The international journal of tourism research tập 12, số 01, 2010 01 + 02

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF TOURISM RESEARCH Int J Tourism Res 12, 1–16 (2010) Published online 28 April 2009 in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com) DOI: 10.1002/jtr.732 Clustering and Compatibility between Tourism Attractions Adi Weidenfeld1,*, Richard W Butler2 and Allan M Williams3 Department of Geography, SoGAER, University of Exeter, Exeter, UK Department of Hospitality and Tourism Management, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, UK Institute for the Study of European Transformations (ISET) and Working Lives Research Institute, London, UK ABSTRACT Cumulative attraction or compatibility is a powerful factor in locational decisions of retail outlets, but it has received little attention in the tourism literature Existing studies largely ignore the impact of spatial and thematic clustering on compatibility between tourism businesses This research questions whether and how spatial and thematic clustering are related to tourist movements between visitor attractions The study in Cornwall, England, is based on in-depth interviews with tourist attraction managers and key informants, complemented by a survey of 435 tourists It provides insights into the relationship between the nature of the tourism product, spatial clustering and tourism behaviour Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd Received 19 November 2008; Revised 21 March 2009; Accepted 24 March 2009 Keywords: tourism clusters; attraction compatibility; visitor attractions INTRODUCTION T he role of visitor attractions in shaping the appeal of destinations is central in destination development, being a core element in generating demand and shaping destination growth Destinations of different *Correspondence to: Dr Adi Weidenfeld, Tourism Researcher, Department of Geography, SoGAER, University of Exeter, Armory Building, Rennes Drives, Exeter EX4 4RJ, UK E-mail: A.Weidenfeld@ex.ac.uk and similar product attractions evolve, either organically or planned, into spatial clusters, thereby generating enhanced appeal across an expanded range of tourism segments (Swarbrooke, 2002) Although visitor attractions, individually and collectively, can be seen as a key component of the tourism experience product (Fyall et al., 2001; Middleton and Clarke, 2001; Swarbrooke, 2002; Watson and McCracken, 2002), and the starting point for the development of tourism infrastructure and services (Fyall et al., 2001), they remain relatively understudied (Swarbrooke, 2001); Watson and McCracken, 2002), especially with respect to compatibility In line with JansenVerbeke and Lievois (2002), a better understanding of the associations between the activities offered by visitor attractions, their spatial organisation and their attractiveness will enhance policy making for tourism spatial planning It is important to note two definitions First, a tourism space is a geographical area with imprecise geographical boundaries in which tourist activities take place (Shaw and Williams, 2004), and can range from a small area, through a resort to the regional scale There are few models (Miossec, 1976; Lundgren, 1982; Dietvorst, 1995; Fennel, 1996; Papatheodorou, 2004) dealing with the influence of different types of tourists, travel motivations and spatial structures of tourism spaces on spatial patterns of tourist flows and accommodation types Other models (Piperoglou, 1966; Dredge, 1999); Jansen-Verbeke and Lievois, 2002; Shoval and Raveh, 2004) refer specifically to spatial structures of and tourist movements between visitor attractions Secondly, a visitor attraction is a single unit, an individual site or a clearly defined small-scale Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd geographical area, based on a single key feature and perceived by visitors as such Its attractiveness motivates people to travel some distance from home, usually in their leisure time, for relatively short visits (Morrison and Mill, 1992) Although there is no generally accepted definition applicable to all visitor attractions (Swarbrooke, 2002; Leask and Fyall, 2006), these are the most important components in the tourism system and the core of the tourism product by dint of being the main motivator of tourist trips, and a key determinant of consumers’ choices Frequently, they represent and deliver the particular sense of place that provides the basis for competition between destinations (Middleton and Clarke, 2001) This paper draws on the literature on tourism appeal, and spatial and thematic clustering, to examine how spatial proximity, density of businesses and product similarity are related to compatibility between tourist attractions at low and high levels of spatial clustering The central concept of cumulative attraction (Nelson, 1958) is the principle of compatibility (Hunt and Crompton, 2008) Compatibility or cumulative attraction (Nelson, 1958) describes relationships of appeal between attractions Clusters are variously constituted, and this is explored by examining two clusters, characterised as relatively high and low density Spatial scale is also important in the analysis of spatial clustering (Simmie and Sennett, 1999; Malmberg and Maskell, 2002) Therefore, this paper also examines the relationships of appeal and compatibility between visitor attractions at both the local scale, i.e compatibility between individual intra-cluster attractions, and the regional scale, i.e the sum of compatibilities between attractions in a destination cluster as a regional group It builds on Hunt and Crompton (2008) by studying whether and how spatial proximity and product similarity are related to compatibility between attractions, using cluster theory as a theoretical framework for this analysis The paper assumes that within tourism spaces, such as destinations, compatibility between attractions is an essential element for sustaining their appeal, generated by various — largely understudied — complementary relationships between tourist attractions (Fyall et al., 2001) These complementary relationships and compatibility contribute to a Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd A Weidenfeld, R W Butler and A M Williams destination’s unique character, and this study argues that their spatiality plays a major role in this These ideas were examined using quantitative and qualitative data collected through interviews with key respondents and a survey of tourists in Cornwall, England The survey specifically aimed to compare two attractions (a farm attraction in Newquay and an amusement park on the Lizard) both centrally located within their clusters, one with relatively low and one with relatively high levels of spatial and thematic clustering The relationships between appeal to visitors, product similarity, spatial density of attractions at the regional scale and spatial proximity between individual intra-cluster attractions at the local scale are explored in the following analysis First, however, we will discuss the concept of cumulative attraction and the idea of compatibility between visitor attractions COMPATIBILITY OR CUMULATIVE ATTRACTION Nelson’s (1958) and Wall’s (1978) discussions of cumulative attraction or attraction compatibility, in the context of retailing and recreation, have been extended to visitor attractions at the micro (local) level by Hunt and Crompton (2008) In line with Nelson (1958), compatibility is the measure of the effect that one business has upon an adjacent or proximate business Compatibility levels range from low to high according to the percentage of customers shared by the same attractions; that is, the degree to which two businesses interchange customers (Crompton and Gitelson, 1979) In this study, a visitor attraction’s appeal and compatibility are measured in terms of number of visitors shared by attractions, in relation to their spatial location (intra-/extra-cluster) and product similarity (including dissimilarity and complementarity) In line with Hunt and Crompton (2008), it is argued that a high percentage of visitors interchanged between attractions reflects synergies of appeal between them, and that visitors are unlikely to visit one attraction without visiting others in the same trip Furthermore, ‘enhancing the perceived critical mass of tourism attractions in the community is likely to have a positive impact on Int J Tourism Res 12, 1–16 (2010) DOI: 10.1002/jtr Clustering and Compatibility between Tourism Attractions potential visitors’ (Hunt and Crompton, 2008, p 245) Two adjacent businesses or attractions that affect each other in a positive manner (number of visitors and volume of sales) are considered compatible (Hunt and Crompton, 2008) Similarly, a cluster whose collective attractions’ compatibility is relatively high is considered a compatible cluster at the regional scale The impact of cumulative attraction, which occurs as a result of the appeal of two or more attractions, is crucial for generating visits to destinations and preference for one destination over another (Lue et al., 1993) Hunt and Crompton (2008) criticise attractions for not identifying and collecting information on compatibility and complementarity They call on attractions to use such information and employ cooperative rather than competitive strategies in the context of destination marketing Similarly, Kim and Fesenmaier (1990) argue that cooperative promotion between visitor attractions can have a positive impact on their cumulative attractions This study argues that the relationships between product similarity and complementarity are important in understanding the nature of compatibility It provides further insight into these arguments by examining relationships between the levels of spatial agglomeration (high versus low levels of clustering) and product thematic similarity The cluster concept also allows for exploration of differences in attraction at the regional and the local scales SPATIAL PROXIMITY AND TOURISM APPEAL Some researchers refer directly to the linkage between the appeal of tourism spaces and their spatial relationships (Miossec, 1976; Kim and Fesenmaier, 1990; Lue et al., 1993; Dredge, 1999; Jansen-Verbeke and Lievois, 2002; Papatheodorou, 2004; Shoval and Raveh, 2004; Hunt and Crompton, 2008) However, apart from Hunt and Crompton (2008) and JansenVerbeke and Lievois (2002), none provide any substantial empirical findings This is surprising, given that ‘understanding the spatial patterns of visitors’ trips is a key to accessing the potential market’ (Lue et al., 1993, p 298) Some previous studies have referred to the relationships between spatial clustering and tourism Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd appeal among attractions Kim and Fesenmaier (1990) suggest that ‘ a strong trip generation effect exists within a short distance range from an origin’ (p 378) and that spatial structures should not be ignored Dredge (1999) and Miossec (1976) provide theoretical hypotheses regarding the relationships between the appeal of visitor attractions and the appeal of the overall resort, as well as the relationships between an individual visitor attraction’s appeal and the appeal of neighbouring attractions, but these were not empirically supported Some researchers argue that a tourism cluster’s appeal as a whole is greater than the sum of the individual attractions (Piperoglou, 1966; Miossec, 1976; Dredge, 1999; Law, 2002) Lue et al (1993) suggest that attractions in spatial proximity, located en route to a destination or in a logical sequence to each other, draw more visitors than if they were randomly distributed This study similarly assumes that these synergies are reflected by compatibility between attractions that increases the overall number of visitors and that the cumulative attraction or compatibility between proximal businesses is a major factor in relationships of appeal between attractions Based on these assumptions, the paper explores whether spatial density of and proximity between attractions are positively related to their collective compatibility at the regional scale and compatibility between individual attractions at the local scale In other words, whether higher levels of clustering attract more visitors at both the regional and local scales, and mutual interchange of visitors PRODUCT SIMILARITY AND TOURISM APPEAL A few studies refer to the relationships between product similarity and spatial proximity between attractions Some of these show a tendency among attractions to spatial and thematic clustering (Jansen-Verbeke and Lievois, 2002; Shoval and Raveh, 2004) Jansen-Verbeke and Lievois (2002) suggest that the more a cluster of heritage buildings are spatially and functionally integrated in their city environment (e.g by transport routes and degree of centrality), the more attractive they are to Int J Tourism Res 12, 1–16 (2010) DOI: 10.1002/jtr pedestrian urban tourists Piperoglou (1966) has evidenced this argument empirically, adding that dissimilarity between visitor attractions products further increases the overall regional appeal Hence, synergies are assumed to be higher among different product clustered attractions In line with Swarbrooke’s (2001) model, and Piperoglou’s (1966) study, Lue et al (1996) suggest that cumulative attraction or compatibility between dissimilar secondary (or satellite) attractions is stronger than that between similar ones Furthermore, they argue that visitors prefer an area with multiple but different types of attractions that appeal to many market segments, e.g heritage, nature and recreation, thus reducing the risk of individual group members being dissatisfied Hence, we assume that compatibility between individual attractions at the local scale, and compatibility between a group of attractions at the regional scale, are higher among different product clustered attractions than between similar ones Complementary relationships between attractions (Fyall et al., 2001) also influence the appeal of visitor attractions at both the local and regional scales This is illustrated in Dredge’s (1999) model, which postulates that ‘the complementary nature of attractions usually increases the overall appeal of the individual nuclei [the attraction’s core product] contained within the complex, and that the secondary nuclei can contribute to the overall attraction of the destination region when similar destinations are being considered The complexes usually have a synergetic relationship with each other, thus increasing the overall touristic interest to a level greater than the sum of its individual parts’ (Dredge, 1999, p 782) This paper argues that synergetic relationships between attractions are reflected in compatibility between them, i.e sharing high numbers of visitors, and that compatibility among attractions is positively related to complementarities between them CLUSTERING AND COMPATIBILITY This study adopts Jackson and Murphy’s (2006) approach, which sees tourism clusters as a form of industrial cluster based on Porter’s (1998) cluster theory Competitiveness in Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd A Weidenfeld, R W Butler and A M Williams tourism clusters is determined by factor and demand conditions, context for firms’ strategy and rivalry and related and supporting industries (Porter’s ‘diamond model’, 1998) The colocation of firms does not guarantee clustering, understood as the process of optimising gains from economies of-scale and of-scope as a result of reductions in the average costs of member firms (Michael, 2007) Clustering produces a range of synergies which may enhance the growth of market size, employment and product (Michael, 2007), and in context of tourism may create a localised chain whereby a few sub-products ‘produce’ the overall tourism product Production complementarities and geographical proximity encourage production networking, which in turn can lead to inter-firm co-operation over innovation (De Propris, 2002) Although clustering stimulates complementarity, the co-location of complementary firms does not guarantee generation of synergies or cost efficiencies among them Synergistic development is stimulated by investment in networks of cooperation and information transfer (Gordon and McCan, 2000) This paper argues that compatibility among attractions may stimulate or be a result of employing cluster mechanisms and strategies employed by co-located attractions Product similarity and level of compatibility In line with both Nelson (1958) and Lue et al (1993), Hunt and Crompton (2008) differentiate between two types of cumulative attraction (or compatibility) in the context of visitor attractions — similar and complementary — without specifying what similarity between attractions actually means In their view, similar attractions draw more visitors because they provide alternatives and price competition, and visitors’ choice is based upon their preferences relating to such features as crowd size; types of attractions; admission price; nature of the theme; or other factors, e.g several theme parks at high proximity presenting different themes They also argue complementary attractions are ‘ dissimilar in type, but are compatible as evidenced by their sharing a relatively high percentage of visitors’ (Hunt and Crompton, 2008, p 238) Int J Tourism Res 12, 1–16 (2010) DOI: 10.1002/jtr Clustering and Compatibility between Tourism Attractions Hunt and Crompton’s (2008) concepts of similarity and complementarity are problematic, lack definitional coherence and ignore their impact on tourism appeal It is unclear whether similarity between attractions refers to product type or thematic associations between products, or both The term ‘complementary’ lacks specificity and refers to compatible dissimilar product type attractions It ignores other elements of complementarities between attractions that may affect compatibility, such as thematic complementarity between similar type attractions This study argues that other aspects associated with product similarity and complementarity of proximal attractions need to be addressed In this study, similarity between