Friend or foe: Challenges to collaboration success at different lifecycle stages for regional small tourism firms in Australia

Abstract

Small tourism businesses are essential to Australia’s economy and development, particularly in regional and rural areas, where a majority of these firms are located. It is important to understand the operation of regional small tourism business, to create strategies for their sustained success into the future. This research paper explores collaboration as an operation of small tourism businesses, by understanding the extent to which small tourism firms face challenges in collaborating at different stages of their business life cycle, and how these challenges to collaboration can be overcome. Collaboration is the selected concept examined within this study as it exposes businesses to shared knowledge, resources, marketing, and capabilities, which these businesses alone would not typically possess. To understand this further, reponses about collaborative behavior were gathered from 24 small tourism operators/managers from The Granite Belt region in South-East Queensland, Australia. Tourism operators recognized several hindrances to successful collaboration: (1) a limited understanding of what collaboration is and how it can be enacted, (2) the informal nature of current collaborations, (3) unbalanced efforts from stakeholders within the collaborations, (4) competition between stakeholders, (5) differing opinions of collaborating businesses, and (6) perceived failure or misdirected leadership from local governing bodies. Using these challenges, a framework was developed that makes recommendations to tourism scholars, organizations, operators, and local councils on how to overcome these hindrances by improving communication, formalizing selected collaborative efforts, and reporting on collaborations.

Keywords

Small tourism firms regional tourism collaboration challenges small business life cycle

Introduction

Tourism Research Australia (TRA) released statistics that revealed a domination of small businesses within the industry—small businesses made up 95% of the tourism industry, broken into two types of businesses; non-employing businesses, and businesses employing 1–19 people (Tourism Research Australia, 2015). TRAs definition of small tourism businesses includes non-employing, self-employing, and businesses that employ 1–19 people (Tourism Research Australia, 2015). A majority of these small tourism businesses are located in regional areas and in these areas, their existence is crucial as they contribute significantly to regional economic development, and have even been regarded as a “saviour of the countryside” (Jackson and Murphy, 2006). It is important that these small tourism businesses, otherwise referred to as small tourism firms (STF) succeed, and as such, it is important to understand how this success can be enabled. However, research shows that STFs face a number of challenges due to their size, including a lack of flexibility, a lack of insight, inappropriate marketing mix, limited access to information, limited cash flow (Ateljevic and Doorne, 2004). In addition, they often have limited knowledge on the business environment, they utilize a short-term planning aspect, and have a management structure (typically owner-managed) that has a strong influence over the way tasks are managed (Page et al., 1999). To overcome these challenges, the literature highlights the benefit for STFs to collaborate to enhance this lack of core competencies (Telfer, 2001). Collaboration for STFs can foster the share of knowledge and resources (Caple, 2011) and advance their marketing skills (Randall and Mitchell, 2008). If collaboration can be so helpful, though, then why aren’t all STFs engaging in collaborative behaviors? While the research highlights the benefits of collaboration, there is stunted progression of the literature and as such, it has not yet extended to understand why collaboration is not always a simple process for STFs, and this research project endeavors to unpack this complexity.

This research project investigates how the aforementioned issues may present within the theoretical framework of collaboration. This project aims to uncover the extent to which regional STFs face challenges in collaborative arrangements, and furthermore, in what ways they believe they can collectively overcome the identified challenges to successful collaboration. The findings will provide strategies for STFs within regional destinations on how they can best collaborate with one another to avoid collaborative challenges.

Small tourism firms

STFs are recognized for their impact on tourist experiences (Lu and Cai, 2011), as they can provide a more diverse and unique range of product and service offerings compared to traditional tourism enterprises (Bastakis et al., 2004). STFs are defined as having 20 employees or less (Miller et al., 2010; Tourism Research Australia, 2015) and generate less than $1 million in annual sales (Miller et al., 2010). Morrison (1996) provides the following definition: “a small tourism business is financed by one individual or small group and is directly managed by its owner(s) in a personalized manner and not through the medium of a formalized management structure… it is perceived as small, in terms of physical facilities, production/service capacity, market share and number of employees” (p. 400). Businesses that are considered tourism businesses are: accommodation, cafes, restaurants and other food services, clubs, pubs, bars and casinos, retail trade, arts and cultural services, sport and recreation services, tour operator services, transport services, and motor vehicle hire (Tourism Research Australia, 2015).

