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Tourism Management 81 (2020) 104139

Available online 22 June 2020

The lone digital tourism entrepreneur: Knowledge acquisition and

collaborative transfer

Philip Alford

, Rosalind Jones

Southampton Business School, University of Southampton, Building 2, Highfield Campus Southampton, SO17 1BJ, United Kingdom

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

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

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

Heritage 8 10

Hotel 40

3 Tour operator 3 11 Self-catering 2

4 Restaurant 30 12 Cycle hire 9

5 Leisure club 10 13

B&B 1

6 Activities 8 14 Hotel 25

7 Hotel 30 15

B&B 1

8 B&B 4 16 Attraction 45

17 Ski centre 45

P. Alford and R. Jones