attractions refers to product themes related to features of the tourism product, such as heritage, wildlife, amusement, garden, etc (Swarbrooke, 2001), and it is argued that complementary relationships exist not only between dissimilar attractions but also between similar ones ‘Similar-thematic complementary’ refers to two similar product attractions that not offer an identical product and therefore complement rather than compete for the same market, e.g two wildlife attractions that exhibit different types of animals and are assumed to be compatible METHODOLOGY Two clusters have been studied with contrasting features in terms of scale, density and product similarity In line with previous studies (Jackson, 2006; Jackson and Murphy, 2006; Novelli et al., 2006); Doncˇic et al., 2007), information including material from tourism associations’ websites, tourism leaflets, advertisements, guidebooks and nine interviews with key informants provided the data for selecting the clusters and for delineating their boundaries The definition of a tourism cluster in this study is an array of linked industries and other entities in competition, which provide complementary products and services as a holistic tourism experience, such as accommodation, attractions and retail outlets (Wang and Fesenmaier, 2007) In order to facilitate the analysis of cluster effects, this study focuses on two relatively spatially discrete clusters within Cornwall, the Lizard and Newquay These research areas are broadly similar in size and are situated within Cornwall in the South West of England (Figure 1) For the purpose of this study, a business was considered to be a tourism attraction if it was a permanently established excursion Research Area border line Newquay Cornwall Lizard Figure The Newquay and Lizard research areas Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd Int J Tourism Res 12, 1–16 (2010) DOI: 10.1002/jtr destination that charged admission for the purpose of sightseeing or allowed access for entertainment, interest or education, rather than being primarily a retail outlet or a venue for theatrical, film or sporting performances; it had to be open to the public and to attract mostly tourists rather than local residents Public, private and voluntary sector attractions were included as long as they charged entrance fees and were Small and Medium Size Enterprises, understood as having between 10 and 499 employees (Shaw, 2004) All attractions in Newquay and the Lizard that matched these criteria were contacted with a view to inclusion in the study Exclusion of other attractions with fewer or more employees was essential to ensure broad similarity in business size categories between the studied attractions and to facilitate comparative analysis All attraction managers in the Lizard cluster (10) agreed to be interviewed and therefore constitute the entire ‘population’ of this area In the Newquay cluster, three attractions did not agree to be interviewed, resulting in a sample of 13 attractions (out of 16) In line with Waitt (2003), a form of ‘framework analysis’ was performed on the interviews with the nine key informants (tourism officers, councillors and policy makers) and the 23 attraction managers, which included the procedures of familiarisation, classification and indexation, and allowed the identification of different themes and their coding using NUD.IST (Non numerical Unstructured Data Indexing Searching and Theory-building) software (QSR International Pty Ltd Melbourne, Australia) All 32 interviews were undertaken face to face between February and October 2006 The minimum average travel distance and time by road between each pair of attractions is shorter in Newquay (20 minutes and 7.1 miles) than the Lizard (37 minutes, 9.33 miles) (based on The Automobile Association data 2008) The Newquay area contains more tourism attractions at a higher density and also has better accessibility to private and public transport than the Lizard Peninsula Newquay brands itself as the UK capital of water sports and surfing, and its main appeal includes beaches and rural and maritime landscapes (Restormel Borough Council, 2005) While most of its appeal lies in leisure attractions, Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd A Weidenfeld, R W Butler and A M Williams tailored for families and water-based recreation, the Lizard’s main attraction is a relatively undeveloped coast as well as a mix of attractions (heritage and garden attractions and a theme/fun park) There are greater product similarity and thematic complementarities among attractions in Newquay than the Lizard While the Newquay area (28% of all tourists in Cornwall) appears to be attracting more visitors than the Lizard, the latter draws from similar markets as well as more specialist holidaymakers, particularly heritage tourists in the off-peak seasons (Restormel Borough Council, 2001) The measurement of tourism attractiveness or appeal is problematic because these concepts have different meanings in different contexts, and their measurement is necessarily subjective (Husbands, 1983; Fennel, 1996; Bonfiace and Cooper, 2001) In line with Husbands (1983), tourism appeal and compatibility were measured in this study in terms of visitor numbers Given the lack of data, it was necessary to collect data on tourist numbers directly by using tourist questionnaire surveys Data were also collected on compatibility in terms of indications of number of tourists visiting more than one attraction during the same holiday trip (Hunt and Crompton, 2008) This form of measurement has considerable limitations: it assumes that tourist flows take place directly between points, whereas real movement may be more complicated with variable individual travel routes (McKercher and Lew, 2004) Sampling strategy and population sample The visit preferences of two groups of tourists were examined: one visiting the Lizard Peninsula, a tourism cluster with a lower level of clustering, and the other visiting Newquay, a tourism cluster with a higher level of clustering The study involved a convenience sample of 435 tourists: 219 at a farm attraction in Newquay and 216 tourists at an amusement park on the Lizard, both collected during the high season of July–August 2006 Although these two attractions are dissimilar in product and size (in terms of number of employees and annual visitors), they draw from a similar visitor market and they have a central location within their respective clusters The samples Int J Tourism Res 12, 1–16 (2010) DOI: 10.1002/jtr Clustering and Compatibility between Tourism Attractions were limited to British families with children who are car users, and these represent the largest market segment in the high season in Cornwall (Acumenia, 2005); this also facilitates comparison of the two clusters A random systematic sampling method, whereby every tourist on the day of the survey had an equal chance of being selected, was utilised (Brunt, 1997) Every respondent provided evidence for both his/her visit behaviour and that of those travelling with him/her Non-parametric chi-squared tests of association (Wheeler et al., 2004) were used to identify differences between visitor preferences to Newquay and the Lizard in terms of the appeal, location and product similarity of visited, or planned to be visited, attractions For the purpose of employing chi-squared tests of difference, data grouping and recoding resulted in five locational classifications of attractions visited or to be visited during their holidays: Lizard, Newquay, out of cluster, out of the South West and ‘none’ Similarly, the same methods resulted in the following thematic classifications of product types: amusement, wildlife, ‘other’ and ‘none’ However, this did not permit the use of statistical analysis to address the research question regarding product similarity due to an insufficient number of cases (violating the requirement that no more than 20% of the cells have expected values less than five) In line with Wheeler et al (2004), the risk of an incorrect rejection of the null hypothesis was determined at the 0.05 level, with a 5% chance of random, non-casual variation; in some cases, sufficient data allowed for testing for associations at the 1% (0.01) level of risk, thereby increasing the reliability of the test FINDINGS: PREFERENCES FOR VISITING TOURIST ATTRACTIONS Respondents named the attractions they had visited the day before the survey as well as those planned for the following day They also named their three most preferred visited attractions in Cornwall and the South West (Preferred attraction 1–3, Figures 2–4), which provided additional data about visiting preferences At the data analysis stage, each attraction mentioned by the respondents was classified according to its type of product and Figure Differences in the locations of attractions visited a day before the survey: tourists in Newquay and the Lizard Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd Int J Tourism Res 12, 1–16 (2010) DOI: 10.1002/jtr A Weidenfeld, R W Butler and A M Williams (Cornwall or