Promoting Co-evolutionary Adaptations for Sustainable Tourism: The “Alpine Convention”

The sustainable development of tourism destinations is the result of co-evolutionary adaptations between tourism firms and their environment. Recent tourism studies adopting the co-evolutionary approach – also fertilized by evolutionary economic geography literature – have looked at how these adaptations are promoted at the firm’s level, while little has been said about how adaptations can be promoted at the environmental level, and especially the institutional level. Thus, this paper examines the role played by institutions for the sustainable development of a tourism destination, mainly looking at the mechanisms that promote co-evolutionary adaptations. In particular, the study focuses on the qualitative analysis of a longitudinal intrinsic case study concerning the Institution “Alpine Convention”. Data are analyzed through a mixed thematic analysis. Findings highlight the pivotal role played by stakeholders’ involvement in decision making processes and by the inter-organizational knowledge transfer in promoting effective co-evolutionary adaptations. The paper contributes significantly to the tourism literature and to the study of co-evolving mechanisms among macro-, meso-, and micro- levels. Implications for both policy makers and executives emerge, together with suggestions for future research.