Tourism destinations have a necessity to innovate to remain competitive in anincreasingly global environment. A pre-requisite for innovation is theunderstanding of how destinations source, share and use knowledge. Thisconceptual paper examines the nature of networks and how their analysis canshed light upon the processes of knowledge sharing in destinations as theystrive to innovate. The paper conceptualizes destinations as networks ofconnected organizations, both public and private, each of which can beconsidered as a destination stakeholder. In network theory they represent thenodes within the system. The paper shows how epidemic diffusion models can actas an analogy for knowledge communication and transfer within a destinationnetwork. These models can be combined with other approaches to network analysisto shed light on how destination networks operate, and how they can beoptimized with policy intervention to deliver innovative and competitivedestinations. The paper closes with a practical tourism example taken from theItalian destination of Elba. Using numerical simulations the case demonstrateshow the Elba network can be optimized. Overall this paper demonstrates theconsiderable utility of network analysis for tourism in delivering destinationcompetitiveness.
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