Devon) Figure Differences in the locations of attractions planned to be visited: tourists in Newquay and the Lizard 100 90 80 70 60 50 40 Attractions Location Distribution of Attractions (%) 30 (Cornwall or Devon) Out of Cluster 20 Lizard Cluster 10 Newquay Cluster None Newquay Cluster Lizard Cluster Figure Differences in the locations of most favoured visited attractions: tourists in Newquay and the Lizard location, as indicated in the previous section Given that opinions expressed by tourists when interviewed at an attraction might depend on contingent and/or incidental conditions such as weather and shifting consumption preferences (e.g differences between early or late in the holiday), rather than on Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd underlying preferences, these findings need to be treated with caution There were various types of businesses and facilities that were perceived by respondents as attractions, but which did not fall into the category of ‘visitor attraction’ used in this study, e.g towns, villages, leisure activities, nightclubs, restaurants, pubs Int J Tourism Res 12, 1–16 (2010) DOI: 10.1002/jtr Clustering and Compatibility between Tourism Attractions and ‘the Beach’, and these were excluded from the analysis unless otherwise stated Relationship between spatial density and compatibility at the regional scale Visitor preferences reveal differences in the regional appeal of each cluster The assumption was that the more tourists were visiting other attractions within the same cluster, the greater the regional compatibility between attractions Cross tabulation and Pearson chisquared tests were employed to explore differences between the clusters To allow a sufficient number of cases in the statistical tests, all businesses mentioned by respondents as attractions were included including those that did not match the defined criteria of what constitutes a tourism attraction in this study (the ‘none’ category, Figures 2–4) Classifying them in the ‘none’ category (together with those not visiting any attractions) was deemed essential, since these businesses included many tourist facilities not charging admission as well as non-tourist facilities and places, e.g pubs, town centre, ‘playing golf’, etc A percentage of the respondents (36.6%) on the Lizard (Figure 2) visited an attraction located out of the Lizard on the day before the survey, including attractions in Newquay, while 28% of Newquay respondents visited an attraction away from Newquay (χ2 = 23.03; p < 0.001, Table 1) Similar differences between tourists’ preferences were found for the most preferred attractions (Table 1), as well as for attractions planned to be visited by the respondents on the following day (Figures and 4) For example, on the Lizard (Figure 4), almost Table Differences in the locations of visited tourist attractions between tourists in Newquay and the Lizard Attraction χ2 value d.f p Yesterday Preferred attraction Preferred attraction Tomorrow Preferred attraction 23.033 174.741 51.188 25.11 41.494 3 3 0.000* 0.000* 0.000* 0.000* 0.000* * Significant at 0.001 level d.f., degrees of freedom Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd half of the respondents (49%) stated that the most preferred visited attractions were located on the Lizard, while in Newquay, tourists stated that 57% of preferred attractions were located in Newquay (χ2 = 174.741; p < 0.001; Table 1) Interestingly, although more tourists interviewed in the Lizard than in Newquay could be expected to plan to visit other attractions in the Lizard, there was little difference between them (6.8% in Newquay, 8.3% on the Lizard, Figure 3, χ2 = 25.11; p < 0.001, Table 1) The relatively low proportion of Lizard tourists visiting or expecting to visit other attractions on the Lizard, compared to the situation in Newquay, may be explained by the fact that the latter has a larger number and higher density of attractions than the Lizard, particularly attractions such as amusement parks and wildlife attractions, that are popular among families with children These findings support the argument that, at the regional scale, spatial clustering is positively related to regional compatibility between attractions, since tourists were drawn to visit more attractions in the higher density Newquay cluster than in the lower density Lizard cluster This is hardly surprising, given that Newquay offers more attractions and accommodation and service facilities than the Lizard peninsula The fact that more tourists in the denser Newquay cluster preferred visiting intracluster attractions than those on the Lizard supports this relationship It should be acknowledged that product similarity could also have a substantial impact on this difference It is possible that the greater product similarity and thematic complementarity between attractions in Newquay than between attractions on the Lizard, was also an influential factor in increasing compatibility in Newquay, as it is discussed in the following section Relationship between spatial proximity and compatibility at the local cluster scale It was argued that spatial proximity between intra-cluster attractions at the local scale is positively related to the levels of compatibility between them There is some quantitative empirical evidence (although not statistically significant) showing that compatibility Int J Tourism Res 12, 1–16 (2010) DOI: 10.1002/jtr Islamic Tourism and Managing Tourism Development in Islamic Societies cases outlining tourism development and management in individual states as well as international comparisons would be useful, as would analyses of motivations of Muslim travellers and their expectations and experiences Impact assessments encompassing environmental and economic, as well as socio-cultural, matters, would yield valuable data to assist in sustainable management Other worthwhile topics include levels of religious intervention in tourism development within and across Islamic countries and views about the consequences, not least among destination residents, and tensions between Muslim and non-Muslim tourists sharing the same destination Such questions and those raised in this paper are important and the subject constitutes a rich field for continued research REFERENCES Alavi J, Yasin MM 2000 Iran’s tourism potential and market realities: an empirical approach to closing the gap Journal of Travel and Tourism Marketing 9(3): 1–20 Al-Hamarneh A 2008 Islamic Tourism: A Long Term Strategy of Tourist Industries in the Arab World after 9/11 Centre for Research on the Arab World Available at http://www.ceraw.uni-mainz.de (accessed 31 October 2008) Arab News 2008a SCT has plans to set up tourism promotion centres Arab News 23 May: http:// www.arabnews.com (accessed 30 November 2008) Arab News 2008b UNWTO invites Saudi Arabia to run its Capacity Building Programme Initiative Arab News 17 April: http://www.arabnews com (accessed 30 November 2008) Armstrong K 2002 Islam Random House: New York Asia Travel Tips.com 2008 Tourism in Saudi Arabia to move forward gradually Asia Travel Tips.com Available at http://www.asiatraveltips.com (accessed December 2008) Aziz H 1995 Understanding attacks on tourists in Egypt Tourism Management 16(2): 91–95 Aziz H 2001 The journey: an overview of tourism and travel in the Arab/Islamic context In Tourism and the Less Developed World: Issues and Case Studies, Harrison D (ed) CABI Publishing: New York; 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10.1002/jtr.740 A Tourism Research Agenda for Portugal João Albino Silva1, Paulo M.M Rodrigues1,3,*, Júlio Mendes1 and Luís N Pereira2 Faculty of Economics, University of Algarve, Faro, Portugal School of Management, Hospitality and Tourism, University of Algarve, Faro, Portugal CASEE — Centre for Advanced Studies in Economics and Econometrics, Faro, Portugal ABSTRACT The need to direct research towards the tourism industry is related to the increasingly competitive environment it finds itself in, especially in terms of services rendered, having grown more complex in the features and critique that comprise the tourist experience, and as economic and social agents become more selective regarding both demand and supply Possessing information and the proper understanding of the real needs of information users and those responsible for public and private decision-making processes at the action and intervention levels becomes a fundamental issue for sustainable tourism growth and its statement for international competitiveness This paper proposes a tourism research agenda for Portugal in order to guide future developments towards the industry’s needs Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd Received 18 May 2009; Accepted 31 May 2009 Keywords: research agenda; tourism; ranking; information; Portugal INTRODUCTION T ourism is widely recognised as a sector of strategic importance According to the World Tourism Organisation, most scenarios of tourism development worldwide point to growth targets well above the forecasts of other key economic industries *Correspondence to: P M M