Real and virtual relationships in tourism digital ecosystems

Tourism has been experiencing very relevant changes since when information and communication technologies, in all their forms, have started to pervade the industry and the market. In the last decade, a new concept gained the attention of both researchers and practitioners, that of digital business ecosystem. It can be considered as a technological infrastructure aimed at creating a digital environment to support and enhance networking between enterprises and stakeholders operating within a sector. Aim of this paper is to assess the extent to which the technological connection has affected the structural configuration of the tourism system and, specifically, of tourism destinations. The present study argues that two components can be considered when assessing the relationships among stakeholders within a tourism destination: a real and a virtual one. Further it shows how these two components are structurally strongly coupled and co-evolve forming a single system. © 2013 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.