Abstract
Tourism destinations can be examined from the perspective of diagonal clusters (Michael, 2003) when the co-location of complementary firms and the relational dynamics that are established among them are addressed. Accordingly, the coordination between these interrelated firms is crucial to destination competitiveness as the activities of each firm add value to individual and collective goals (Novelli et al., 2006) and to destination resilience (Hartman et al., 2020). As a result, the coordination between the suppliers in a tourism supply chain has recently gained research attention (Zhang et al., 2009) yet only a few studies address it, especially empirically. This PhD dissertation proposal examines the role of coordination in the creation and preservation of competitiveness in a tourism destination. It seeks to contribute to science with a deeper understanding of coordination in destinations, and to practice with a support tool for decision-making processes aimed at increasing tourism firms’ performance and resilience.