Rodrigues, Faculty of Economics, University of Algarve, Campus de Gambelas, Faro 8005-139, Portugal Email: prodrig@ualg.pt However, tourism worldwide is facing a growing number of challenges in developing, managing and marketing their products in a competitive, complex and rapidly changing environment The generation and use of knowledge to feed innovation and product development is crucial for the success of both tourism destinations and enterprises (Davidson and Voss, 2002; Hjalager, 2002; Cooper, 2006) In this context, it is important to find methodologies and forms of articulation between knowledge promoters and users, so that the whole chain value of the tourism sector may benefit from the results obtained This is important to create strategic competitive advantages particularly for a sector, dominated by smalland medium-sized enterprises, fragmented across a variety of activities and with some problems in terms of lack of management expertise (Barney, 1991; Micela et al., 2002; Pechlaner et al., 2002; Heath, 2003) The concept and pursuance of a tourism research agenda is an issue that developed in the 1990s through studies performed in countries such as Australia, Canada and New Zealand Australia’s Office of National Tourism published its first discussion report in 1977, Towards a National Plan, and later a report entitled, Tourism: Getting it Right for the Millennium (1997), where thematic priority areas of research were identified The importance of a research agenda at the regional level was tackled in 2000 by the Centre for Regional Tourism Research in Australia which has since looked to shape its research to the region’s specificities In 1994, the Canadian Tourism Commission formed a research group who developed a study aimed at identifying the industry’s key research needs through stakeholder and literature review enquiry (Smith, 1999) Potential thematic areas of research were later put before industry leaders through questionnaires As a result of growing concerns regarding the basis for future Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd Tourism Agenda for Portugal planning, a workshop, part of the New Zealand Tourism Association conference in 1996, identified needs from research findings founded on supplier and consumer views In 1998, the same association published the report, Tourism Research Strategy, which identified a combination of key thematic areas of research to be developed in the country (Ryan and Simmons, 1999) As highlighted by King (2001) and Morrison (2002) a research agenda is based on a rising awareness from both agencies that promote and carry out research as well as those it addresses So, it becomes important to articulate and promote the combined views of research needs that should support the industry’s direction in the medium and long run In addition, besides constituting an important support basis to developing studies, the research agenda allows for the articulation between research work and the needs of the recipient, ancillary to developing new and priority research issues Given the economic importance of the tourism sector for Portugal, Silva (2004, p 13) considers that it ‘is urgent to proceed with an inventory of Portuguese tourism research, where, besides assessing its scientific and multidisciplinary nature, the information is made available to all those interested in the study and understanding of the industry’ According to Silva, the agenda’s project should be based ‘on a greater perception of the needs of scientific awareness of businesses and regions, to ensure a process that articulates common concerns and the capacity to develop collective solutions based on responsible partnership principles’ The main objective of this paper is to contribute to an assessment of current research in tourism in Portugal and to introduce new constituent elements of a tourism research agenda for Portugal, in other words, (1) to develop an inventory of the state of tourism research that identifies global research needs; and (2) to determine gaps or discrepancies between informational needs and research findings in order to identify ties between researchers and research beneficiaries Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd 91 This paper is organised as follows: section presents the data and methodology used in this study, section discusses the findings of our analysis and section draws the main conclusions of the paper DATA AND METHODOLOGY This study was performed in 2005/2006 for Portugal and builds on two complementary stages In the first stage, data on research published in Portugal were collected and treated, entailing an enquiry of completed MSc dissertations and PhD theses from universities and research centres during recent years In the second stage, an exploratory research was conducted in order to isolate a list of key thematic areas A focus group was used as a qualitative research procedure From the focus group, five thematic areas of research were established, which were subsequently submitted for a review by a panel of experts The five thematic areas of research which comprise the thematic research areas of the agenda are: business, tourism destinations, markets, sustainability, and education and training Once the agenda’s thematic areas of research were identified, a questionnaire was set up which served as a basis for data collection of opinions of a representative sample of tourismrelated entities and agencies Two analytical dimensions, among others, were considered: (1) the degree of importance of thematic areas of research; and (2) the ranking of research priorities The questionnaire was fundamentally concerned with identifying: (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) areas of priority research; and research entities, by research area; preferred channels for research enquiry; levels of research use; motives for use and non-use of research data; (6) degree of satisfaction on available research; and (7) suggested improvements The research agenda’s questionnaire for tourism in Portugal comprised three parts The first part, consisting of six questions, looked to Int J Tourism Res 12, 90–101 (2010) DOI: 10.1002/jtr 92 characterise respondents and agencies The second part asked respondents to rank the five thematic areas of research found in the exploratory research Each topic was assessed on a five-point Likert-type scale (which is an ordinal scale), such that = not important, = not very important, = important, = very important, = extremely important This part of the questionnaire also asked respondents to rank thematic areas of research (given the same Likert-type scale) and to include thematic areas not found on the list provided The last part of the questionnaire comprehended the way the research agenda was implemented for tourism in Portugal The study’s target population considered for the tourism research agenda for Portugal was based on tourism regions, hotel groups, travel and tourism agencies, tour operators, city councils, transport operators, agencies and other entities The study’s exhaustive research included surveying all regional tourism agencies and other tourism-associated entities and businesses belonging to the target population As such, a judgement sample of hotel groups, travel and tourism agencies, tour operators, city councils, transport operators and other agencies, was selected From a total of 153 questionnaires carried out by post during May and June 2005, 62 were completed and later validated, corresponding to a response rate of 40.5% The statistical treatment of the data was performed using the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) version 14.0 To examine the characteristics of organisations and their representatives, the degree of importance of thematic areas of research and ranking of research priorities, descriptive statistics were computed Significant differences in terms of assigned research topic and subtopic importance between the various types of organisations and representatives was tested using the Kruskal–Wallis H test or chi-square test A 10% significance level was considered A cluster analysis was also used to identify homogeneous groups of organisations’ representatives in terms of assigned importance to each thematic area of research in tourism A two-stage cluster approach was adopted as suggested by Punj and Stewart (1983) The variables used in the cluster analysis were the 29 sub-thematic Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd J A Silva et al variables of research in tourism To address the issue of ordinal scale of the variables, we used a modification to the calculation of the corresponding dissimilarity matrix suggested by Kaufman and Rousseeux (1990) For example, for an ordinal variable with five ordered categories (1 = not important to = extremely important), we transformed the rank rik, rik = {1, 2, , 5}, to the unit interval by calculating Zik = (rik − 1)/(5 − 1) After the transformation of the variables, first, we applied the hierarchical agglomerative cluster analysis using the Ward’s minimum variance, the furthest