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Tourism Management 81 (2020) 104139
Available online 22 June 2020
0261-5177/Crown Copyright © 2020 Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
The lone digital tourism entrepreneur: Knowledge acquisition and
collaborative transfer
Philip Alford
a
,
*
, Rosalind Jones
b
a
Southampton Business School, University of Southampton, Building 2, Highfield Campus Southampton, SO17 1BJ, United Kingdom
b
Birmingham Business School, University House, University of Birmingham, Edgbaston, Birmingham, B15 2TY, United Kingdom
ARTICLE INFO
Keywords:
Digital marketing
Entrepreneur
Small tourism businesses
Knowledge acquisition
Mode 1 and Mode 2 knowledge
Technology-in-practice
ABSTRACT
This paper addresses calls for more detailed studies of small tourism enterprises. Researchers report a lack of
adoption and ineffective utilisation of digital technologies in smaller tourism businesses. The study focuses on
two university-facilitated projects of digital marketing adoption and utilisation by 53 small and medium sized
tourism businesses in the South of England. The framework for this study was driven by Modes of Knowledge
Transference and Technology-In-Practice. The findings describe peer-to-peer knowledge acquisition and sharing
that take place in university-led projects and suggests that a combination of Mode 1 and Mode 2 knowledge helps
entrepreneurs to advance their digital marketing knowledge. Peer-to-peer clusters are an effective means of
placing digital marketing knowledge and technology in the context of small and medium tourism business
practice. The paper provides implications for destination marketing organisations and policymakers and sug-
gestions for future avenues of research are offered.
1. Introduction
This paper contributes to the small business tourism literature by
examining digital marketing (DM) knowledge acquisition in small and
medium sized tourism businesses (SMTBs). DM is defined as “an adap-
tive, technology-enabled process by which firms collaborate with cus-
tomers and partners to jointly create, communicate, deliver, and sustain
value for all stakeholders” (Kannan & Li, 2017, p. 23). The DM toolbox
contains an increasing range of free and paid technologies and platforms
which SMTBs can use to reach and engage with customers, including
email, online reviews, Google and Bing ads, social media ads, content
marketing, and automated marketing, as well as third-party platforms
such as destination marketing organization (DMO) websites, Booking.
com and Airbnb. However, a recent report from the UK Government
(HM Government, 2019, p.10) observes that the 200,000 small and
medium sized tourism enterprises in the UK require support in “helping
them to go digital”, are lacking a support network, and are essentially
suffering from the lone-wolf syndrome, being isolated and operating
alone. The pay-per-click Google Ads platform is a salient example of the
help that SMTBs need, being prohibitively expensive for smaller firms to
fully utilize and its benefits hard to assess, requiring digital analytic
capabilities often out of reach for small business owners unfamiliar with
digital advances in marketing. Support for SMTBs is essential given that
the tourism sector is increasingly reliant on web-based technologies for
regional competitiveness (Alford, 2018), in large part driven by con-
sumer adoption of technology. It is estimated that 85 per cent of inbound
visitors to the UK book their travel online (HM Government, 2019).
“Tourism, like so many other industries, is experiencing a wave of digital
disruption that threatens to restructure some traditional business models
and make others obsolete” (OECD, 2017, p. 7).
Levels of adoption and use of DM by tourism entrepreneurs remains
stubbornly low (Alford & Page, 2015), particularly for rural tourism
micro firms (Kelliher, Reinl, Johnson, & Joppe, 2018). This is despite the
obvious benefits of understanding customers better, developing closer
customer relationships, and building upon small firm flexibility and
informality (Sigala, Airey, Jones, & Lockwood, 2004; Simmons, Arm-
strong, & Durkin, 2011). Burgess, Sellitto, Cox, and Buultjens (2015, p.
433) make the stark observation that “the smaller the business is, the
lower the adoption rate tends to be”. This phenomenon is not limited to
the tourism sector but is also common in other sectors where a general
lack of adoption of e-business and e-marketing technologies and asso-
ciated challenges are reported (Fillis, Johansson, & Wagner, 2003; Gil-
more, Gallagher, & Henry, 2007; Harrigan, Ramsey, & Ibbotson, 2011).
