Topic of the week: Spanish bibliography on Innovation and Tourism

As most people know, Spain has traditionally been the third touristic destination in the world (it was the second last year) after USA and France, which theoretically implies certain industry knowledge ready to be exported in our knowledge society, contributing to the Europe of Knowledge development.

Why is this not (very) true? There are several reasons why Spain is not exporting its knowledge on tourism as other countries in Europe are doing with their knowledge in industrial sectors, i. e.:

• Knowledge in tourism is not patentable as it is in industrial sectors, you can’t protect neither license effectively most of the innovations that might enter the sector
• New products in tourism are very easily copied by competitors, unless they are supported by a new technology industrially protected (that belongs to the company that has launched the new product, quite a big barrier)
• It is quite difficult to get information from R+D processes in Tourism, as R+D is not systematized as it is in industrial sectors

Lately (since year 2000) there have been in Spain several initiatives that defend the exportation of knowledge on what we really do best, this is, tourism. In this line of knowledge, COTEC Foundation has published the first Innovation studies at Spanish level, http://www.cotec.es/publica/estudios.html

Also COTEC has published a document on new technologies in tourism, http://www.cotec.es/publica/documentos.html

The Universitat de les Illes Balears has in his portal a document called “Innovación, Transferencia de tecnología y desarrollo en empresas hoteleras. Estudio de las contribuciones de las empresas hoteleras de origen balear a las economías latinoamericanas”, http://www.uib.es/catedra_iberoamericana/publicaciones/empresas_hoteleras/, that highlights the importance of the previous experience of Balearic entrepreneurs when they got to Latinamerica to develop their 365 days/year Sun and Beach hotel businesses.

The Universitat Oberta de Catalunya also has published a document, http://www.uoc.edu/dt/20219/index.html, that introduces an idea that for me is key to future tourism development: the idea that people are going to be willing to pay more for emotions than for technology, and this has to be considered when designing any innovation process in any type of bussiness related to tourism in the future.

As we can see in these examples, in these 5 past years Spain is starting to move on the way of knowledge exportation as a plus to the tourism business creation at national level, even though no licenses for this knowledge are going to be paid. Northern Europe might be Europe of knowledge at industrial level, Southern Europe might be “of non-licensed tourism knowledge”. Let’s go for it.