Towards a tourism industry turnaround: the need for a new metric of social success

Abstract

Purpose

This review highlights the need for a tourism industry turnaround combining changes in its governance and in its social success metric.

Design/methodology/approach

Although debate was ongoing before the pandemic with the sustainability approach as the main reference, the crisis caused by the SARS-CoV-2 has multiplied and amplified the voices calling for change in order to counteract the inertia of a return to the pre-pandemic “business as usual” scenario.

Findings

This review led to a proposal that combines a tourism governance framework and its principles, with a conceptualisation of social success and guidelines for building a metric for its measurement.

Originality/value

This resides mainly in a transition from a public–private partnerships (3Ps) model to a new scheme of public–private–people partnership (4Ps). The P for “people” represents the need for an alliance with society to contribute to the recovery and transformation that the tourism industry is currently experiencing. In this process, local communities should be empowered to play an active role in it. In the proposal elaborated, host communities are the focus of its conceptual architecture. To-date, analysis of the application of the 4Ps model to tourism is almost unexplored, despite the significant practical implications of a power re-balancing in decisions related to tourism planning and development. In addition, a social success-driven metric supported at the institutional level will contribute to redefining priorities in tourism destinations'/companies' strategies.

Citation

Vargas-Sanchez, A. (2022), "Towards a tourism industry turnaround: the need for a new metric of social success", Worldwide Hospitality and Tourism Themes, Vol. 14 No. 1, pp. 38-47. https://doi.org/10.1108/WHATT-10-2021-0135