In 2010, Morrison, Carlsen, and Weber concluded that, while the nature of small tourism business models is “fragile and unorthodox,” they are perceived as “powerful agents of social, economic and political transformation” (Morrison et al., 2010: 747). While limited, the literature on STFs recognizes the developmental issues they face related to inflexibility, a lack of insight, inappropriate marketing mix, limited access to information, limited cash flow (Ateljevic and Doorne, 2004), limited knowledge of the business environment, a short-term planning aspect (Page et al., 1999), small-scale development, insufficient planning efforts, hard economies of scale, and deficient supplies of resources (Romeiro and Costa, 2010). A majority of STFs reside in regional destinations, and research has shown that these geographical areas can face additional struggles due to their location that impact the competitiveness of their tourism offering. These challenges are specific to small tourism firms, and have been summarized in Table 1.

Table 1.

Summary of challenges faced by small tourism businesses.

Operational challenges identified within literature for small tourism businesses
Generic challenges	Managerial challenges	Marketing challenges
Lack of insight Inflexibility Limited cash flow Issues of uncertainty Limited access to information Seasonal fluctuation Limited knowledge on business environment Small scale development Hard economies of scale Insufficient supply of resources Regional/rural location can inhibit ability to be competitive	Owners have limited experience in tourism Rely on personal contacts to help generate sales Difficulties with management structure Attitude reflects business, and therefore can positively or negatively influence profitability Short term planning aspect or insufficient planning Regional/rural location can inhibit ability to attract skilled employees	Inappropriate marketing mix Feel disadvantaged by RTO due to size—feel they don’t receive same benefits as larger tourism businesses with more leverage Lack of critical consideration before investing in marketing activities

Extracted from: Page et al. (1999); Ateljevic and Doorne (2004).

Surprisingly, the above literature is the only existent literature that details challenges specifically for small tourism businesses. Knowledge can, however, be taken from other fields, and this literature review has expanded to recognize challenges encountered in other industries. Challenges for small businesses identified in other industries include lack of capital (Hodges et al., 2015; Meath et al., 2016), lack of information on business strategy and marketing (Harris et al., 2014; Hodges et al., 2015; Jeffs and Thomson, 2016; Meath et al., 2016; Taneja et al., 2016), lack of social resources (Hodges et al., 2015), prioritizing other issues that they perceive to be more important (Meath et al., 2016), slow technology adoption and challenges to keep up with subsequent changes to trade (Markman et al., 2016), family business dynamics and balancing business and family life (Change et al., 2011; Hodges et al., 2015), and difficulty recruiting and retaining staff (McMillan, 2016). Much of this is parallel with issues for small businesses in tourism literature, with the tourism literature adding issues related to seasonality, barriers due to regional/rural location, difficult economics of scale (which are also evident in some other industries but not all), and issues relating to relationships with tourism organizations.

For the purpose of this research project, small tourism businesses are the focus, so small to medium enterprises (SMEs) are excluded from the discussions in this study due to significant differences in their size within the tourism industry. TRA defined medium tourism businesses as those employing up to 199 persons (Tourism Research Australia, 2015), and the differences between the sizes of these businesses are significant.

In order to overcome some of the identified challenges the STFs face, it is suggested that collaboration may contribute to a solution. The literature suggests that development within small businesses requires voluntary collaboration between businesses, with their driving force being common interest in changing, developing skills, learning, improving quality, competitiveness, and innovation (Caple, 2011; Khodabandehloo, 2014). As such, the following section will further investigate benefits of collaboration for STFs.

Collaboration

The benefits of collaborating

Collaboration can offer a solution to some of the identified challenges that STFs face, by fostering knowledge and resource share (Caple, 2011). Benefits of collaboration include increased product offering, a reduction in operational costs, and improved efficiency (Naipaul et al., 2009). Tourism does not exist from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. on weekdays, but rather, 24 hours a day, seven days a week for the most part (Fennell, 2006). This means that operators of STFs are time restricted, and have little time to invest into collaborations and communicating with other STFs, as they are also in the same time restricted situation (Fennell, 2006). But, it is because of these restrictions that collaboration and cooperation are even more important (Saxena, 2005). Wood and Gray’s (1991) define collaboration as “a group of autonomous stakeholders of a problem domain engage in interactive process, using shared rules, norms and structures, to act or decide on issues related to that domain” (p. 146). Collaboration is enacted in order to enhance the core competencies of a region so that business managers can work with their competitors, instead of against them, to promote unified tourism regions (Telfer, 2001).

