Transnational collaborations for a more sustainable tourism: the role of digital transition

Digital transformation provides opportunities for sustainable tourism development, through the forecast and mitigation of negative tourism impacts (e.g., overtourism), the involvement of all stakeholders, including residents, in the decision making, and the systematic collection and sharing of tourism data. Digital transformation also facilitates collaboration among different structures, which is also fundamental for sustainable tourism. This ongoing study considers a transnational cooperation structure in order to understand how digital transition can facilitate collaboration among different actors and structures in different destinations in terms of sustainability decisions. To this extent, a longitudinal qualitative study has been developed at different levels of analysis (namely, regional/province level, destination level, municipality level) and at different points in time. At the higher level of analysis (the regional level), three in-depth semi-structured interviews have been conducted with key managers of the regional DMOs of the three regions involved in the study. Results show a fragmented situation at the regional level: even though issues of digital transformation, systematic collection and processing of tourism data, as well as transition towards a more sustainable tourism development are deemed important, there is no systematic collaboration among the three regions, except for few consolidated tourism projects. At a lower level of analysis, the study attempts to collect semi-structured interviews with public and private key stakeholders of the selected destinations and municipalities in order to provide a more nuanced and in-depth understanding of the phenomenon. This research will contribute to sustainable tourism literature, as well as digitalization and collaboration studies in tourism, in that it first considers a transnational collaboration structure.