Ambivalence in the evolution of a community-based tourism sharing concept: a public governance approach

ABSTRACT Limited attention has been given to the underlying prerequisites for how the tourism industry can develop a well-informed, holistic and strategic governance that would lead to more robust sustainable tourism governance. By introducing a theoretical approach stressing a deeper and more contextual understanding of tourism development in the face of a growing interest in the sharing economy, the study engenders insights into the complexity of one public tourism organisation's creativity and ambivalence when approaching alternative tourism strategies. The aim is to undertake an in-depth investigation into the evolution of one tourism sharing economy concept initiated and implemented by a public tourism organisation in Sweden, focusing especially on the factors driving and hampering change from traditional tourism growth to a sharing business logic. Concluding remarks revolve around the complex environment in which the public tourism organisation manoeuvres. On the one hand, the study considers the lock-in of the vertical tourism-centric discourse and, on the other hand, the potential of breaking free from the traditional business model through co-creational capacity building in the regional context.