Hexa‑Helix Coopetition for Sustainable Destination Management

Tourism remains one of the world’s most economically significant sectors, driving employment, investment and local development across diverse regions. For example, in the UK alone, the visitor economy generated £147 billion in GDP in 2024, representing 5% of national economic output, and supported 2.4 million jobs, approximately one in every 15 workers. Similar patterns are observed worldwide, where destinations rely heavily on tourism revenues but increasingly struggle with pressures including overcrowding, environmental degradation, policy fragmentation, rising travel costs, and widening regional inequalities. The World Travel & Tourism Council forecasts up to £60 billion in potential tourism‑revenue losses in major markets if structural weaknesses, regulatory burdens, and underinvestment in coordinated destination management are left unaddressed.

To address this complexity, this project adopts a Hexa‑Helix approach, an evolution of Etzkowitz and Leydesdorff’s (1998) well‑established Triple Helix model which conceptualises innovation as the interaction of government, industries, and academia. Contemporary interpretations extend this framework into multi‑helix models such as quadruple, quintuple, and hexa‑helix, incorporating additional societal actors including communities, media, and regulators to better reflect today’s collaborative governance systems in sustainability and regional development contexts. The Hexa‑Helix model therefore provides an analytically rich structure for examining destination‑management ecosystems involving diverse actors with intersecting mandates. To understand the tensions and dynamics within these systems, the project further integrates coopetition theory, introduced by Brandenburger and Nalebuff (1996), which conceptualises cooperation and competition as simultaneous, interdependent strategic behaviours that shape value creation among organisations. Applying this combined lens enables deeper insight into how destination stakeholders coordinate or fail to coordinate in advancing sustainability goals.

The main research objectives are:
1) To critically examine multi‑actor governance and power dynamics.

2) To investigate structural, policy and institutional barriers to sustainable destination management.

3) To empirically map stakeholder networks and coopetitive relationships.

4) To develop and validate the Hexa‑Helix Coopetition Framework for sustainable destinations.

Data will be gathered through qualitative interviews, policy analysis, stakeholder‑network mapping, and quantitative surveys with helix actors to map destination‑system stakeholders, analyse patterns of collaboration and competition, and identify governance barriers that impede sustainable destination‑management outcomes.

The expected outcome is a Hexa‑Helix Coopetition Framework for Sustainable Destination Management, providing theoretical advancement in multi‑actor governance that offer practical guidance for policymakers, destination‑management organisations, tourism businesses, regulators, and community groups seeking to pursue destination sustainability.

Supervisors

Dr Diana Abdullah

Assoc. Prof. Tatbeeq Raza-Ullah