'The role of adaptive capabilities in supporting Ireland's senior tourism agenda'

AimThe aim of this research paper is to capitalise on the burgeoning senior tourism sector by exploring the dynamic capability orientation of micro-tourism firm owner/ managers (those employing less than ten employees). The... [ view full abstract ]

Aim
The aim of this research paper is to capitalise on the burgeoning senior tourism sector by exploring the dynamic capability orientation of micro-tourism firm owner/ managers (those employing less than ten employees). The research elicits their conceptions of senior tourism and explores the activities, strategic enablers and resource constraints of their multi-level capabilities. Additionally, the research endeavours to surface the dynamism inherent within these capability sets to sense, react and reconfigure the resource base in response to the emerging senior tourism concept. As such, it focuses on the over 55 years senior market, the vagaries of seasonal demand and the study of embedded Irish micro-tourism firms within the tourism landscape. In tandem with this, there is the ability of dynamic capability theory, and more specifically an adaptive capability approach, to bestow upon micro-firms a transient competitive advantage. Also interwoven within these ideas is a cultural heritage substrate, upon which Ireland has hewn its international reputation and vies for foreign tourists through the magnificence of its landscape (Guiney, 2002). Such attributes combine to produce a tourism product which is ‘more than the sum of its parts’ and is integral to Ireland’s economic prosperity (Mehta, 2007: p. 115). The future emphasis of Irish tourism policy is on changing the ‘focus from overseas visitor numbers, to overseas visitor revenue’ (Department of Transport Tourism and Sport, 2015: p. 6) and to achieve this, firms must embrace new trading opportunities and market initiatives.

Contextual Overview 

Tourism as a global industry is resilient and pervasive, encompassing both geographical and demographic boundaries. It is an important component of the worldwide economy and is one of the largest and fastest growing sectors (Jarvis et al., 2016; Phillips and Moutinho, 2014; Cracolici and Nijkamp, 2009; Estol and Font, 2016). The Irish tourism sector has been steadily recovering from the effects of the fiscal turbulence experienced in Ireland from 2008-2011. 2017 was the country’s seventh successive year of growth in attracting international tourism numbers to Ireland, producing overseas earnings of €5.78 billion, attracting 10.65 million visitors and supporting in excess of 281,000 jobs, making it a record year for Irish tourism (Tourism Ireland, 2017).

However, nestled within the euphoric headline figures of a sector rebounding from the degradation of economic austerity (2008-2011), is the anomaly of many tourism micro-firm owner/ managers being unable to capitalise on this stellar growth. The tourism sector is experiencing a paradigm shift in the short to medium term: capacity constraints of the larger population centres have the potential to constrict future economic growth; trading patterns are truncated and irregular, and the tourism offering is ambiguous amongst the wider demographic segments (Fáilte Ireland, 2014; 2016a). In addition to these challenges, a modern interpretation and re-imagining of Ireland’s tourism offering to lessen the reliance on ‘a hazy green image’ and ‘a warm welcome’ (Fáilte Ireland, 2016d), present tourism micro-firm operators with a window of opportunity to redesign their offering in terms of an intuitive geographical, chronological and methodological approach.

Projected demographic trends indicate that ‘Europe is turning increasingly grey’ and that budgetary pressures will increase upon areas such as healthcare, unemployment benefit, long term care, pensions and education (European Commission, 2015a, p. 1). There is also opportunistic untapped potential for the tourism sector in the arrival of a growing demographic wave of senior citizens. Discretionary activities are an important pastime, giving rise to the prominence of leisure pursuits amongst developed nations. A rise in uninhibited free time and increased disposable income have generated a new lifestyle framework centred on tourism and recreation (Cracolici and Nijkamp, 2009). Rising lifestyle changes have resulted in current seniors being more travel conscious than previous generations and tourism is emerging as one of the largest beneficiaries of this demographic trend (Alén et al., 2016). Despite the increasing significance of the senior market, it is a relatively recent occurrence within the marketing literature (Moschis, 2003; Nichols and Moschen, 2015). This cohort of seniors was largely overlooked by marketers until the mid-1980s (Moschis et al., 1997) and is growing in importance due to their relative affluence and propensity for flexible, all-year round travel schedules (Sudbury and Simcock, 2009; Le Serre and Chevalier, 2012; Ward, 2014). The opportunity of harvesting the revenue potential of this niche demographic is presented to the many micro-firms interlaced within an Irish culture and heritage setting. Notwithstanding empirical evidence from academic sources (Ward, 2014; Le Serre, 2008; González et al., 2009; Sudbury and Simcock, 2009) and administrative sectors (Eurostat, 2015a; United Nations World Tourism Organisation, 2015; United Nations, 2015), Ireland’s overseas visitors marketing campaign fails to explicitly engage with these senior tourists. Those businesses at the coalface of the tourism sector must have ‘the right mix of skills’, as called for by the Department of Transport Tourism and Sport (2015, p. 6), to capitalise upon the planned rejuvenation of the Irish tourism industry over the next decade.

