Interorganizational cooperation in tourist destination: Building performance in the hotel industry

Although the importance of interorganizational relationships in the tourism industry has been recognized, it is unclear how cooperation influences firms' performance. We argue that interorganizational cooperation in tourist destinations nourishes firms' internal capabilities-absorptive, innovative and adaptive capabilities-thus generating competitive advantage and superior performance. We conducted two studies. In the first, we have built and validated a survey-based instrument to empirically measure interorganizational cooperation. In the second, using a sample of 271 responses to a web-based survey with hotel managers, we tested hypotheses proposing a positive relationship between interorganizational cooperation, dynamic capabilities, competitive advantage and firm performance. Our findings support that by cooperating, firms develop a number of capabilities that sustains competitive advantage leading to superior performance. The implications of our results from a theoretical and managerial perspective are also discussed.