International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management

Emerald Article: A network perspective on managing stakeholders for sustainable urban tourism Seldjan Timur, Donald Getz

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Seldjan Timur, Donald Getz, (2008),"A network perspective on managing stakeholders for sustainable urban tourism", International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, Vol. 20 Iss: 4 pp. 445 - 461 http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/09596110810873543 Seldjan Timur, Donald Getz, (2008),"A network perspective on managing stakeholders for sustainable urban tourism", International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, Vol. 20 Iss: 4 pp. 445 - 461 http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/09596110810873543 Seldjan Timur, Donald Getz, (2008),"A network perspective on managing stakeholders for sustainable urban tourism", International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, Vol. 20 Iss: 4 pp. 445 - 461 http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/09596110810873543

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A network perspective on managing stakeholders for sustainable urban tourism

Seldjan Timur
Department of Business Administration, Faculty of Business and Economics, Eastern Mediterranean University, North Cyprus, Turkey, and

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Received 5 July 2007 Revised 24 August 2007 Accepted 4 January 2008

Donald Getz
Haskayne School of Business, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada
Abstract
Purpose This study aims to examine the current network of inter-relationships of stakeholders representing government, the community and the tourism and hospitality industry, and their perceptions of critical stakeholders in destination development. Design/methodology/approach While the network analysis enabled examination of the interconnectedness of stakeholders, the stakeholder approach identied the critical stakeholders in destination development. These two approaches helped determine how the existing relationship structures of destination stakeholders might inuence sustainable destination development. Findings The destination marketing/management organizations (DMOs) and stakeholders with access to or possession of critical resources have the highest centrality in urban destinations. In all three clusters, local government and DMOs are perceived to hold the greatest legitimacy and power over others in destination development. It is also found that there is a lack of bridges between the three clusters of industry, government and the community. Research limitations/implications The study demonstrates the use of a network analysis methodology as a potential tool for researchers and managers in examining destination stakeholder relationships. Practical implications DMOs, hotels and attractions stakeholders have the most crucial roles in achieving inter-stakeholder collaboration for sustainable destination development, particularly because the many and diverse industry actors trust or depend on them. Originality/value There are very few studies that have applied both network and stakeholder perspectives to destinations to examine the structure of inter-stakeholder relationships and the potential inuence of this relational structure on sustainable destination development. Keywords Stakeholder analysis, Urban areas, Tourism Paper type Research paper

Introduction There is a large body of literature on sustainable tourism. However its application to urban settings is relatively new. The research on sustainable tourism has concentrated on natural environments and protected areas, despite the fact that most of the worlds population lives in urban areas and the majority of travel happens in cities (World Tourism Organization, 1999). The market of urban tourism is rapidly expanding (Paskeleva-Shapira, 2003). The favorable market conditions tempt many city planners to make the tourism and hospitality industry (hereinafter the industry) development an important part of urban policy. The growth of the industry in urban destinations

International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management Vol. 20 No. 4, 2008 pp. 445-461 q Emerald Group Publishing Limited 0959-6119 DOI 10.1108/09596110810873543

