Resources and Activities Complementarities: the Role of Business Networks in the Provision of Integrated Rural Tourism

This paper focuses on the role of business networks, and especially on the ways in which formal and informal interactions among economic agents shape the tourist product. Local businesses are considered as agents who realize and/or create economic opportunities and develop new goals and strategies. Businesses are not viewed as independent entities, but as actors whose actions are embedded in structures of ongoing relations. As such, similar resources and activities based in rural tourism destinations do not necessarily have the same consequences at different times and places. Business networking is a crucial factor in organizing activities and resources at the local level, leading to spatially different levels of integration. Such differences are focused on here, using illustrative examples and findings from the case-study regions in the UK, Spain and Greece.