Collaborations in the Hospitality Sector in Venice

As the hospitality industry has grown, interest in hospitality management research has increased significantly in recent decades. Tourism can be considered a dynamic business in a relatively unstable environment, whereby various types of interference can impose challenges to business dynamics in tourism that require businesses to respond quickly. Firms in this sector have to adapt to external influences driven by largely uncontrollable events such as economic movements and exchange rate fluctuations, changes in nature and climatic conditions, fashions and new consumer behaviors. In this scenario, interorganizational cooperation can help reduce uncertainties, broaden the range of opportunities, anticipate trends and encourage gatekeepers, or CEOs, to disseminate information and knowledge within the organizational structure. Interorganizational cooperation is important for companies to obtain valuable resources such as information and knowledge, goods, services, capital, markets, technology and so on. Cooperation has been considered particularly important in the context of tourism destinations, where relationships and integration between organizations directly and indirectly related to tourism help to provide customers with a complete tourism experience. In essence, research has indicated that the tourism industry does not achieve full development without cooperation between different stakeholders. However, many studies on cooperation and collaborations are empirically and quantitatively applied in the contexts of manufacturing industries such as the automotive industry, the electronics industry, while only a few in service-based industries; for example, the tourism and hospitality industries. To fill this gap in the literature, the present study aims to explore what kind of collaborations are established in the hotel context of Venice and what advantages/disadvantages can occur. Whether they are vertical collaborations, therefore with suppliers, customers, and competitors, or horizontal collaborations, with industry experts, universities, public institutions, trade associations, cultural associations, and many other agents operating in the Venetian hotel sector.