Coopetition Networks in Tourism Destinations: A Literature Review

Coopetition (simultaneous cooperation and competition of actors) is still a relatively new concept in business, management, and tourism. However, several coopetition studies have focused on tourism and tourism destinations. Also, compilation literature reviews of tourism and tourism destinations have been published (Rusko, 2018). This chapter focuses on underlying coopetition networks of tourism and specifically of tourism destinations. Because of the typical features of tourism destinations, multifaceted connections in competition and cooperation-and coopetition-are present in everyday business and activities among actors of the destination. These coopetitive relationships cover several levels, they are present inmicro, meso, macro, andmeta level interplay of tourism destination. Furthermore, the analysis shows that several studies about coopetitive networks in tourism destinations do not use terms macro or meta though these seem to be themain levels of the studies. This only reveals the fertile dimensions of coopetitive networks in tourism. These various relationships form coopetitive networks that represent several dimensions and levels of actors, competition, cooperation, and coopetition. This chapter introduces these multifaceted perspectives of coopetition networks, which have been described in the contemporary literature about tourism and tourism destination.