The terms “cluster” and “network” are commonly referred to as strategies by which collaborative arrangements can take place. The terms are commonly used interchangeably within tourism literature, as demonstrated in Bodega, Cioccarelli and Denicolai (2004), Hall (2005), Novelli et al. (2006), and Lade (2010). Networks offer a basis for identifying critical stakeholders and to what extent those stakeholders have relationships between them (Timur and Getz, 2008). Understanding networks within a region can then inform the composition of the business cluster. Business clustering is a collaboration strategy originally conceptualized for competitive advantage (Porter, 1990), and can create interdependence between stakeholders, fostering knowledge and skills transfer between them with the objective to raise to the profile of their region (Caple, 2011). The present study will identify what strategy, if any, is utilized in STF collaboration.

The challenges of collaborating

Despite collaboration being beneficial to a number of parties for a number of reasons, there are a number of challenges to collaboration that inhibit participation. To map out challenges encountered in collaborating, literature by Gray (1996) was closely examined, where identified challenges to partnerships (as a form of collaboration) are comprehensively broken down into three phases. Gray (1996) analyzed collaboration by assessing relationships between businesses, government, and communities. With an assumption that many of the challenges to successful collaboration in the form of a partnership are transferable to other types of collaborative arrangements, the challenges outlined by Gray (1996) are displayed in Figure 1.

Figure 1.

Challenges to partnership collaboration, constructed from Gray (1996).

Although the challenges identified would seemingly fit within the tourism context, the key challenges for collaboration identified by Gray (1996) have still not yet been empirically examined within the tourism industry. Gray’s study focuses on challenges within partnership type collaborations, yet challenges encountered within a partnership may be limited as they have a limited number of stakeholders. de Araujo and Bramwell (2002) commented that it would be useful for collaboration in the tourism industry to expand beyond partnerships, to include a wider range of interested organizations and individuals and at present, the literature on collaboration within the tourism industry has not comprehensively expandedto understand the challenges that are encountered for STFs collaborating at different stages of their business life cycles. As such, this research project integrates these complexities to understand collaboration challenges beyond that of partnerships, and at different life cycle stages.

Integrating the business lifecycle

The business lifecycle typically means that a business will experience different stages of development and growth (Lipi, 2013). As such, life cycle factors could pose differences in the way that businesses at different stages of the experience collaborative challenges. Collaboration could be a tool to accelerate the business from existence and survival to success, or it could also be a renewal strategy, and could also be a tool after the existence and survival stages. There are many different business life cycles and the stages within those differ, yet the basic inception of the life cycle remains the same through growth, maturity, and decline (Dibrell et al., 2011).

When considering how STFs progress through the stages of their lifecycle, it is acknowledged that small businesses face different challenges to larger businesses (Strobl and Kronenberg, 2016) and as such, many lifecycle models were analyzed for their suitability for use within the present study. The life cycle model by Lester et al. (2003) was chosen for use within this study for many reasons. Firstly, the five stages that are used within this model are similar to stages used within a majority other life cycle models, encapsulating what predominant research suggests. This model is not designed solely for small business like other models (Churchill and Lewis, 1983; Scott and Bruce, 1987) or for large businesses (Miller and Friesen, 1984; Smith et al., 1985), but is relevant for all organizations and as such, implementing this model within the present study ensures to capture all businesses.

While it is recognized that this study focuses on STFs and a model for small business could be implemented instead, like Churchill and Lewis (1983), it is also recognized that the model by Lester et al. (2003) is more recent, providing current insights into the business lifecycle. Futhermore, this model was used again by Lester and Parnell (2006) on their analysis of a small, family-owned and operated company, which resonates with the style of businesses within the present study. Churchill and Lewis (1983) model was also closely aligned with this study as their model focuses on small business, yet it was deemed that the model by Lester et al. (2003) was more suitable due to the differences in Stages 4 and 5. In Lester’s model, there is a strong focus on collaboration and interaction with other businesses, which is the focus of the present study, whereas the model by Churchill and Lewis (1983) focuses more on the growth of the firm and its resources without considering interaction with others. The five stages from Lester et al. (2003) have been summarized and are outlined in Table 2.