Researchers acknowledge that information and communication
* Corresponding author.
E-mail address: P.R.Alford@soton.ac.uk (P. Alford).
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Tourism Management
journal homepage: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/tourman
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tourman.2020.104139
Received 10 August 2019; Received in revised form 5 March 2020; Accepted 2 May 2020
Tourism Management 81 (2020) 104139
2
technology research in SMEs is commonplace, but there is a gap in
knowledge concerning micro enterprise entrepreneurs and adoption
(Bharati & Chaudhury, 2006; Fink & Disterer, 2006; Jones, Simmons,
Packham, Beynon-Davies, & Pickernell, 2014). On first inspection this is
somewhat surprising given the rate of technological innovation and the
“ubiquity of non-proprietary technologies and open-access platforms”
that offer small firms comparatively low-cost opportunities to adopt DM
(Morgan-Thomas, 2016, p. 1122). However, identifying which tech-
nologies to invest in and how to manage them effectively requires a
complex knowledge mix, comprising of strategy, technology and ana-
lytics across owned, earned and paid-for digital media platforms
(Chaffey & Ellis-Chadwick, 2019).
Digital technologies have inexorably altered the marketing envi-
ronment of small tourism businesses (Elliott & Boshoff, 2007), and while
there are case studies of SMTBs that have adopted digital technologies,
especially social media and user generated content, in their business
models (e.g. Burgess et al., 2015; Sigala & Gretzel, 2017), consumer
behaviour online (Xiang & Gretzel, 2010) and online destination mar-
keting (Hays, Page, & Buhalis, 2013; Pan & Li, 2011) remain dominant
themes in the tourism literature pertaining to DM. A recent paper by
Navío-Marco, Ruiz-G�
omez, and Sevilla-Sevilla (2018) provides a ten
year review of e-tourism research and there is no mention of DM in
respect of lone entrepreneurs. References to SMTB marketing tend to be
within the wider context of destination marketing. For example,
McCabe, Sharples, and Foster (2012, p. 37) refer to suppliers in the
destination “having problems with online marketing” and lacking time
and IT competence. Cost reduction and market penetration are identi-
fied as potential benefits for SMTBs created from collaboration with
DMOs, but no details at an individual firm level are given (Wang,
Hutchinson, Okumus, & Naipaul, 2013). Referring to the adoption of
technology by small tourism businesses, Thomas and Ormerod (2018, p.
248) observe that there is “a small body of empirical work in this area”.
Evidence within the tourism sector, scant though it is, suggests that a
top-down, one-size-fits-all, approach to increasing the adoption and use
of DM by entrepreneurs is largely ineffective (Mistilis, Buhalis, & Gret-
zel, 2014). Lashley (2018, p. 339) observes that “management devel-
opment in small hospitality firms is at a low level, and entrepreneurs in
micro firms do not typically give priority to their own development”.
Lashley goes on to advise that where agencies are aiming to improve
destination competitiveness “by intervening in the development of
managers of small hospitality firms’, they should adopt “a much more
subtle and targeted approach”. The tourism sector is not alone in this
regard; there has been criticism of standard business training pro-
grammes that include either finance or marketing training for SMEs,
owing to their decidedly mixed results, globally (Gin�
e & Mansuri, 2014).
In the UK, the South West Productivity Commission report (2017)
concluded that rural micro tourism businesses are hard to reach and do
not engage with support. To compound the problem, the budgetary
pressures on DMOs will, inevitably, impact on the support they can offer
to SMTBs. In the space of just eight years, net current expenditure on
tourism by local authorities (the largest overall funders of DMOs) in
England has decreased 58 per cent from £142 m per annum to £59 m
(Gov UK, 2011; 2017). A study of small tourism businesses in Scotland
by the Federation of Small Businesses (2014, p. 11) found that “the
support landscape” was “overly complex, confusing, poorly communi-
cated and disjointed”. This view is corroborated by McCamley and Gil-
more (2017) who report that Northern Ireland DMOs do not engage
effectively with SMTBs. Provision of e-learning tool kits has seemingly
not resolved any of these issues even with digital government initiatives
worldwide, which include creation of online DM resources for entre-
preneurs (e.g. the European Commission’s Tourism Business Portal -
Digital Toolbox, the Australian Tourism’s Tourism E Kit, and Visit-
Britain’s Digital Marketing Toolkit). Statistics related to engagement
with these resources are not publicly available, however the low levels
of adoption of DM by tourism entrepreneurs would suggest that impact
is limited.
