Managing tourism knowledge

Knowledge management is an established academic subject area but tourism has come to this subject late. Knowledge management can provide tourism organizations and destinations with significant benefits in terms of innovation and competitiveness. The paper provides an overview of knowledge management and in particular a model of knowledge stocks and flows, emphasising the imperative of knowledge transfer and exchange as a competitive tool. The paper finally provides an overview of the contexts of tourism for knowledge management examining the concept of destinations as networks, the notion of communities of practice and the characteristics of tourism as a sector. Finally, the paper concludes with observations on the future of knowledge management and tourism.