation and policy succession. Second, the study provides a longitudinal view of the governmental stimulus to tourism innovation through a mix of policy instruments. Innovation has gradually gained importance since its first introduction in the 90s as a goal in the tourism policy albeit with an evident technological bias. Third, subtle and not always evident interactions have been found between tourism policy and innovation policy, even though tourism is still not considered as a national priority for the innovation policy. Fourth, the innovative clusters case study provides evidence of the difficulties in translating policy ideals like innovation into action and the questionable effectiveness of these types of systemic instruments to promote tourism innovation. Finally, by exploring the entrepreneurs’ innovation journey, the study had a privileged look inside the “black box” which constitutes the innovation process in tourism, its characteristics and the multiple factors which positively influence the success of the journey. In summary, through all the different case studies selected, the research has contributed to understanding the phenomenon of innovation from the point of view of those initiating and managing the innovation process. It has provided evidence of the implementation of this abstract concept by multiple-scale agents and thus being introduced in different specific contexts: government policy, clusters and entrepreneurs. It has also shown evidence of how the innovation process works in practice in all these different settings, its limitations and the difficulties involved in conducting the process successfully to make innovation happen. All the different obstacles found confirm that innovation is a complex process and indicate why it is rare to find it in practice.