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presents various challenges such as protection of environment, conservation of heritage, preservation of social fabric and cultural values, and maintenance of a desired quality of life for residents. The development of tourism that is sustainable in economic, environmental, social and cultural terms has been repeatedly recommended but researchers have found that the management and implementation of sustainable tourism (ST) requires the involvement of many partners, and that this collaboration between diverse stakeholders is both complicated and difcult to achieve (Paskeleva-Shapira, 2001). Managing ST requires interactions between the public sector (i.e. government bodies such as city planners, transportation department, etc.), the private sector (tourism and hospitality rms) and the local residents. This study aims to uncover the current interrelationships of stakeholders representing three partners of ST development. Respondents in three cities, representing diverse stakeholders from the industry, government and the community, were examined as to their existing interconnectedness. In the ensuing sections, stakeholder theory and the network perspective will be discussed to provide a foundation for identifying critical stakeholders in destination development. The network perspective helps determine whether identied critical stakeholders have existing relationships with the other members of destination networks. Having discussed the existing links among stakeholders from three clusters and identied the critical stakeholders, the study concludes by questioning which organization should take the lead in establishing stakeholder networks in sustainable destination development. Applying stakeholder and network perspectives to destination development Stakeholder perspective Freeman, who introduced stakeholder theory to strategic management dened stakeholder as . . . any group or individual who can affect or who is affected by the achievement of the organizations objectives (Freeman, 1984, p. 25). However, a universally accepted stakeholder denition has not been constructed yet (Carroll, 1993). Mitchell et al. (1997) reviewed stakeholder concepts, and analyzed the underlying dimensions found in the various stakeholder denitions. This review found that power and legitimacy are the core attributes of a stakeholder identication typology. In the Mitchell et al. (1997) model, stakeholder salience is positively related to the cumulative number of stakeholder attributes. Stakeholders who are perceived to possess one attribute are less salient than those who possess two attributes. This nding emphasized that stakeholders could vary from one issue to another issue. Accordingly, critical stakeholders that hold legitimacy and have power over others in the process of destination development could be different from (or same as) those involved for instance, in destination marketing or product development efforts. Similarly, critical stakeholders could vary from one destination to another. Accordingly, this study identies the critical actors in destination development by employing stakeholder approach. The stakeholder framework allows a wider range of actors to be considered and blended into urban tourism policy, and therefore has signicant benets for sustainability. Many sustainable development situations, including tourism development, are characterized by a complex web of interests and trade-offs between interacting sets of diverse stakeholders.

Network perspective Three concepts are of vital importance in understanding social network analysis (SNA). Nodes, or actors, are entities, persons, organizations, or events. Links are the relationships, of any kind, between the actors. Links have content (Cobb, 1988). Links may be money transfers, communications, publications sent to subscribers, friendships, exchange of resources like information, or overlapping memberships (Tichy et al., 1979). Actors can be directly or indirectly linked, joined by multiple relationships, or be separate. Networks are the patterns formed from the combination of all the actors and links within the system. Networks have characteristics. For example, networks may be dense (having many links) or sparse (having few links). Density refers to the number of connections between actors within the network. It is argued that highly dense networks result in efcient communication and enhanced diffusion of norms across networks (Meyer and Rowan, 1977). Another network characteristic is centrality. Networks may have one central actor with links from many actors directed to it, which indicates high network centrality, or a network may have several groups and no central actor that indicates low network centrality. A central position within the network indicates the amount of power obtained through the structure, and capacity to access information and other members (Wasserman and Faust, 1994). SNA is concerned with the structural positions (such as central, isolate, bridging) of actors. If an actor has many links to others in the system, then it has different network characteristics than an actor with fewer links within the system. The goal of adapting the network perspective to tourism and hospitality industry stems from the recognition that a destination is a system which consists of relations that are likely to inuence destination stakeholders opportunities, constraints, behavior, or values. SNA is one of the tools that can be used to examine the links and the potential inuence of ties between members of destination stakeholders on many issues including sustainable destination development. In this study actors are stakeholders representing government, the industry and the community which are identied as the partners of ST development by the World Tourism Organization (WTO). The link is operationalized as having business contacts, and the content of the link is joint tourism programs or projects. This link is selected to examine if stakeholders representing three clusters have established ties and meaningful networks in the system. Centrality is one of the most popular measures used in SNA. There are various measures of centrality (Freeman, 1979; Scott, 2000). Freeman (1979) operationalized centrality by degree, betweenness and closeness measures. Degree based centrality is simply the number of other actors to which the focal actor is tied (Krackhardt, 1990; Freeman, 1979). Centrality then measures an actors involvement in a network by revealing how many connections an actor has. It corresponds to being well connected within its local environment (Scott, 2000). It can be computed for in-degree centrality (which measures how many ties an actor receives) and out-degree centrality (measures how many ties are made with other actors). Betweenness centrality measures the frequency with which an actor falls on the paths between pairs of other actors (Freeman, 1979). Closeness centrality denes an actors ability to access independently all other members of the network (Freeman, 1979). It is a score calculated by measuring the extent to which an actor can most easily reach others through the shortest number of jumps across the network.