A dynamic capabilities lens, refocused through an adaptive capabilities filter, has direct relevance to exploring this senior tourism phenomenon by promoting economically significant change (Helfat and Winter, 2011), and making appropriate strategic adjustments in response to external stimuli (Schindehutte and Morris, 2001). Ma et al. (2009: p. 1087) define strategic adaptive capability as ‘a firm’s capacity to sense and respond to environmental changes in a relatively quick and flexible way’ and that a specific adaptive capability lies within alertness and responsiveness to the business environment. Adaptive capabilities which are a component of dynamic capabilities (Wang and Ahmed, 2007), enable a firm to assimilate the economic influences within the external environment, in turn leading to the identification and maximisation of nascent business opportunities (Biedenbach and Müller, 2012). Schindehutte and Morris (2001) call for additional research on how small firm entrepreneurs cope with adaptation, whether it is proactive, planned and strategic, or whether it is defensive, reactive and purely functional.

Research Question

The research question under consideration is:

‘How dynamic are micro-firm owner/ managers at reacting to the emerging senior tourism phenomenon?’

The research question will be guided by the following research objectives:

• To explore owner/managers awareness and appetite for engaging in senior tourism
• To surface the enablers and barriers of owner/ managers’ capabilities to operationalise a senior tourism focus
• To gauge how dynamic and adaptive owner/managers are to orientate towards and respond to senior tourism market opportunities

Research methodology

Qualitative analysis was undertaken through 24 semi-structured interviews with the owner/ managers of tourism micro-firms within the cultural heritage domain in the south east of Ireland. Both purposive and snowball sampling selection techniques were utilised and interviewees were drawn from firms competing in both the natural and built heritage sectors and the traditional and living culture segments. Analysis of the interview transcripts was undertaken using NVivo 11 data management software. This research adopted a subjectivist approach gravitating towards an interpretivist orientation. The research study was guided by an inductive approach and the unit of analysis focused upon the owner/ manager interaction with higher order capabilities to facilitate potential senior tourism engagement.

Findings

The primary data was collected by means of 24 face to face semi-structured interviews with the owner/ managers of micro-tourism firms in the south east of Ireland. The transcripts were imported into NVivo 11 and coded using thematic analysis. The subsequent findings will explore the extent to which owner/ managers adapt to market volatility by altering their resource base and strategic focus to create a better fit between the organisation and the environment. The function of higher order capabilities within the cultural heritage firms will be observed and the role of adaptive capabilities geared towards a senior tourism focus will be studied.

Research implications

This research project established a line of best fit between relevant literature pertaining to senior tourism, seasonality of demand, adaptive dynamic capabilities and micro-firm managerial frameworks. The tourism sector has a low propensity for the development of inventive processes and services (Camisón and Monfort-Mir, 2012) and small firms within the industry remain under-researched (Thomas et al., 2011; Kearney et al., 2013). The senior tourism sector is an under-studied phenomenon (Meltem and Tahir, 2014; Kim et al., 2015; Alén et al., 2014) and more acutely so from an Irish perspective (Ward, 2014). Further compounding this paucity is the deficiency of research into the effects of off-peak seasonality within the Irish senior tourism market (Matthews et al., 2012). This research aims to demonstrate that the advancing demographic wave of an ageing population will present both opportunities and challenges for the tourism sector.

Originality

The output of this research will develop a programme of improvement whereby micro-firms can transcend best practice by integrating higher-level capabilities into their processes in a sustainable way. The impact of adaptive capabilities upon key decision makers to overcome organisational inertia and promote proactive competitive engagement will be highlighted. Senior tourism is a growing phenomenon and those firms that view the sector as a homogeneous appendage to the wider family market are shunning a core component of their future customer base.