Given these low levels of adoption and the mixed results of formal
training and digital knowledge transfer, urgent questions need to be
addressed. How can policy-makers and tourism business support
agencies help entrepreneurs in acquiring the knowledge necessary to
market effectively in the digital age? And, what theory can we draw
upon, and contribute to, that will support the study of SMTBs’ DM
knowledge acquisition and transfer? Referring to Thomas, Shaw, and
Page (2011), who highlighted the lack of theorisation of small business
research in tourism, Thomas and Ormerod (2018, p. 250) acknowledge
that while “some progress has been made” … “it has been sporadic and
many of the published studies remain relatively unsophisticated in
theoretical terms”. Our multi-disciplinary study addresses this persistent
problem by drawing on two theories that we believe will enrich our
understanding of tourism entrepreneurs and DM. Firstly, we review the
knowledge management literature which will be familiar to tourism
scholars (Cooper, 2006; Ruhanen, 2018). We specifically address two
types of knowledge, which Ruhanen refers to, as identified by Gibbons
et al. (2010), namely Mode 1 knowledge (generated by universities and
researchers) and Mode 2 knowledge (generated by practitioners and
consultants). Our study is concerned with knowledge acquisition and
collaborative transfer and therefore developing a better understanding
of the types of knowledge that tourism entrepreneurs access enables us
to study how that knowledge can be enriched and how its transfer can be
improved. From mainstream small business research, we review the
technology-in-practice literature (Morgan-Thomas, 2016), which is
underpinned by the theory of sociomateriality (Orlikowski & Scott,
2008) and, more widely, by studies of technology in organizational
practice (Feldman & Orlikowski, 2011; Zammuto, Griffith, Majchrzak,
Dougherty, & Faraj, 2007). Technology-in-practice literature provides a
highly apposite, conceptual position from which to study the adoption of
DM by tourism entrepreneurs and will challenge the way in which
tourism scholars view SMTB technology adoption and implementation.
In turning to the technology-in-practice literature we are also respond-
ing to wider calls in tourism for researchers to look to external disci-
plines relevant to small business research (Shaw & Williams, 2010). We
make a further contribution by providing evidence of a useful synergy
between the modes of knowledge transfer and technology-in-practice.
This synergy is captured in the model which is presented in the discus-
sion section of our paper. More broadly, our study makes a contribution
not only to the small business tourism research agenda (Alford & Page,
2015; Ateljevic, 2007; El-Gohary, 2012; Komppula, 2014; Thomas,
2013; Thomas et al., 2011) but also informs our understanding of how
tourism business support agencies can move effectively to support en-
trepreneurs in the tourism sector (Ateljevic & Page, 2017; Chang, 2011;
McCamley & Gilmore, 2017; Mistilis et al., 2014; Thomas & Wood,
2015).
In addressing these questions, we provide evidence from two digital
marketing projects: 1) “Digital Destinations: Exchanging Digital Tech-
nology Knowledge in Local Tourism Economies”; funded by the Eco-
nomic & Social Research Council (ESRC); 2) “SME Digital
Transformation”; funded by the UK Higher Education Innovation Fund
(HEIF). These projects involved 53 entrepreneurs where the sole busi-
ness owner is the foci of the study. This focus is important as there are
few studies of DM in relation to the sole entrepreneur and, in the absence
of a designated marketing resource (employee), the owner will assume
responsibility for sales and marketing activity in the firm (Carson,
Cromie, McGowan, & Hill, 1995; Moriarty, Jones & Rowley, 2008).