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If an actor is connected to different members, it will have access to different nonredundant sources of information (Krackhardt, 1990; Wasserman and Faust, 1994). Scott (2000) dened these actors as gatekeepers, as they have potential for control over others or facilitate exchanges between less central actors. In this study, these actors are called bridging stakeholders as they can establish contacts between clusters. Researchers have to decide which centrality measure is the most meaningful and valid one for their research purposes. Freeman (1979) and others studied the empirical performance of centrality measures under different research scenarios (Galaskiewicz and Burt, 1991). Costenbader and Valente (2003) argued that the in-degree centrality measure was less affected by sampling because, although respondents dropped from the sample were no longer able to indicate their ties, they were still able to receive them. Therefore, the current study uses in-degree based centrality to compute the most meaningful centrality measure. Tourism and hospitality industry applications The network approach has been used in leisure and recreation (Stokowski, 1990, 1994; Blackshaw and Long, 1998) and, tourism and hospitality (Cobb, 1988; Park, 1997; Money, 2000; Pavlovich, 2001, 2003; Tyler and Dinan, 2001; Pforr, 2002, 2006) and in event management (Larson, 2002; Stokes, 2004, Mackellar, 2006) to examine interactions among actors, identify the actors in the network, or to examine the function of the network as a whole. Stakeholder theory has been applied as a planning and management tool (Sautter and Leisen, 1999; Yuksel et al., 1999; Getz and Jamal, 1994; Robson and Robson, 1996; Walsh et al., 2001; Jamal and Getz, 2000; Medeiros de Araujo and Bramwell, 1999), and for stakeholder identication (Hardy and Beeton, 2001; Sheehan and Ritchie, 2005). Recently, Sheehan and Ritchie applied stakeholder theory to assess destination stakeholders from the perspective of DMOs and concluded that if these agencies were to be re-conceptualized as destination management organizations it would require the DMO to effectively build and manage stakeholder relationships. They specically called for a network approach to create a picture of the connectedness of destination stakeholders and to test the hypothesis that the DMO is the most central and most connected actor in the network . . . (Sheehan and Ritchie, 2005, p. 731). Accordingly, this study rst examines the current interconnectedness of diverse urban tourism stakeholders through a network lens and then analyzes the connectedness of legitimate and powerful stakeholders of the industry in the established destination networks. Research design and methodology A two-stage research design was employed. The rst aimed to obtain detailed input from selected interviews regarding critical stakeholders of urban destinations in the context of ST and the challenges of ST in the context of urban destinations. The interview process started with the key stakeholders such as the local DMOs, some hotel managers, major tourist attractions managers, conference and convention centers managers and government agents responsible for tourism and/or economic development. During the interviews, a snowball technique was employed to identify other stakeholders who were considered to have relevant characteristics and valuable information regarding the purposes of the study. This helped identify a more complete

