Tourism Destination Brokers: a network analytic approach

Understanding the interactions of tourist companies could be relevant for the destination’s organisation and management. The present article employs a network analysis to examine inter-organisational interactions and the various roles that some companies assume in tourism destinations. The results reveal the existence of a network in which enterprises, identified as brokers, take on strategic roles both within and outside of their specific sub-sectors of origin. This study proposes new social network analysis indicators to identify the distinctive and prevalent position of company brokers, who manage inter-organisational relations by spontaneously assuming specific roles within the tourist destination network. Brokers facilitate cooperative and collaborative practices among companies in different tourism sub-sectors, thus increasing actors’ network cohesion across a given tourist destination.