Table 2.

Five stages of business life cycle summarized from Lester et al. (2003), including Potential Challenges for Collaborating STFs.

Stage	Description
1: Existence	The focus is on viability, or simply identifying a sufficient number of customers to support the existence of the organization.
2: Survival	This stage provides several interesting alternatives; some organizations grow large and prosper well enough to enter stage three, some “hit and miss,” earning marginal returns in some fiscal cycles, and others fail to generate sufficient revenue to survive.
3: Success	Job descriptions, policies and procedures, and reporting relationships have become much more formal. Such organizations have passed the survival test, growing to a point that they may seek to protect what they have gained instead of targeting new territory.
4: Renewal	Collaboration and teamwork foster innovation and creativity. This creativity is sometimes facilitated through the use of a matrix structure, and decision making is very much decentralized.
5: Decline	Control and decision making tend to return to a handful of people, as the desire for power and influence in earlier stages has eroded the viability of the organization.

Although past scholars have alluded to the positive outcomes for businesses when successful collaboration was present (Cai, 2002; Cox and Wray, 2011), our understanding of what that collaboration looks like between STFs and the extent to which challenges may be present in collaborative arrangements at different business life cycle stages is still limited. This study therefore seeks to uncover how regional STFs collaborate at different stages of the business life cycle, underpinned by the theoretical framework of collaboration challenges and analyzed against the business lifecycle model. The study aims to answer the question; “How do STFs face challenges in collaborating at different stages of their business lifecycle?”

Case study design

In order to gain a deep understanding of how STFs collaborate, a qualitative methodology was employed to provide the richness of information sought (Tracy, 2013). The research was conducted with an interpretivist paradigm to allow for the consideration of multiple meanings for things, based on each participant’s understanding of reality (Jebreen, 2012). This is particularly important in this research project because the way in which STFs share information, knowledge, and ideas with one another is significant in understanding the landscape of collaboration in a regional tourism destination.

The research was conducted via a holistic, single case study that was explanatory in nature, seeking to investigate operational links to interpret what is happening and “why.” This methodology is most appropriate as it assists in the formation and understanding of underlying actions of participants, and maintains meaningfulness by investigating real-life organizational processes (Yin, 1994). Case studies are considered essential in the development of understanding of how certain concepts are present in a given group as they allow the research to progress naturally (Flyvbjerg, 2006). Case studies facilitate in-depth understanding and organizational learning (Helgenberger, 2011), and furthermore, have been successfully used in a previous tourism studies that analyses collaboration between small tourism businesses (Caple, 2011), which aligns with the present study.

The case

The regional area of the Granite Belt in Queensland, Australia, was selected as a study site for this research project. The Granite Belt is located in South-East Queensland, around 200 km south of the state’s capital city, Brisbane. The Granite Belt is made up of an array of small villages, with Stanthorpe being the most prominent. The Granite Belt is governed by the Southern Downs Regional Council (SDRC), which was formed in 2008 as an outcome of the Queensland Local Government Reform process, and encompasses the areas that were formerly occupied by the Warwick and Stanthorpe Shire Councils. The SDRC has recently formed a tourism advisory committee, “Regional Promotion, Tourism & The Arts Advisory” (RPTAA), whose duty it is to discuss tourism strategy for the region. External to the local council, the Granite Belt is included by the Regional Tourism Organization (RTO) “Southern Queensland Country” (SQC). Membership to SQC requires an annual fee. There is communication and interaction between SQC and the local council, however no hierarchical relationship exists—SQC exists outside of the scope of local councils. Within the Granite Belt, a local tourism organization has been formed for many years, called Granite Belt Wine and Tourism (GBWT), also paid membership. Figure 2 outlines the current structure of council and tourism bodies within the Granite Belt, including the local council and the RTO.

Figure 2.

Different levels of governing tourism bodies within the granite belt region.

Access to participants

The unit of analysis for the research is structure-focused, looking at units within organizations. Those units are small tourism businesses and tourism service providers within a regional destination in Australia, and the source of data is the business owners or managers who operate these firms. Purposive sampling using judgment was deemed the most appropriate mainly because of the first author’s preexisting knowledge about the region. The first author was born and raised within the Granite Belt region, and due to her knowledge and connections within the region, she was able to select businesses that are recognized for their ability to collaborate, or their history of prior collaborations.

