We're All in This Together: Understanding How Tourism Advocates Build Relationships across the Tourism Industry

The tourism industry has long been concerned with gaining political influence to ensure supportive policies and governance. Tourism advocates are leaders who seek political influence by creating a unified industry voice and setting a prioritized legislative agenda. This requires tourism advocates to have strong relationships with members of the tourism industry. We use a political advocacy framework to explore how tourism advocates develop as leaders and the behaviors they utilize to build relationships within the tourism industry in the context of a state tourism advocacy association in the United States. The findings suggest that there are many paths to becoming a tourism advocate, but all require supportive organizational resources, industry knowledge, and social capital as these attributes are vital in efforts to build the relationships with tourism industry members.