Investigating barriers to innovation in the tourism industry
The dramatic growth of the tourism industry reflects an important contribution to the systematic increase of GDP in the world, tourism is often recognized as a key driver for socio-economic development. However, this growth rate is accompanied by extremely fierce competition; Which puts a lot of pressure on tourism companies to innovate continuously in order to survive and grow.
Official statistics show a relatively moderate level of innovation in the tourism sector, which is managed by small institutions individually or as a family.
Innovations in the tourism sector include barriers such as resilience to change, low awareness of the importance of innovation, resource constraints among small businesses, and so on. However, the existence of small innovative tourism companies can not be ignored. And there is the fact that in some small tourism companies, innovation and entrepreneurship have a positive and direct relationship with each other. Undoubtedly, the unstable and unstable environmental conditions experienced in the tourism industry have had a great impact on the level of risk-taking and the willingness of tourism companies to cooperate and, consequently, to innovate. In addition, cooperation in tourism has been shown to be associated with innovation and has a positive effect.
Limited opportunities, inadequate valuation and lack of conditions for innovation, non-protection of creative ideas and innovations, and companies are discouraged from engaging in innovative activities. In the meantime, the issue of effective support for innovations is raised.
The small size of companies and the high turnover of staff are the most important obstacles to domestic innovation in tourism companies. The small size of tourism companies is associated with a lack of resources. These companies usually do not have the financial resources to create innovative knowledge or buy it from commercial entities. Accordingly, they are forced to use knowledge and information, which are mainly from external sources, to reinforce innovative processes or innovative ideas.
Limited resources create relatively high risk and lack of time for innovative activities; It also hinders access to innovative technologies that are too expensive for tourism companies. Another issue that is crucial for innovation is human resource practices. Although the importance of highly skilled and motivated personnel is often recognized as a critical success factor for innovation, seasonal fluctuations due to seasonality and relatively low wages lead to many problems related to human capital. Low levels of formal training, lack of skills, and high staff turnover are some of these problems.
Creating a culture of innovation is one of the most important factors in the success of innovation. The process of innovation in tourism, unlike other industries, is very informal and is carried out through non-standardized procedures and procedures. The lack of a comprehensive approach to innovation management creates significant inefficiencies in absorbing, accumulating, transferring and integrating knowledge. Thus, although tourism is recognized as an industry with a high level of customer intensity, the actual customer participation in innovation processes is far from the level of user-centered innovations.
Tourist companies show limited interest and participation in research and development activities, because most of the developed innovations are not technological in nature, but intangible in nature, which includes behavioral changes. The industry is rapidly expanding, which greatly contributes to the rapid erosion of innovators’ competitive advantages.
Tourism companies do not suffer from a lack of new ideas, but they do experience complex problems that prevent those ideas from being effectively translated into comprehensive innovations. The scale of barriers experienced is often due to internal inefficiencies, for example, the inability to protect innovations against competitors, not only because of the nature of the innovations introduced, but more importantly because of inconsistencies in the selection, implementation and operation of safeguards. Interestingly, the impact of most of the reported barriers, namely lack of funding, is not more pervasive than other key barriers to staffing, innovation protection, or technical support. Research has shown that deficiencies in technical and technological issues hinder the innovative activities of tourism companies.
Inadequate skills, low formal competencies and competencies, as well as lack of motivation to participate in innovation processes, are structural and behavioral constraints in the tourism industry, but need to be addressed at different levels of the industry. The level of policy-making should provide better coherence between the changing needs of the market and the structure of the education system, as well as the tourism industry as a whole. The education system must address the issue of knowledge transfer to the industry in the form of formal education and vocational training. Important considerations in this regard should be the use of new media for education and knowledge transfer, which are currently used in a very small range. Finally, managers and business owners need to be educated about the importance of innovation for competition as well as the role of high quality human resources in the process.
Source: Aria Heritage