Business models in tourism: a review and research agenda

Purpose
Business models and the business model concept have become a fixture of scholarly and managerial attention. With a focus on how actors create, capture, and disseminate value, business model research holds the promise to inform the tourism sector’s search for ways to innovate and change outdated business practices. Yet, the concept has inspired little research tackling the contingencies of the tourism context. We address this gap in this review and research agenda on business models in tourism.

Design/methodology/approach
In this article, we review and synthesize contributions from publications in EBSCO, Emerald Insight, ProQuest, and Science Direct databases, that make explicit use of the business model concept in tourism (anytime up to September 2016). We conceptualize the identified articles as a coherent body of knowledge on business models in tourism with the objective of identifying common themes that characterize existing contributions.

Findings
From the review of 28 qualified articles we identify four emergent themes: (1) sector specific configurations, (2) the role of different value types, (3) design themes for consistency, and (4) regulatory contingencies. These themes inform three domains in which we present avenues for tourism-specific studies on business models as well as their management and innovation that we position in relation to the general business model literature.

Originality/value
Our review details how researchers across disciplines conceptualize the business model. Together with the identified directions for further research, this literature review article thus establishes a common conceptual basis and stock of knowledge for the study of business models in tourism research.