Knowledge sharing for coopetition in tourist destinations: the difficult path to the network

Innovation within the tourism industry is crucial to respond to tourists' changing needs and to thereby guarantee the economic sustainability of tourist destinations. From this perspective, a network approach is increasingly adopted because of its capacity to orchestrate economic actors and their resources in a way that reaps large benefits for all parties. Knowledge is a pivotal resource for creating innovation through a network approach in the tourism sector, and the implementation of ICT-based tools is a key support for collecting information and obtaining further understanding of the tourism market. This paper analyzes factors that disrupt the implementation of a system of data collection in tourist destinations by examining a longitudinal case study of ski resorts that shows which barriers and difficulties impeded the creation of a network of local stakeholders despite their sharing of common goals.