The Role of the Tourism Clusters in the Dynamic World of Tourism

Abstract

The tourism sector is taking up the issue of local growth dynamics and is banking on a territorial organization inspired by clusters to develop destination development policies. A cluster can be defined as a geographically close group of interrelated enterprises and associated institutions in a given field, between which there are common elements and complementarities. This concept is now the subject of much research in tourism and inspires experiences of tourism destination development around the world. In scientific approaches, the concept of cluster highlights, on the one hand, the role of organizational proximities, built from spatial proximities in the dynamics of competitiveness of tourist destinations. On the other hand, tourism clusters are developing all over the world. The challenge of this article is therefore to show that the simple transfer of a scientific tool developed in the industrial context to the management of tourist destinations poses a problem. It must be enriched to understand the dynamics of local tourism development and acquire more operational efficiency. Special specific dimensions should in fact be taken into account, which will be addressed based on the process of co-production inherent in tourist activity, the dynamics of singular proximities in this field of tourism and the characteristics of the embeddedness of tourist activities in the territory. Finally, the authors propose a cluster model more suited to tourist destinations. DOI: https://doi.org/10.53486/cike2023.05; UDC: 338.48:332.15; JEL: O13, R11, Z32.