Data collection

Figure 3 outlines the recruitment process of participants, which took 12 weeks from February 2017. Mason (2010) conducted research into a variety of studies (Charmaz, 2006;Green and Thorogood, 2009; Morse, 1995, 2000; Ritchie et al., 2003), with the aim to investigate the most common sample size. Twenty-foursix was a satisfactory sample size, firstly, because saturation of data was reached and secondly, it has been backed by research. The opinions of a council representative and a representative from Southern Queensland Country Tourism (SQCT) were sought to add depth and further understanding to the data. A round of questions was presented for response via email to a representative of SQCT, the RTO for the Granite Belt Region, and to a representative from Southern Downs Region Council (SDRC) the local council, which added an additional two participants, totaling 26 respondents.

Figure 3.

Process of participant recruitment.

Limitations

This research is not without limitations. Firstly, the research project only included those businesses who were deemed to be collaborative in nature. Gathering opinion from small businesses who are not actively engaging in collaboration would identify additional barriers and challenges to successful collaboration, and would enable a more comprehensive understanding of why more businesses were not participating in collaboration. Secondly, the data collection phase of the research project occurred at a time where emotions and frustrations within the region were particularly heightened, due to structural changes within the local council as they transitioned to a different destination marketing organization that encompassed different branding.

Data analysis

The in-depth interviews were voice recorded, and then transcribed verbatim for analysis. In order to make the data analysis process as straight forward and simple as possible, the researcher also maintained summaries, self-memos, and a research diary throughout the entire data collection period. Content analysis and thematic analysis were the selected procedures to categorize the data for the purpose of classification and summarization, and independent audits were conducted after the themes had been classified (Braun and Clarke, 2006; Gbrich, 2007 in Vaismoradi et al., 2013). The themes were generated ground up, and then compared with the literature. The data were analyzed without computer programs as the researchers did not want to distance themselves from the data due to interest in understanding the participant’s opinion and obtaining a good grasp of the data and themes.

Findings and discussion

The respondent profile (Table 3) provides details of the participants. The no. represents the number given to each participant that participated in that interview. All participants interviewed were owners or managers (or both) of the business, with the exception of respondents 25 and 26, who were representatives for their organizations. For those who have two numbers that indicates that there were two owners/managers present. In this instance, the age and time in role were the same in all cases, as all of the duos were couples who owned and managed the business together, and were therefore of similar age, and had the same time in the role. For duos that were interviewed together, the duration of the interview is the combined total, as both participants were interviewed at the same time, not one on one, as this was their preference. The Industry Memberships column outlines what organizations (if any) the business is a part of, to give an indication as to how involved the businesses are in industry initiatives. The details of the representatives from SDRC and SCQ have been purposefully left out for confidentiality purposes.

Table 3.

Respondent profile.

No.	Business type	Age	Industry memberships	Age of business (years)	Time in role (years)	Business life cycle stage
1	Accommodation	>50	SQC/GBWT	NA	1	Existence
2	Accommodation	>40	NA	8	8	Survival
3 + 4	Tour company	>50	SQC	2	2	Existence
5 + 6	Restaurant/accommodation	>40	NA	>50	9	Renewal
7	Winery	>50	GBWT	>40	10	Decline
8 + 9	Accommodation	>40	SQC/GBWT	>30	<1	Renewal
10	Winery	>40	SQC/GBWT	>40	>20	Renewal
11 + 12	Accommodation	>50	SQC/GBWT	10	1	Existence
13 + 14	Café/attraction	>40	SQC/GBWT	16	1	Existence
15	Accommodation	>50	SQC/GBWT	10	8	Success
16	Winery	>50	SQC/GBWT	>20	9	Decline
17 + 18	Accommodation	>60	SQC	6	6	Survival
19	Café/attraction	>60	SQC	17	17	Renewal
20	Attraction	>30	SQC/GBWT	6	6	Survival
21 + 22	Accommodation	>60	GBWT	18	18	Renewal
23	Accommodation	>60	SQC	12	12	Existence
24	Restaurant/winery	>50	SQC/GBWT	10	3	Renewal
25	SDRC Rep
26	SQC Rep

SDRC: Southern Downs Regional Council; SQC: Southern Queensland Country; GBWT: Granite Belt Wine and Tourism.

