Internationalisation of small and medium sized enterprises in the tourism industry: Towards a resource based view of location bound companies
Keywords:
resource based view (RBV), tourism enterprises, small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs), internationalisationAbstract
The purpose of this article is to analyze the internationalisation of location bound tourism SMEs - small and medium sized enterprises - from the resource based view (RBV) of the firm. The tourism products are service intensive products which are typically bound to a certain location or a destination. The prerequisites and modes of internationalisation within the tourism business are argued to differ from those within other business sectors. The tourism production is based not only on an individual company's resources, but on the resource base of a network or a destination the company is embedded in. It is suggested in this article that the theoretical background of the RBV leads to a better understanding of the internationalisation, growth and value creation of location bound tourism companies than the existing theories of service internationalisation. In this conceptual paper, organisational assets, reputation assets, capabilities, and industry specific assets are regarded as key resources in the internationalisation of location bound tourism SMEs.