Secondly, entrepreneurs are highly influential in the direction and
growth focus of the firm, in common with small firms in other industries
(Jones, Morrish, Deacon, & Miles, 2017; Jones & Rowley, 2011). Finally,
entrepreneurs are acknowledged as being innovative and carrying out
entrepreneurial marketing activities to enhance destination competi-
tiveness to meet the gaps in DMO’s service provision (McCamley &
Gilmore, 2017).
P. Alford and R. Jones
Tourism Management 81 (2020) 104139
3
2. Theoretical background
2.1. Digital marketing and SMTBs
In much the same way that small business marketing is not a small
version of larger firm marketing (Hill, 2001), DM should be viewed as a
new approach to marketing rather than traditional marketing that is
supported by digital means (J€
arvinen, Tollinen, Karjaluoto, & Jaya-
wardhena, 2012; Liu, Karahanna, & Watson, 2011; Sultan & Rohm,
2004; Taiminen & Karjaluoto, 2015). There are six particular issues
related to small firm adoption of DM: 1) the technical competency of the
entrepreneur and the value that he/she attaches to DM; 2) the fit be-
tween DM and the firm’s business model; 3) the challenges associated
with integrating traditional marketing practices with DM; 4) needing a
willingness to test new marketing approaches by advancing beyond
website usage (Alford & Page, 2015; Hoffman & Novak, 2011; Kim, Lee,
& Lee, 2013); 5) building customer relationships through social media
(Felix, Rauschnabel, & Hinsch, 2017; Malthouse, Haenlein, Skiera,
Wege, & Zhang, 2013); and 6) being able to meet the challenge of the
growing complexity of the marketing landscape (Alford, 2018),
requiring greater resources to manage DM.
Entrepreneurs are found to be lacking in awareness of the accrued
benefits of DM which creates a barrier to adoption (Harrigan et al., 2011;
Jones et al., 2014; Wolcott, Kamal, & Qureshi, 2008). Where tourism
entrepreneurs see the benefits, adoption of DM is more likely (Elliott &
Boshoff, 2007; Simmons, Armstrong, & Durkin, 2008). More recent
studies confirm that these challenges still remain, including the entre-
preneur’s lack of competency and knowledge and a constrained view of
the benefits of DM (Taiminen & Karjaluoto, 2015). Entrepreneurs also
tended to focus on the immediate and attainable impact of technology
implementation, rather than the longer-term outcomes (Aldebert, Dang,
& Longhi, 2011; Jones et al., 2014).
While the website remains the focal point for most small firms, partly
because that is where the final sale is likely to take place (Jones et al.,
2014), effective DM for tourism entrepreneurs involves the holistic
management of a mix of owned, earned and paid digital channels
(Alford, 2018; Chaffey & Ellis-Chadwick, 2019). It also requires an
extension and integration of conventional marketing practices with
digital platforms (Kotler, Kartajaya, & Setiawan, 2016). Generating
customer insight is of critical importance for digital marketers and so we
posit that entrepreneurs must now understand and include their target
customers’ search behaviour if they are to develop a successful search
engine optimisation strategy (Berman & Katona, 2013). Paid-for
advertising remains a potent part of the marketing mix, but now en-
trepreneurs and SMTBs require the technical skills to master the in-
tricacies of setting up, managing and monitoring pay per click
advertising campaigns (Hutchinson & Quintas, 2008). Furthermore,
tourism entrepreneurs have to contend with powerful intermediaries,
for example Booking.com, which dominate the customer’s online
journey, particularly at the point of search.
The entrepreneur needs to understand how to generate insights from
an abundance of digital data to effectively compete (Arons, van den
Driest, & Weed, 2014; Kotler et al., 2016). Successful DM implementa-
tion requires an ability to accurately measure its impact, which in turn
demands new technical and analytical skills and capabilities of entre-
preneurs. The UK government’s Department for Business Innovation &
Skills (BIS, 2015) reports that, despite there being a positive link be-
tween digital skill levels and turnover growth, a quarter of SMEs do not
possess basic digital skills. Indeed, Leeflang, Verhoef, Dahlstr€
om, and
Freundt (2014, p. 4) identify “the talent gap in analytical capabilities” as
a particular cause for concern for digital marketers. Entrepreneurs are
challenged with managing the data generated through digital channels
and turning that data into intelligence (Ateljevic, 2007). This poses a
significant existential problem, namely that entrepreneurs are less likely
to adopt DM because they lack the skills necessary to evaluate its ben-
efits and relevance to their own business model.