Many of the challenges recognized within literature surfaced within the interviews of the participants of this research project, but new themes also emerged.

The small business lifecycle

Within the responses from the participants, it was evident that those participants who had only been the owner/manager for a short time expressed different emotions and experiences than those who had been owner/manager for a longer period of time. This was most evident when asking participants to detail the benefits that they felt they received from collaboration. In the responses, it seems that those owners/managers who were in business for a short timer period seemed very grateful and excited to be a part of collaborations within the region, as opposed to those owners/managers who had been in business for several years, who looked at collaboration as a form of essential support to overcome their struggles

Respondent 5 (Owner for 9 years): You get that sense of camaraderie… You kind of realise that we're all in it for the same sort of reasons…. And, it kind of gives you that sense that “no man is an island”…

From the opinions that were expressed by participants, it seems that business owners/managers in Stage 1, the “Existence” phase, seemed to be more eager to collaborate to learn as much as they could, in comparison to business owners/managers in later stages. To clearly portray the subsequent issues that arise in association with the business life cycle for STFs, the Table 4 has been adapted from Table 2.

Table 4.

Five stages of business life cycle and the effect on collaboration challenges.

	Stages of collaboration
Life cycle stage	Establishing/redefining	Setting goals	Direction setting	Implementation	Monitoring and revision
1) Existence: R: 1, 3/4, 11/12, 13/14, 23	Eager to collaborate Unmatched enthusiasm from successful STFs	Inexperienced Need to rely on advice from successful STFs	Follow lead of successful STFs—Hoping to gain knowledge	Follow lead of successful STFs Often afraid to take leadership	Follow lead of successful STFs Don’t believe value of monitoring
2) Survival: R: 2, 17/18, 20	Collaboration is a priority for STFs gaining success, not for failing STFs	Focused on sole benefit for business rather than region	Likely to push own agenda as they strive to succeed	Focused on own business and less involved in collaboration	Eager to see results of collaboration
3) Success: R: 15	Caught up in businesses success and collaboration is less important	Focused on sole benefit for business rather than benefit for region	Likely to push own agenda to succeed Competitive, don’t wish to share insights	Focused on own business, not collaboration OR pushy on the others to increase own success	Eager to see results of collaboration and collaborate again if positive outcomes
4) Renewal: R: 5/6, 8/9, 10, 19, 21/22, 24	Eager to collaborate Cautious about collaborating if uneven input from others	Set goals for whole region, not just own business, realizing long-term benefits	Move quickly to implement Experienced and likely worked with one another before	Keen to push agenda and move collaborations Aren’t afraid to take leadership roles	Fail to monitor and revise Confident they can go off past experience for the future
5) Decline: R: 7, 16	Not eager to collaborate Believe most collaborations fail and was a cause of their decline	Don’t set goals Hold onto past mistakes Rehash old arguments	Given up Lack of direction for collaboration and own business	Eager to implement, provides a positive focus	Don’t usually monitor or report Keen to try in case it helps their business

Limited knowledge

Some participants admitted that their understanding of collaboration was nascent and their knowledge was limited. Businesses within the existence stage of their life cycle felt this more commonly than those in the renewal stage. When asked for their definition of collaboration, the majority of the responses were around the basis of working together and working with others for a mutual goal, a common goal, or the betterment of the region. Essentially, while the definitions were accurate, they were somewhat basic and what most of the definitions lacked was the element of “action,” that being, the process by which collaboration constructively deals with differences of stakeholders, and “to act or decide on issues” (Wood and Gray, 1991). The constructed framework from Gray (1996) begins at the “Problem Setting” phase once the collaboration has been established, yet a lack of knowledge about collaboration by inhibit the participation in collaboration before it has a chance to begin.

The informal nature of STF collaboration

Interestingly, a large number of respondents explained that their involvement in collaborations was not structured, and there had not been any formalization of their collaborative efforts. Businesses who were in the success and renewal stages of the business lifecycle and had experience with collaborations emphasized the casual nature of the collaboration. Two respondents described the casual nature of the collaboration using the term “off-the-cuff.” This theme was implied in the following participant response: “We’ve never formally written it down, and that's probably something we should do, is report back, but we all just know that it was successful and you get on and you do it again next year.” The informal nature of the collaboration is somewhat consistent with the literature on STFs, that explains that only a small percentage of STFs have a formal business plan in action and that most marketing activities engaged in have informal consideration (Ateljevic, 2007).

