Partners and Innovation in American Destination Marketing Organizations

Abstract

Innovation and interorganizational collaboration have been identified as important elements of competitive tourism strategies. This study proposes a model that relates aspects of organizational settings and collaboration to the success of innovation within the organization. In particular, this study focuses on destination marketing organizations (DMOs) as they collaborate with destination businesses to assist in the development of new services in marketing the destination. A national survey among American DMOs indicates that partner collaboration is a significant driver of visitor-orientated innovation. Specifically, innovation success was found to be driven solely by the development of market-oriented rather than strategy-oriented new services, indicating that many of the American DMOs respond to visitor changes at the expense of providing new services that somehow do not fit within current organizational setting. These findings suggest that DMO leadership needs to consider organizational changes in order to better support innovation at the destination.