Exploring Indicators and Determinants to Evaluate Innovation in Tourism Firms

Innovation is consensually recognized as a sine qua non factor for tourism firms' competitiveness. There is, however, less consensus on the way to assess it since its determinants, implicitly present in the concepts of innovation, which are based on typologies, have not yet been clearly defined. This is a central question that few researchers have tried to address. Thus, in this article, a systematic literature review was developed with the objective of presenting the state-of-the-art on the evaluation of firm-level innovation in tourism, highlighting its indicators. From the full analysis of 35 articles, it is noteworthy that the topic was analyzed in European, American, African, Asian, and Oceania contexts. As central elements, human resources management, quality, resources, projects, and knowledge (supported or not by technologies) are fundamental to evaluating innovation (predominantly incremental) in an industry where companies are easily subject to imitation by their competitors. The nature of innovation in its individual, structural, interactive, and/or systemic perspectives has been described based on the apprehension of managers' conceptions and conduct. As a challenge to be overcome by future investigations, the need to establish parameters for the quantification of the various indicators captured and, consequently, classification scales based on scores are pointed out.