web of legitimate stakeholders. The respondents not only included key stakeholders, but also their referrals. When the saturation point was reached, the interviewing process was nalized. In total, 38 interviews were conducted in three cities with diverse stakeholders representing the industry, government and the community. In the second stage, a structured questionnaire was developed to collect comparable and quantiable data in three cities. The self-completion, mail-back questionnaire was developed to examine the existing stakeholder relationships and identify the critical destination development stakeholders. Network analysis principles and methods were utilized to construct a destination network structure. Questions and analysis were adapted from Galaskiewicz (1979), Tichy et al. (1979), Galaskiewicz and Shatin (1981), Knoke and Wood (1981), Cobb (1988), Krackhardt (1990), Galaskiewicz and Burt (1991), and John and Cole (1998). To measure current stakeholder interconnectedness, an existing link was queried. The standardized stakeholder list was presented to respondents and they were asked to check off those with which their organization had joint programs or projects in the last 12 months. From responses to this question an adjacency matrix was constructed that represents the relationships among destination stakeholders in the destination network in each city. Specically, by coding the presence (or absence) of a formal business contact, a matrix where the stakeholders are both rows and columns was created. A 1 stands for the presence of a formal business contact between stakeholder i and stakeholder j, and a 0 indicates the lack of relationship. Constructed adjacency matrices were entered into UCINET VI to compute the network measures and map relations between the network members. To identify the salient destination stakeholders that were particularly important for destination development, the two major attributes of stakeholders, power and legitimacy, were examined (Mitchell et al., 1997). The respondents indicated the critical stakeholders on the standard list. Sample cities Three urban tourism destinations, Calgary (Alberta, Canada), Victoria (British Columbia, Canada) and San Francisco (California, USA) were chosen for empirical investigation. While a study of a single destination network would be instructive, a comparison of three cities with varying tourism infrastructure and different planning approaches yields more understanding. The City of Calgary was the logical starting point, being the home city, but was also notable in having a substantial tourism industry yet possessing no tourism policy or plan. However, the city has substantial environmental programs developed by the environmental management and community strategies departments at the City Hall. The City of Victoria was selected because the annual report of the Tourism Victoria indicated that the principles of sustainability were being applied in this urban area. The primary reason in choosing San Francisco was the Sustainability Plan for the City of San Francisco that had been developed by the municipal government. In 1996, over 350 San Franciscans, community activists and people representing many city government agencies, over 100 businesses, and academia gathered in working groups and drafted a plan to achieve a sustainable society. In 1997, the goals and objectives of the sustainability plan became policy of the City and County of San Francisco (www. sustainable-city.org).

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A comparison of the major tourism-related features of these three urban destinations is provided in Table I. Data collection Network analysis requires either the collection of data from all members, or the use of samples (Scott, 2000). In the current research it became clear that it would be almost impossible to achieve a complete census that would permit examination of all relationships between stakeholders. There were a nite number of government agencies to canvass, but a potentially huge and unreachable number of organizations in the tourism industry and host environment clusters. To examine existing destination stakeholder relations, a list of stakeholders was developed a priori using sources such as World Tourism Organization (1993) and major tourism textbooks. The list consisted of stakeholders from the industry, government and the community. The alternative was to have a different list named by every respondent, which might have resulted in some very incomplete answers. Of the identied target population, a total of 578 (190 in Calgary, 195 in Victoria, and 193 in San Francisco) questionnaires were mailed to stakeholders representing three partners of ST in the three cities. The surveys were mailed, with instructions that they be completed by top management. To increase the response rate, non-respondents were followed up according to the Dillmans (1978) total design method. Two weeks after the questionnaires were mailed to the respondents, a reminder postcard was sent, followed by a re-mailing of the entire package to those stakeholders that did not respond within three weeks. A total of 173 (70 respondents from Calgary, 62 from Victoria, and 41 from San Francisco) returned surveys were useable. Partly owing to the sampling design, a majority of responses came from one stakeholder cluster the tourism industry. Within that cluster there were fewer respondents from tourism services or advertising, compared to accommodation and attraction companies. Unfortunately, one key organization, the San Francisco Convention and Visitors Bureau (SFCVB) did not respond to this study. The exact numbers in each cluster are not critical to the network analysis, nor is it essential that a sample be random. Redundancy in the sample ensures that all-important links in the network are identied. Saturation is quickly reached, although minor and peripheral linkages might be missed. Major inter-cluster linkages are also revealed. Even though a key stakeholder did not respond, many other respondents identied their links to the SFCVB. The in-degree measure that is used to operationalize centrality enabled SFCVB to receive ties but they were no longer able to indicate theirs. But, it is the overall structure and patterning of the network that is of most interest. Study ndings and discussion The maps of destination networks illustrate interconnectedness by identifying the exact position of destination stakeholders in the tourism networks (Figures 1-3). In this section, the existing structural positions of stakeholders such as central, isolate, or bridging in each city are presented rst and then, the connectedness of perceived critical destination development stakeholders are discussed.