2.2. Modes of knowledge transference
As this study focus concerns university-hosted projects, we are
interested in whether and how knowledge transfers via engagement
with tourism entrepreneurs. There are systematic failures recorded
which relate to knowledge transference from universities providing ac-
ademic research to tourism businesses (Ruhanen, 2018; Thomas &
Ormerod, 2017), and also between DMOs and SMEs (McCamley & Gil-
more, 2017). There are two sources of knowledge that can be acquired
by businesses: Mode 1 knowledge and Mode 2 knowledge (Gibbons
et al., 2010; Tribe, 1997). Mode 1 includes knowledge created within
universities, being academic-led and disseminated through scholarly
journals, with impact on the practitioner being highly limited. Mode 2
knowledge is generated outside of academia, often by consultants,
companies and governments, and is more accessible to practitioners.
Mode 2 knowledge, while often ‘packaged’ in business-friendly formats,
is described as subject to normative constraints and therefore less
conducive to free thinking and ideation (Rip, 2002). In many cases the
sources will either lack the methodological rigour associated with aca-
demic endeavour or the methodology is not made transparent in the way
that is required by peer reviewed journals. Mode 1 knowledge is
investigator-led, scientifically rigorous, and has the potential to foster
creativity and innovation; the problem being that it is currently largely
inaccessible to industry users, in part due to the impenetrable nature of
academic writing as viewed by practitioners (Ruhanen, 2018; Thomas &
Ormerod, 2017). Kannan and Li (2017, p.40) proffer the following so-
lution: “Practitioners can provide the raw material and academics can
provide the rigor, and together they can extend our knowledge of the
everchanging digital environment.”
2.3. Technology-in-practice
Caution is advised to avoid making assumptions about small busi-
nesses and their relationship with technology for marketing (Thomas
et al., 2011). In reflecting on what those assumptions might be and how
they might constrain our understanding of tourism entrepreneurs and
DM, we have found the technology-in-practice literature to be particu-
larly insightful (Feldman & Orlikowski, 2011; Leonardi, 2011; Mazma-
nian, Orlikowski & Yates, 2013; Morgan-Thomas, 2016; Scott &
Orlikowski, 2014; Zammuto et al., 2007). A helpful review by Mor-
gan-Thomas (2016: p. 1129) found that “current SME research on ICT
adoption builds on the principle of determinism”, underpinned by im-
plicit assumptions that technology is a largely inflexible ‘given’ and it is
the user (e.g. entrepreneur) who must adapt (e.g. learn how to use the
technology, shape the business model around the technology, allocate
resources to master the technology) if the business is to enjoy the ben-
efits of DM. Technology-in-practice is guided by a different set of
ontological assumptions: technologies are intertwined with, and shaped
by, the user and are rarely used as intended and ultimately must be seen
in the context of practice. The technology-in-practice perspective as-
sumes that the entrepreneur’s focus lies with knowledge pertaining to
perception of the technology, the purposes it currently serves and could
serve in the future, and opportunities for innovation through technol-
ogy, rather than focusing on how to use the technology. In an earlier
study, which pre-dates much of the technology-in-practice literature,
but is closely aligned to it, Alford and Clarke (2009, p. 580) posed the
question: “how do we ensure that, as technological solutions are
implemented within tourism, due consideration is given to
human-centred issues?” We argue that these business-centred and
human-centred viewpoints are crucial in ensuring a level of critical
reflection when studying the adoption of DM by SMTBs, and when
designing interventions that support the lone tourism entrepreneur.
