‘Reverse Network Engineering’: A Top-down and Bottom-up Approach in the Tourist Market

Companies involved in turnkey projects in less developed areas often face a situation where adequate supplier networks do not exist. Or, that knowledge is lacking about adequate suppliers that potentially may be included into a supply base. Policy makers in the fields of regional industrial development face similar problems. Their colleagues in tourism have to create and/or organise not only suppliers on the input side but also suppliers in most if not all parts of the supply chain, including marketing and distribution. Actually, for policy makers tourism can be seen as an extreme case of network 'creation', for which reason we will use it as an example.