Travel experience ecosystem model: building travel agencies’ business resilience in Portugal

Abstract

The Portuguese tourism distribution recognizes in the digital economy drivers - based on e-business, collaborative networks and information exchange - an incentive to productivity and rendibility, leading to sustainable competitive advantages. Travel agencies live currently in a darwinian business-oriented environment, where only resilient entrepreneurs are able to survive. This framing allows the genesis of a new theoretical archetype of travel agencies, the “TEEM-Travel Experience Ecosystem Model” observing several organizational strategies and concepts, such as Resilient Virtual organizations, digital Customer Ecosystems, Collaborative Value Chain and Co-Creation travel experiences, as well as new types of open Source Innovation trough Social Web.