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Population Approx. 1 million (2006) 11,100 (accommodation Not-for-prot association; city has one rooms) (2006) board position Calgary Stampede (annual event) Business travel is predominant Gateway to the Canadian Rockies Cultural attractions Cruise port Provincial capital British heritage Major business and leisure travel destination Gateway to wine country

DMO characteristics

Lodging

Major attractions

No. of visitors (annual) Nearly 5 million (2006)

Calgary (www. tourismcalgary.com)

Victoria (www. tourismvictoria.com)

Approx. 330,000 (Greater Victoria 2006) Approx. 750,000 (2003) Not-for-prot; all business leaders 32,850 (hotel rooms) (2006)

7,000 (accommodation Not-for-prot association; city has one rooms) (2006) board position

3.5 million (Greater Victoria 2006)

San Francisco (www. sfcvb.org)

15.8 million (2006)

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Table I. Comparison of the sample cities

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Figure 1. Calgary network

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Figure 2. Victoria network

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Figure 3. San Francisco network

Network maps In Figure 1, Tourism Calgary (the local DMO) and cultural attractions are near the center of the network, closely surrounded by the travel trade, recreational operators, car rentals, Calgary Airport Authority (CAA), tourism services, Calgary downtown association, and hotels. Peripherally located in this network are local institutions, Calgary Convention Center, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), community groups, B&Bs, natural attractions, motels, rail industry, and Calgary Economic Development Authority. The Victoria network map (Figure 2) illustrates that Tourism Victoria (the local DMO), cultural attractions, hotels, motels, recreational operators and institutions were at the center of the network, while Victoria Conference Center, NGOs, tourism services, travel trade, and air carriers surrounded them. Also, Figure 2 shows there were no relational ties (i.e. joint tourism business projects/programs) between, for example, cruise companies and car rentals, or between B&Bs and the national tourism organization. In San Franciscos network (Figure 3), SFCVB, cultural and natural attractions, the City of San Francisco, hotels and travel trade were at the center of the network; Moscone Convention Centre, NGOs, recreational operators, entertainment organizations, and the Chamber of Commerce surrounded them; transportation, B&Bs, airport authority and institutions were at the periphery. The cruise stakeholder group was an isolate in the San Francisco contact network. Different patterns of relationships between destination stakeholders were identied in the three cities. Although network maps displayed DMOs at the center of each destinations contact network, other stakeholders that were centrally located in each city were different. This suggested that key destination stakeholders could be different in each city and there is no one single network structure for destinations. Calgary has fewer stakeholders located at the center. Meanwhile, Victoria had a more diverse group of stakeholders located at the center of the network. A diverse group of stakeholders would be better not only for representation and involvement of various groups interests, expectations and goals in sustainable tourism strategies and policies but also to ease the challenges that might be faced during the implementation phase. A second point concerns who these central stakeholders were in the networks. The Calgary network showed that the CAA is one of the signicant business partners in Calgary. This idiosyncratic character of the Calgary network could be explained by referring information collected through interviews conducted during the rst stage of this study. The CAA is highly involved in tourism and recognizes the importance of establishing strong contacts with diverse tourism actors. Victorias inner circle stakeholders included recreational operators, motels and local institutions such as nancial and consulting companies and the university, along with the core urban tourism stakeholders such as Tourism Victoria, cultural attractions and hotels. Interconnectedness of a diverse group of stakeholders reects a different character in Victoria. Unlike the other two cities, educational and nancial institutions were also among the central players in Victoria network. It was also observed that, overall, the San Francisco network had fewer links. This was partly related to the lower response rate. But, it could also reect the unique characteristic of stakeholder relationships in San Francisco. During the interview stage, it was found that the relatively larger size of San Franciscos tourism and hospitality industry was perceived as one of the complexities of the industry. The concerns