neighbour and the between groups as agglomeration methods and the squared Euclidean distance as distance measure The decision of the number of clusters to choose was based on the fusion coefficients (distances at which clusters are joined at each successive step), on the cut-off of the dendrogram (tree graph of the results of a hierarchical procedure) and on R2 measures Second, a partitional k-means clustering was used to obtain a better classification, in which each point was assigned to the centroids of the Ward’s method The use of all these methods enabled us to validate the cluster analysis Non-parametric tests (Kruskal–Wallis H test and Mann–Whitney U test) were also used to validate the cluster analysis Although the number of cases with missing data was small, when considering the 29 sub-thematic variables used in the cluster analysis, we decided to impute the non-responses, to reduce bias in the classification of the organisations’ representatives FINDINGS OF THE STUDY The evolution of tourism research in Portugal The number of theses and dissertations completed over the last two decades on tourism is used as a proxy to analyse the evolution of tourism research in Portugal Figure presents the evolution of the number of completed theses and dissertations per year This figure presents an increasing trend revealing the growing importance of tourism research Besides the number of theses and dissertations completed over the two decades under consideration, this analysis also provides us Int J Tourism Res 12, 90–101 (2010) DOI: 10.1002/jtr Tourism Agenda for Portugal 93 30 25 20 15 10 1983 1986 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 Master dissertations Phd thesis Total Figure Completed PhD theses and MSc dissertations in Portugal (1983–2004) with information regarding the areas of research that these theses and dissertations have focused on This will be interesting to contrast with the research need put forward by the organisations surveyed From a total of 217 research studies carried out by Portuguese authors, 189 represented MSc dissertations and 28 represented PhD theses Interestingly, between 2000 and 2004, 47.6% of the total MSc dissertations and 65.5% of the total PhD theses were concluded.1 Table presents a classification of the theses and dissertations into thematic areas of research Its analysis, however, requires careful consideration as classification relied only on the title names provided Nearly 30% of the PhD theses and MSc dissertations were developed in the research areas of ‘tourism Approximately 94% of these studies took place in Portugal, 5% in the UK and 1% in Spain and France Regarding the studies in Portugal, the University of Algarve is the one where the majority of theses in tourism were concluded (14.3%) In general, the Instituto Superior de Ciências Trabalho e da Empresa (ISCTE), the Technical University of Lisbon and Universidade Nova de Lisboa represent each more than 10.0% of research studies in tourism Together they gather more than half of the research in tourism At the MSc dissertations level, the highest proportion was observed in ISCTE (14.3%), while at the PhD level, the highest proportion was developed at the University of Algarve (17.9%) Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd destinations’ and ‘markets’ Table shows that 22.1% of the overall theses that were presented focused on ‘sustainability’ and 16.6% on ‘businesses’ Only one thesis focused on ‘teaching and training’ It is important to note that the distribution of MSc dissertations by research area is similar to the overall distribution of PhD theses The majority of PhD theses were developed in the areas of ‘tourism destinations’ (35.7%) and ‘sustainability’ (28.6%) Upon concluding this data processing stage, the study turned to collecting the views and opinions of a representative sample of tourism industry agents Identification of thematic areas of research The characteristics of the organisations analysed were as follows: 55% were public, 31.7% were private and the remaining 13.3% belonged to another type (syndicate, nonprofit, public–private, etc.) In terms of classification, 30.6% were national, regional or local, 22.6% were city councils, 11.4% were business associations, 9.7% were tourist accommodation, 4.8% were travel agencies or tour operators, 4.8% were trade unions and 16.1% were other organisations Sixty-two representative organisations responded to the questionnaire about the Int J Tourism Res 12, 90–101 (2010) DOI: 10.1002/jtr 94 J A Silva et al Table Distribution of theses undertaken in the area of tourism according to thematic areas of research MSc and PhD theses MSc dissertations PhD theses Thematic areas of research No % No % No % Businesses Tourism destinations Markets Sustainability Teaching and training Total 36 66 66 48 217 16.6% 30.4% 30.4% 22.1% 0.5% 100.0% 32 56 60 40 189 16.9% 29.6% 31.8% 21.2% 0.5% 100.0% 10 28 14.3% 35.7% 21.4% 28.6% 0.0% 100.0% Table Degree of importance of thematic areas of research for tourism in Portugal Thematic areas of research Businesses Tourism destinations Markets Sustainability Education and training Not important Not very important Important Very important Extremely important 1.6% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% 4.8% 1.6% 0.0% 3.2% 3.2% 27.4% 11.3% 4.8% 8.1% 11.3% 46.8% 33.9% 35.5% 32.3% 35.5% 19.4% 53.2% 59.7% 56.5% 50.0% Table Ranking of thematic areas of research for tourism in Portugal Type of organisation Thematic areas of research Private Public Other Overall 4.5 4.3 4.4 4.5 3.6 4.5 4.5 4.3 4.1 3.7 4.8 4.4 4.5 4.8 4.0 4.6 4.4 4.4 4.3 3.8 Markets Sustainability Tourism destinations Education and training Businesses tourism research agenda for Portugal The vast majority of the respondents holds a higher education qualification (83.3%); 69.2% hold a managing position (president, organisation leaders, secretary-general, coordinators, among others) and 30.8% being senior civil servants The organisations’ representatives were asked about the degree of importance they would give to the five thematic areas of research in tourism and the respective subthemes Table shows that ‘markets’ is the only area which gathers consensus between all individuals: all of them valued it as important (4.8%), very important (35.5%) or extremely important (59.7%) On the other hand, ‘businesses’ was considered by some individuals as not important (1.6%) or not very important Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd (4.8%) and less than a half valued it as extremely important (19.4%) All the other areas of research were considered very or extremely important for more than 85% of the organisations’ representatives The tourism research areas ranking was established based on the mean of the degree of importance of those thematic areas, bearing in mind that the organisations’ representatives gave greater importance to the tourism research areas that they considered as priorities This procedure was also used to compute the tourism research sub-areas ranking Table shows the ranking of tourism research areas according to themes based on importance given by organisations We observe that all organisations are consistent in the degree of Int J Tourism Res 12, 90–101 (2010) DOI: 10.1002/jtr Tourism Agenda for Portugal 95 40% 40% 30% 30% 20% 20% 10% 10% 0% Markets Sustainability Tourism Destinations Research needs Education and Training Businesses 0% Research results Figure Relative distribution of needs and results of research in tourism according to thematic areas of research importance assigned to the thematic areas of research The first four places in the ranking are differentiated only by 0.2 units, following the subsequent order: ‘markets’, ‘sustainability’, ‘tourism destinations’ and ‘education and training’ A high or extreme degree of importance is given to these four tourism research areas Despite all organisations assigning high importance to the thematic area of research ‘education and training’, public organisations regard this as significantly less important (H = 6.454; d.f = 2; p = 0.040)2 than other types of organisations In all other thematic areas of research, no significant differences between private and public organisations were observed Further, respondents of at least 50 years of age assign less importance to the thematic areas of ‘sustainability’ (H = 5.646; d.f = 2; p = 0.059) and ‘markets’ (H = 5.869; d.f = 2; p = 0.053) than the remaining respondents In Figure 2, we observe the relative distribution of needs and research findings in tourism according to thematic areas of research Although we cannot stipulate that the ‘quantity’ of necessary results satisfy the global information needs of recipients, we can observe that there are imbalances in Figure These imbalances could be surplus or deficit in research results in relation to the research needs There is a surplus in research results Observed value of the H test statistic of Kruskal–Wallis, number of degrees of freedom (d.f.) and significance probability (p value) Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd when the bullets are placed above the top of the bars and there is a deficit otherwise On the one hand, a relative shortfall in terms of ‘education and training’ is observed, according to the given importance assigned to the thematic area by the panel of experts On the other hand, there appears to be a surplus in relation to the results for ‘markets’ and ‘tourist destinations’ In view of these results, tourism research efforts may be directed towards the thematic areas of ‘markets’, ‘tourist destinations’ and ‘education and training’ However, this does not suggest that the research findings produced for the first two thematic research areas are sufficient to satisfy the information needs but that these thematic areas offer, in comparative terms, more results As can be observed from Table 4, subthematic areas of research considered more important by surveyed organisations in terms of ‘markets’ were ‘tourist satisfaction’ and ‘new product development’ Private agencies allocate significantly greater importance to ‘new product development’ than other organisations (H = 4.642; d.f = 2; p = 0.098) Other sub-thematic areas identified by organisations, not listed in the questionnaire and regarded as important, were ‘outside communication channels’, ‘emerging markets’ and ‘market accessibility (air transport)’ Regarding the thematic area of ‘sustainability’, the sub-thematic area considered more important for organisations was ‘environmental management systems’ Larger organisations (of at least 250 employees) assigned Int J Tourism Res 12, 90–101 (2010) DOI: 10.1002/jtr 96 J A Silva et al Table Ranking of sub-thematic areas of research for tourism in Portugal Thematic and sub-thematic areas of research Mean Markets 1.1 Tourist satisfaction 1.2 New product development 1.3 Competitive positioning 1.4 Segmentation and targeting 1.5 Brand management 4.6 4.8 4.5 4.3 4.3 4.1 Sustainability 2.1 Environmental management systems 2.2 Economic impacts 2.3 Cultural resources management 2.4 Attitudes and perceptions of the resident population 2.5 Governance/integrated local management 4.4 4.5 4.3 4.3 4.3 4.3 Tourist destinations 3.1 Tourist destination image/brand 3.2 Tourist destination planning 3.3 Tourism destination marketing 3.4 Tourism resource enrichment 3.5 Tourism destination management 3.6 Public–private partnerships 4.4 4.7 4.6 4.5 4.5 4.4 4.2 Education and training 4.1 Training needs 4.2 Quality programme assessment 4.3 Education and training methods 4.4 Training programmes 4.3 4.4 4.4 4.2 4.1 Businesses 5.1 Quality service 5.2 Employee motivation and satisfaction 5.3 Marketing 5.4 Leadership and entrepreneurship 5.5 Product and service innovation 5.6 Human resource management 5.7 Organisational performance 5.8 Benchmarking 5.9 Project evaluation 3.8 4.7 4.2 4.2 4.1 4.5 4.0 4.0 3.9 3.7 Note: Average scores are rated on a Likert scale ranging from = not important to = extremely important significantly lower importance to ‘attitudes and perceptions of the resident population’ (H = 5.550; d.f = 2; p = 0.062) Other sub-thematic areas specified by organisations were ‘certifiCopyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd cation’, ‘social impacts’, ‘integrated development’ and ‘social responsibility’ The ‘tourist destination image/brand’ and the ‘tourist destination planning’ are the thematic areas that are in the upper rank in terms of sub-thematic areas of research for tourism in terms of ‘tourism destinations’ Also, ‘destination benchmarking’, ‘tourist destination performance’ and ‘hospitality’ are other important areas identified by organisations, but not listed in the questionnaire At the ‘education and training’ level of subthematic areas, ‘training needs’ and ‘quality programme assessment’ were considered most important Other sub-thematic areas identified by organisations were ‘certification’, ‘overall skills’ and ‘organisational networking’ Finally, the sub-thematic areas of research considered most important were ‘businesses’ and ‘quality service’ At this level, organisations added sub-thematic areas: ‘productivity’, ‘investment’ and ‘internationalisation strategies’ In order to understand the relative value that each thematic research area has on tourism in Portugal, a global ranking of sub-thematic areas was developed The ranking was obtained weighting the importance given to each subthematic research area by the relative degree of importance of the respective thematic research area The overall scores of sub-themes can be found in Table Two sub-themes at the ‘market’ level, two at the ‘tourist destination’ level and one at the ‘sustainability’ level occupy the first five positions From Table 5, we observe that the ranking of sub-themes given by public organisations is equal to the overall ranking The same, however, cannot be said about private organisations who give greater priority to ‘tourist satisfaction’ and ‘new product development’ The results further reveal that the disposition of organisations to take part in the tourism research agenda did not depend on the type (χ2 = 0.445; d.f = 2; p = 0.801)3, classification (χ2 = 2.350; d.f = 4; p = 0.672) and dimension of organisation (χ2 = 0.749; d.f = 2; p = 0.688) It should be noted, however, that 96.8% of Observed value of the chi-square test statistic, number of degrees of freedom and significance probability (p value) Int J Tourism Res 12, 90–101 (2010) DOI: 10.1002/jtr Tourism Agenda for Portugal 97 Table Overall ranking of sub-thematic areas of research for tourism in Portugal Ranking Thematic areas of research Markets Tourism destinations Markets Tourism destinations Sustainability Tourism destinations Tourism destinations Markets Markets Tourism destinations Education and Training Education and training Sustainability Sustainability Sustainability Sustainability Markets Tourism destinations Education and training Education and training Businesses Businesses Businesses Businesses Businesses Businesses Businesses Businesses Businesses Type of organisation Sub-thematic areas of research Tourist satisfaction Tourism destination image/brand New product development Tourist destination planning Environmental management systems Tourism destination marketing Tourism resource enrichment Competitive positioning Segmentation and targeting Tourism destination management Training needs Quality programme assessment Economic impacts Resident population attitudes and perceptions Cultural resource management Governance/integrated local management Brand management Public–private partnerships Education and training methods Training programmes Quality service Product and service innovation Marketing Employee motivation and satisfaction Human resource management Leadership and entrepreneurship Organisational performance Benchmarking Project evaluation organisations believe that the implementation of the tourism research agenda is the responsibility of a public–private partnerships and 90% of which show willingness to participate in the initiative Surveyed organisations suggested a number of ways in which implementation could be carried out, namely through: availability of information, participation in workshops (knowledge and experience sharing with opportunities for suggestions and recommendations, discussion of ideas and studies), assigning human resources for such research, awareness joint actions schemes with economic agents and associations and other action lines Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd Private Public Other Overall 1st 3rd 2nd 4th 5th 7th 8th 6th 9th 10th 15th 12th 11th 14th 16th 13th 17th 18th 19th 20th 21st 22nd 24th 23rd 26th 25th 28th 27th 29th 1st 2nd 3rd 4th 5th 6th 7th 8th 9th 10th 11th 12th 13th 14th 15th 16th 17th 18th 19th 20th 21st 22nd 23rd 24th 25th 26th 27th 28th 29th 1st 2nd 3rd 4th 5th 6th 7th 8th 9th 10th 16th 15th 11th 13th 14th 12th 17th 18th 19th 20th 21st 22nd 23rd 24th 26th 25th 27th 28th 29th 1st 2nd 3rd 4th 5th 6th 7th 8th 9th 10th 11th 12th 13th 14th 15th 16th 17th 18th 19th 20th 21st 22nd 23rd 24th 25th 26th 27th 28th 29th After identifying the overall ranking of sub-thematic areas of research for tourism in Portugal, it is relevant to identify homogeneous groups of organisations’ representatives in terms of assigned importance to each thematic area of research To achieve this aim, a twostage cluster analysis was performed using the 29 sub-thematic variables of research in tourism However, there were some nonresponses in the data set The item nonresponse is the missing-data pattern in the 29 sub-thematic variables used in the cluster analysis By dividing respondents into those with and without missing data, the importance given to the research themes in tourism does not differ significantly between those two Int J Tourism Res 12, 90–101 (2010) DOI: 10.1002/jtr 98 J A Silva et al Table Relationship between groups with and without missing data, and degree of importance of thematic areas of research for tourism Mann–Whitney’s test U p Businesses Tourism destinations Markets Sustainability Education and training 176.000 0.694 172.000 0.612 162.000 0.431 169.000 0.556 166.000 