3. Method
A qualitative research design was adopted using inductive enquiry to
P. Alford and R. Jones
Tourism Management 81 (2020) 104139
offer new insights from a relatively unknown aspect of study using a
“discovery orientated approach” (Jaworski & Kohli, 1993, p. 1; Morrish
& Jones, 2020); that is, data collection carried out using fieldwork that
enables and informs theory development. This approach allowed for
developing new understandings of a new phenomenon using a case
study (Eisenhardt & Graebner, 2007; Yin, 2009). Substantial data were
collected from two digital projects based in Dorset, South of England.
The overarching framework for the projects involved the SMTBs
developing a DM plan to achieve a minimum of two DM objectives,
which the entrepreneurs began formulating at the first seminar. This
design was chosen to facilitate the transference of Mode 1 knowledge
and Mode 2 knowledge. The university-led meetings which took place at
the university campus consisted of an introductory presentation based
on the project team’s research and expertise (Mode 1 knowledge), and
which would help the SMTBs to develop their DM objectives. For
example, in the first meeting, the entrepreneurs were provided with
frameworks for DM strategy and in the second meeting at the university
they learned how to engage in data-driven marketing, encompassing DM
analytics. These presentations were followed by discussion with, and
among, the entrepreneurs and, in many cases, by blog posts by the en-
trepreneurs to the project website where they would reflect on the
meeting (Mode 2 knowledge). This also allowed the project team to
share information with the participants (Mode 1 knowledge). As the
project progressed, the entrepreneurs were given more responsibility to
self-organise their meetings. This led to entrepreneurs volunteering their
business premises (e.g. hotel, restaurant or meeting rooms) for their
meetings during which one participant would be nominated as the
meeting facilitator and another as a note-taker. A member of the uni-
versity project team would attend these meetings but mainly in an
observer role, keeping participation to a minimum to encourage the
creation and transfer of Mode 2 knowledge. The final meeting, held on
the university campus, was led by the businesses during which they
presented their final DM plan. The design from the inception of the
projects was for ownership of the process to transfer gradually to the
SMTBs and thereby adhere more fully to the principles of
technology-in-practice, whereby DM would be seen in the context of the
business.
Engaging with entrepreneurs as participants allowed for relation-
ships to develop between the university and the participants, allowing
two datasets that were merged originated from two DM studies: Digital
Destinations (DD) (2012–2014) which comprised of 53 SMTBs, and
Digital Transformation (DT) (2014–2017), which comprised of 10
re-recruited participants from the original DD project of 53 SMTBs. The
entrepreneurs (Table 1) represent a range of sectors which together
comprise the ‘visitor economy’ in the region and include: hotels, visitor
attractions, bed and breakfast, self-catering, outdoor activities, and
museums.
Through a partnership with the local DMO, SMTBs were invited to
attend an information evening regarding the projects. This generated a
lot of interest, with over 100 SMTBs completing the application form. On
the basis of the information provided on that form, and with input from
the local DMO, the research team were able to select 53 SMTBs. In part,
participants were chosen on the basis that they were entrepreneur
owner-managers who were responsible for carrying out digital market-
ing and making strategic decisions, including technology investment
decisions in the firm. However, as the research team wanted to study
how DM knowledge is transferred between the SMTBs, it was important
to recruit a mixed group of entrepreneurs in terms of their knowledge
and experience of DM, albeit with shared common goals of improving
their DM and accessing support that hitherto had been unavailable to
them. The level of knowledge of each entrepreneur was established on
the basis of information provided on the project application form and
also through guidance of the local DMO.
The cohort was divided into 6 clusters in order to provide a smaller
group size that was more intimate but would still provide diversity of
Table 1
SMTBs and clusters.
Case Business type Employees Case Business type Employees
Digital Olympians AppsFab
1 Education 3 9 Charity 133
2
a
Heritage 8 10
a
Hotel 40
3 Tour operator 3 11 Self-catering 2
4 Restaurant 30 12 Cycle hire 9
5 Leisure club 10 13
a
B&B 1
6 Activities 8 14 Hotel 25
7 Hotel 30 15
a
B&B 1
8 B&B 4 16 Attraction 45
17 Ski centre 45
P. Alford and R. Jones