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regarding the size of San Franciscos tourism and hospitality industry complicated establishing contacts to different sectors of the industry. There were very limited relationships among destination stakeholders within and between clusters. With fewer links, San Francisco network illustrated a more sparse network than Calgary and Victoria networks. The local government authority also displayed a different characteristic in San Franciscos network. The respondents perceived government as a key player in San Francisco. Although there is no known collaboration between the industry members and the government other than the regular funding contract between them this nding might be a result of the sustainability plan that might have positioned the city as an active player in their environment. The network maps that provide a summary of the relational ties are also considered to reect the basic structure of how the industry interactions in cities function. As will be seen in the ensuing section, centrality within the network is not accidental, it is a function of inuence or power and it is accompanied by a high degree of perceived legitimacy. Regardless of small variations that would occur as sampling methods and response rates vary, results strongly suggest that the positions of stakeholders located at the center of the networks will be relatively enduring, while the positions of those peripherally located could be unstable. Centrality Network theory argues that structural position in the networks determines stakeholders status or inuence in the system. According to Cobb (1988) a well-connected player in a network has a strategic advantage. Thus, higher centrality stakeholders are able to manage information ows and inuence others. By contrast, an isolate may nd itself without signicant input, or unable to get timely information about crucial decisions affecting tourism development. According to the in-degree based centrality, DMOs were the stakeholders with the highest centrality in the three cities. They had more contacts to other members of the network than did the other stakeholders. High centrality measures give the local DMOs advantaged positions. But the centrality of an actor in a network refers to more than just interconnectivity, because there is power obtained through the network structure (Krackhardt, 1990; Wasserman and Faust, 1994). The more the other stakeholders are dependent upon the DMOs for what they need the more likely it becomes that stakeholders will view the DMOs as being inuential. Furthermore, other powerful stakeholders become aligned with them. This, in turn, makes the DMOs appear even more powerful and they could be considered super powers. The other inuential stakeholders in Calgary network were the provincial tourism marketing organization and the hotels stakeholder groups. Having more ties with hotels stakeholder group indicate that the destination is dependent on their product. In Victoria, in addition to the local DMO, stakeholders had more ties with the cultural attractions subsector. With such a strategic advantage, cultural attractions are more likely to inuence destination development in Victoria than other stakeholders. A more diverse group of stakeholders has this strategic advantage to inuence destination development in San Francisco. The attractions sector included cultural attractions, natural attractions and entertainment stakeholder group. Again, it is observed that stakeholders with access to or possession of critical resources have the highest centrality in the tourism network.