Unbalanced efforts

It emerged from the data that businesses involved in collaboration felt that there was unbalanced and uneven efforts contributed by other participating businesses. This came from businesses in each of the business life cycle stages, but more commonly from those in the survival, renewal, and decline stages due to their experiences collaborating. Around half of the respondents expressed that they felt their efforts were not met with the same amount of effort from other tourism providers, or that the collaboration was not reciprocal, as indicated by this response: “Sometimes there are just people out there you don’t work with, because you know it is just not going to work for you… you’ll end up doing all the work.” In relation to the literature, it seems many issues arose for participants in what could be considered the second phase of a partnership development, “direction setting,” where challenges can emerge around the compliance of members (Gray, 1996: 64). However, it could be concluded that this was due to the fact that the collaborations were not formally structured in the beginning, where members were able to communicate their expectations of other members within the collaboration. As mentioned,Gray (1996) identified that the first phase of partnership development, “problem setting” includes agreements around the goal and aim of the partnership and the commitment and involvement of members (p. 64), and because the majority of collaborations within the Granite Belt were unstructured as identified earlier, the tourism operators did not express their expectations and have subsequently been let down, as their expectations were not met.

Competition

Participants in the existence, survival, and success stages of the business life cycle expressed responses of competition more commonly, as they had not yet recognized the benefits of collaborating as a region, for the benefit of the region. During one interview, the participant expressed that they understood many of the challenges associated with collaboration to be a result of the businesses involved having a “small business mentality.” Noted in this response from the participant when asked to expand on the use of the term “small business mentality” was the element of competition. Issues associated with competition were also noted in the literature by Hodges et al. (2015), suggesting that high levels of competition were an issue often present for small businesses (not specifically in tourism). Around half of the participants in this case study recognized that competition was a challenge they were facing in successfully collaborating.

Differing opinions

Another common theme that emerged from the data was differing opinion of tourism operators. Literature explains that much of the operation of STFs relies on the personal values, attitudes, beliefs, and motivations of the owner/management (Gorgievski et al., 2011), which could be one of the reasons that business operators struggle to agree—they each have their own opinion and run their businesses accordingly. Respondents indicated that it felt as though there were too many egos and “splinter groups” (R13), and that it can “be like putting 20 chefs in a room” (R7). The respondents in the survival and decline stages expressed these opinions more strongly, with seeming frustration as they feel perhaps the collaborations were a reason why their business was not succeeding. Previous research has also explained that the success of a STF is often reliant on the ability of the owner/managers communication skills, politeness, and outgoing personality (Ateljevic, 2007), and so if a STF operator was not particularly outgoing or socially inclined, they may incur barriers to successful, collaborative relationships.

Failed/misguided leadership from local governing body

Many participants in this study feel they are disadvantaged by two main groups, the local council, and the LTO, GBWT, yet did not feel at all disadvantaged by the RTO, SQCT. A sense of defeat and frustration was evident during the interviews, and while none of the interview questions actually prompted response about any of the tourism bodies or council, the local council and the LTO were consistently mentioned in association with challenges that the STFs were facing. Many respondents became angry and frustrated as they communicated their opinion, and these respondents were from every single stage of the business life cycle, from existence right through to decline. These responses are somewhat consistent with previous research that suggested that STFs often feel disadvantaged by tourism organisations due to their location or the size of their businesses (Ateljevic, 2007).

When asked how the small tourism businesses in the Granite Belt generally respond to assistance and guidance from the council, the representative communicated this response: “Every business is responsible for its own promotion and marketing whether it be a tourism operator, fuel station or retailer. The role of Council is to promote tourism and events for the region and the operators need to ensure they have adequately marketed their business to capture visitors to the region.” The council representative also added this comment: “Collaboration is the way forward in tourism.” These comments highlight the breakdown in communication between the STFs within the Granite Belt and the local council.

Overcoming challenges to successful collaboration

Participants expressed a number of ways in which they believe they could overcome the barriers that they are facing to successful collaboration. The main themes identified for ways to overcome challenges for successful collaboration are displayed in Table 5.

