ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a review of the concept of knowledge management and its relationship to tourism and networks. It is timely as tourism is experiencing an operating environment characterized by a focus on globalization, intense competition, environmental turbulence and both rapid and ubiquitous change. The knowledge economy – and its approach to knowledge management – has emerged as a response to cope with this environmental turbulence. The new era is characterized by the recognition of knowledge as a core commodity and its management as fundamental to innovation, organizational renewal and sustainable competitive advantage. Clearly, tourism can benefit from managing tourism knowledge in both organizations and destinations, though the sector has been slow to adapt to this new opportunity. This chapter aims to show the benefits of generating and managing knowledge for networked tourism organizations and destinations and outlines a model for tourism and knowledge management.