Critical destination development stakeholders The respondents in each city perceived DMOs to be appropriate, desirable or legitimate stakeholders for destination development. A total of 96 percent of respondents in Calgary, 94 percent of respondents in Victoria and 93 percent respondents in San Francisco indicated that their local DMOs should be included in destination development. Furthermore, in each city, respondents in all three clusters identied local DMOs to be legitimate. The attractions sector in each city was also perceived to be legitimate. The government agents were the other legitimate stakeholders. In fact, the ndings from three urban destinations suggested that high centrality stakeholders across destination networks were also perceived to hold high legitimacy degrees for destination development. However, the results emphasized that DMOs had important roles in destination development. In terms of powerful destination stakeholders, the responses from three cities and all three clusters showed similar results. About 97 and 83 percent of respondents perceived their local tourism organizations to possess a very high and high degree of power over others in destination development. The ndings suggested that high centrality destination stakeholders were also among the top ve most powerful ones. As the network theorists suggested, centrality did refer to power obtained through the networks structure (Barley et al., 1992). The empirical ndings supported the argument that high centrality stakeholders were perceived to have more inuence than those that were more peripheral. Analysis also suggested that local governments involvement in destination development is appropriate, since they are among the most powerful stakeholders. In practice, the trend is toward decreasing levels of government involvement in tourism (Swarbrooke, 1999). Tourism organizations are being privatized, and industry-led organizations put emphasis on destination marketing rather than destination development. The hotel stakeholder group was also perceived to be a powerful player in destination development by each cluster in each city. This could be because of the inuence they have over DMOs, which stems from their corporate status and nancial power. Furthermore, since hotels are the major contributors to the superstructure of urban destinations, the destinations are dependent upon their product. Conclusions and implications The existing structural positions of stakeholders representing three diverse clusters of ST development in three cities displayed that the stakeholders located at the center of networks in the three cities were the DMOs. But, other stakeholders with high centrality were different in each city. However, they were stakeholders with access to or possession of critical resources. It is argued that since each destination faces a different set of key stakeholders, the interactions would probably aggregate into unique patterns of inuences in each city. As a result, sustainable destination development will be as unique as their historical patterns of development, the nature of their industry, and governmental and institutional culture. The study applied stakeholder perspective and identied the most important, important and unimportant stakeholders for destination development in the tourism and hospitality industry. The local DMOs are perceived to hold the greatest legitimacy and have power over others regarding destination development. Therefore, it is the entity

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most likely to take active role in sustainable destination development. DMOs, as high centrality destination stakeholders, could be key players in not only management but also planning and development, and linking planners, investors, developers, residents, local organizations, and the industry for developing a sustainable policy for their destinations. The power of DMOs arises not only from holding a high central position within the destination network, but also from the dependency of stakeholders on DMOs for resources such as expertise, information, and clientele. DMOs have the most crucial roles in achieving inter-stakeholder collaboration for developing a shared tourism policy, particularly because the many and diverse industry actors trust or depend on them. The other critical stakeholders in destination development were hotels, attractions, and government agents. These critical stakeholders that had advantageous positions in the structure of destination networks also have important decision-making roles, and are key to understanding the circulation of ideas and decisions to act collectively, particularly when the individuals are in different organizations. From this perspective, the DMOs, hotels and attractions stakeholders can be used to communicate destination planning and development issues, facilitate collaboration among stakeholders, increase awareness of network members towards sustainability challenges, and coordinate efforts toward reaching shared tourism and hospitality industry goals. In each city, all of these inuential stakeholders came from the industry cluster. This could be related to the sampling but at same time highlights the lack of bridges between the clusters. The DMOs, hotels and attractions stakeholders have another major role to play in between-cluster networking. They must partner with the bridging stakeholders so that contacts between clusters can be established. Establishing ties with less connected or isolated stakeholders would help minimize the evident disconnect between clusters and improve legitimacy for sustainable urban policy. Destinations can no longer ignore various stakeholder concerns. On the contrary, they are challenged to create a more participative model. According to network theory, to create an environment in which collective action can be realized, more contacts have to be established. Thus, there is a need for sustainability networks. The term sustainability networks is used to indicate the interactions of multiple stakeholders with varying degrees of interest in sustainable destination development. The interconnectedness of diverse stakeholders representing governmental bodies, business rms, persons or other entities on sustainability dimensions can improve the process of sustainable destination development. What would sustainable urban tourism actually look like? This research does not provide the answer, and the various stakeholder goals and meanings attached to the concept of SUT are to be discussed elsewhere. But the network analysis of urban tourism stakeholders does strongly suggest that sustainability will only be perceived to exist as a process, not a nal product, in which all the major stakeholders participate as equals. Exclusion of one or another important voice in this planning or policy-making process will certainly result in dissention, while their formal collaboration will ensure that one perspective does not completely dominate the discourse. This study advances theory and practice in the area of urban tourism by empirically identifying legitimate and powerful stakeholders that were critical in destination development. This study also advances theory and practice in stakeholder research by applying it in tourism destination development, and empirically testing the attributes of urban destination stakeholders.

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