Table 5.

Overcoming challenges for successful collaboration.

Findings	Degree of contribution
Learning best practice collaboration and marketing	Expansion
Greater involvement from businesses	New
Enhanced communication	New
Enhanced leadership from governing tourism bodies	Expansion

In order to best consider the challenges that arose from the participant’s responses and integrate their suggestions for overcoming barriers, the following framework illustrated as Figure 4 was constructed.

Figure 4.

Framework for overcoming challenges for collaboration success.

The framework begins on the inner and works outwards. The inner circles represent the challenges that are encountered within each of the corresponding phases of collaboration. It then progresses outwards to the continuous circle of text, which are the suggested strategies to overcome these challenges. The strategies integrate the suggestions of the tourism operators; learned best practice collaboration and marketing, greater involvement from business (both tourism and non-tourism), enhanced communication, and enhanced leadership from governing tourism bodies. These suggested strategies to overcome collaborative challenges should be enacted throughout the entire process of collaboration. The outermost circles are the phases of collaboration, with an explanation of how to succeed in each collaboration phase. The phases of collaboration were created with consideration for Gray’s 1996 phases of partnership development, by amending a new set of phases that better encapsulated the process by which collaboration occurs for regional STFs. The cycle begins at “Establishing or Re-Defining the Collaboration,” and progresses through the circular phase time and time again as collaborations grow and evolve. This process is not numbered like Gray’s 1996 framework, as the collaboration process described by participants did not have a beginning or end, but rather, was a circular, continuous process.

Conclusions and future research

STFs face significant barriers due to their size, and collaborating can help them to overcome these by sharing knowledge and resources. This research reveals an understanding of the collaborative behaviors of STFs, and the guidelines provided within this study can improve the success of STF collaboration. Using qualitative methodology allowed the researchers to gain a unique understanding and insight into the issues that regional small tourism businesses were facing, and the in-depth interviews encouraged participants to honestly recall their stories and struggles. The project achieved the aims of the paper by contributing knowledge on the degrees that regional small tourism businesses face challenges in successfully collaborating, detailing how those challenges were felt by STFs at different stages of the small business life cycle, and presenting ways in which these businesses can overcome the identified challenges. The main issues identified by the tourism operators within the Granite Belt region include possessing limited knowledge about collaboration, having informal structures within any collaborations, unbalanced efforts by members, differing opinions between members, and misdirected leadership and communication breakdowns between tourism operators and governing tourism bodies within the region, including the local council. The participants also presented solutions to overcoming their barriers in collaborating. The study presents the framework as a contribution to literature, offering new and expanded knowledge within academia to the effective operation and subsequent success of regional small tourism businesses.

It is anticipated that, though collaborative challenges are felt differently by STFs during different stages of their business life cycle, this framework will enable them to overcome the challenge at all stages of the business life cycle. The framework is to be used as a guideline for industry to utilize in order to overcome barriers to successful collaboration, and as a guide to forming new collaborations.

It is recommended that future research investigates the best strategy by which regional small tourism firms engage in collaboration particularly collaborative strategies like networking and business clustering (Weidenfeld et al., 2011), which may offer appropriate structures by which STFs can collaborate. In addition, it is recommended that future research continues to uncover the management and operation of small tourism firms, the challenges they may encounter, and how those challenges may be overcome, recognizing that small tourism businesses in regional destinations possess unique characteristics that warrant customizations of traditional theories and concepts.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Author Biographies

Rachel Perkins is currently doing her PhD in Griffith University’s Department of Tourism, Sport and Hotel Management, focusing on collaboration within regional and rural tourism destinations. Her research interests are focused on the supply-side of tourism, and finding solutions to problems by working closely with industry on projects. Rachel is also a sessional tutor and research assistant for Griffith Business School, and works casually at the Griffith Centre for Sustainable Enterprise.

Catheryn Khoo-Lattimore has a PhD in Marketing and researches at the Griffith Institute for Tourism, Australia. She also consults for the hospitality and tourism industry, and is the UNWTO Regional Field Expert on the 2019 Global Report on Women in Tourism. Catheryn is also Editor-in-Chief for Tourism Management Perspectives, and regularly speaks at international tourism events.

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