0.517 Table Average values and Kruskall–Wallis test for each thematic area Average values Thematic areas of research Businesses Tourism destinations Markets Sustainability Education and training Kruskall–Wallis test Group (n = 35) Group (n = 19) Group (n = 8) H p 4.0 4.7 4.8 4.7 4.6 3.8 3.9 4.2 4.4 4.3 2.9 4.3 4.1 3.4 3.1 7.070 13.885 20.933 16.610 15.961 0.029* 0.001** 0.000*** 0.000*** 0.000*** *** p < 0.001; ** p < 0.01; * p < 0.05 groups (see Table 6) In this way, we assume that the distribution of the missing-data mechanism depends neither on the observed, nor on the missing values, that is, the data are missing completely at random We used a nearestneighbour approach to impute the missing data The squared Euclidean distance was used as a distance measure between the cases, as a way to select the donor by minimising a specified distance (Lessler and Kalsbeek, 1992) The Ward’s method, as well as the furthest neighbour and the between groups methods, pointed to three clusters of homogeneous organisations’ representatives in terms of assigned importance to each thematic area of research in tourism Using Ward’s method, 72.5% of overall variability was withheld for the three clusters (R2 = 0.725) The solution of the k-means cluster analysis was similar, but more consistent The validation of the cluster analysis and the statistical data for the characterisation of the groups are shown in Table We decided to use the predictive validity, based on the five thematic areas of research (not used to perform the clusters), because the main goal of the cluster analysis is to identify groups of organisations representatives in terms of assigned importance to each thematic area of research The outcomes of the Kruskall– Wallis test indicate that five thematic areas of Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd research in tourism exhibit statistically significant differences among the three groups A post hoc analysis, through the Mann– Whitney U test for two independent samples, was conducted which sought to discover the pairs of groups showing significant differences in the rank of importance of five thematic tourism research areas (Table 8) The multiple comparisons were performed through the three times repetition of this test The level of significance from which the existence of significant differences can be established was 0.033 for this case The importance of the thematic area ‘businesses’ was rated higher by group than by group Group gave higher importance than group to ‘tourism destinations’ and ‘markets’ Still taking into account the importance of ‘markets’ as a thematic area of research, group differed significantly from group because the first group gave significantly higher ratings For the thematic areas of ‘sustainability’ and ‘education and training’, test results showed a significant difference, in terms of importance, between group and the other two groups because the former gave lower ratings After validating the cluster solution, groups are characterised as follows (see Table 9) The knowledge about what can lead to a move from one group to another can be used in Int J Tourism Res 12, 90–101 (2010) DOI: 10.1002/jtr Tourism Agenda for Portugal 99 Table Group differences in rating importance of thematic areas of research for tourism by using Mann– Whitney U test Group difference Thematic areas of research Group versus group Group versus group Group versus group 294,000 147,000** 139,500** 280,500 244,000 61,500* 102,000 55,500** 22,000** 30,500** 41,000 58,000 71,000 28,500* 28,000* Businesses Tourism destinations Markets Sustainability Education and training ** p < 0.001; * p < 0.033 Table Organisations characteristics Group (n = 35) Group (n = 19) Type of organisation (%) Private Public Other 36.4% 48.5% 15.2% 26.3% 68.4% 5.3% 25.0% 50.0% 25.0% Classification of organisation (%) Tourist accommodation Syndicates Business agencies City councils Travel and tourism agencies or tour operators National organisations of tourism Regional or local organisations of tourism Other organisations 14.3% 5.7% 11.4% 20.0% 0.0% 2.9% 25.7% 20.0% 0.0% 5.3% 15.8% 21.1% 10.5% 0.0% 36.8% 10.5% 12.5% 0.0% 0.0% 37.5% 12.5% 0.0% 25.0% 12.5% Dimension of organisation (%) Less than 50 employees 51–249 employees At least 250 employees 48.6% 17.1% 34.3% 42.1% 26.3% 31.6% 37.5% 0.0% 62.5% 0.0% 0.0% 100.0% 0.0% 0.0% 100.0% Willingness to participate in the tourism research agenda implementation (%) Yes 91.2% 93.8% No 8.8% 6.3% 85.7% 14.3% Characteristics Responsibility of the tourism research agenda implementation (%) Public 2.9% Private 2.9% Public–private partnerships 94.3% tourism policy to easily implement the research agenda Group is the largest group (56.5% of the total) and placed the highest importance on all thematic areas of research in tourism In this group, it is possible to find the greatest number of private organisations, though 48.5% of the organisations were found to be public The majority of the tourist accommodation and all Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd Group (n = 8) of the national tourist organisations belong to group This group has a slightly higher proportion of small organisations and it is the only one in which there is no unanimity in what regards the responsibility of the implementation of the tourism research agenda To group belong 30.6% of the total organisations’ representatives, in which the lowest Int J Tourism Res 12, 90–101 (2010) DOI: 10.1002/jtr 100 importance to the research in tourism is assigned to ‘businesses’ Once again, the majority of organisations are public, but there are 26.3% of private organisations The organisations are mainly regional and local tourist organisations or city councils, and all of them sustain that the tourism research agenda implementation should be settled upon public– private partnerships Only 6.3% of them are not willing to participate in the implementation of the tourism research agenda Compared with the two other groups, group is the smallest one (12.9% of the total) and gave the lowest score in importance to ‘businesses’, ‘markets’, ‘sustainability’ and ‘education and training’ Half of the organisations’ representatives of group work for a public organisation The rest of them work for a private organisation (25%) or for other types of organisations (25%) This group is mainly formed by representatives of city councils with more than 250 employees All of them also consider that the responsibility of the implementation of the tourism research agenda should be settled upon public–private partnerships Compared with the others, this group reveals a smaller willingness to participate in the implementation of the tourism research agenda J A Silva et al guese tourism as well as the acceptance in some universities of the importance of tourism as a research field Second, the cross point between needs evidenced by public and private sectors and developing research by universities reveals a significant gap, reinforcing the importance of dialogue between the various agents and the use of scientific knowledge for Portuguese tourism Although this study is a university-driven initiative, it looks to draw tourism businesses and public agencies together In fact, it is necessary to overcome communication barriers in order to foster joint collaborative work between research institutions, businesses and public agencies The use of this type of information is, from a researcher’s point of view, directed essentially at organisations, responsible in coordinating this network and should be able to objectively define actions in terms of sector knowledge development, more so than universities These research findings, together with the survey of work that has been developed, will ultimately cause important considerations in terms of what can and should be done for integrated knowledge management in the tourism sector in Portugal ACKNOWLEDGEMENT CONCLUSION This paper represents the first attempt to establish a research agenda for tourism in Portugal In the development of this study, we identified the needs and ranked priorities for research in accordance with the expectations of its users The listing of research that has been carried out in this field and the scenarios of what may be developed in the future correspond to an important moment of the stakeholders’ reflection period and should contribute to consolidate a model of integrated knowledge management in the tourism sector in Portugal From our study, the following aspects can be highlighted First, an accentuated growth of research is observed, more notably during the last years, constituting a definitive sign of growing interest by universities in understanding and drawing from the realities of PortuCopyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd The second author thanks the Portuguese Science and Technology Foundation for financial support through the POCTI programme and FEDER (grants refs POCTI/ECO/ 49266/2002 and PTDC/ECO/64595/2006) REFERENCES Barney J 1991 Firm resources and competitive advantage 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