DEVELOPING AN EVOLUTIONARY TOURISM PARTNERSHIP MODEL

Partnerships have become a popular tourism management strategy for leveraging scarce resources in an era of fiscal constraint. Despite this popularity, little empirical research has been done to explain the processes that occur when such interactions take place. An evolutionary model is presented based on an empirical study of three tourism partnerships, a review of existing tourism partnership case studies, and the integration of emerging theory from the organizational behavior field. The model suggests that tourism partnerships begin in a context of environmental forces and evolve sequentially through problem-setting, direction-setting, and structuring phases. Special facilitative skills are needed to sustain and nurture tourism partnerships.