Keywords

1 Introduction

Tourism destinations (TD) are facing paradigmatic changes in the socio-demographic environment, digitalization and sustainability. Innovation is a fundamental vehicle for modernization and competitiveness in this environment (Divisekera & Nguyen, 2018; Hall & Williams, 2008), and despite its importance, the tourism industry does not innovate, according to the Report on Tourism Innovation and Smart Specialization (SEGITTUR & COTEC, 2021). This report highlights difficulties in access to finance, limits to business cooperation and a lack of qualified personnel.

Policies to support entrepreneurship and innovation are designed to remove many of the obstacles people face, especially in terms of access to capital and knowledge (Müller et al., 2017). However, by focusing on the universalized individual, through the “atomization” of society, the impact of these policies is limited (Ahl & Marlow, 2021). These traditional approaches to the concept of entrepreneurship and innovative capacity limit the ability to understand the different journeys of entrepreneurship and innovation and, indirectly, apply measures that replicate the limitations presented by the market (Werner et al., 2017). This essentialist conceptualization limits the impact of public policies, since, without intending to, it limits the participation of people located in certain territorial areas, women (Ely et al., 2011; Kimbu et al., 2021; Zhang et al., 2020), and other vulnerable groups (Figueroa-Domecq et al. 2022).

Theories such as Endogenous Development highlight the impact of the territory, especially on the innovation of SMEs (Jardón, 2011). Cooke and Morgan (1998) identify three major groups of actors in the relationship between innovation and SMEs: Companies, Research, Development and Innovation (R + D + i) Institutions and Political Institutions’ strategies and actions. Nevertheless, this approach to innovation does not capture the impact that entrepreneurial activity itself has on other entrepreneurs, through a “spillover” effect of the innovation diffusion (Acs et al., 2009). The “Spillover Theory” incorporates a crucial element in the process of economic growth: the transmission of the indirect effects of knowledge through entrepreneurship (Audretsch, 1995). Moreover, the increase in technological innovations has increased the competitiveness of territories, while deepening the social gap between those who can afford technology and those who cannot and that consequently experience spillover effects or not (Ferreira et al., 2017; Ratten et al., 2019).

This territorial approach is used to analyse the Emprendetur funding call, developed by SEGITTUR, to support innovation in companies in the tourism sector between 2012 and 2016. Therefore, through an exploratory analysis of the Emprendetur call, the objective of this article is to analyse from a territorial point of view the distribution and typology of tourism entrepreneurship and innovation throughout the Spanish geography. Based on this general objective, the following research questions are raised:

Research Question (RQ) 1. Which territories (Autonomous Communities, provinces or municipalities) are the ones that concentrate most of the applications for innovation funding for their business activities?

RQ2. Which territories have the highest success rate in obtaining funding from Emprendetur?

RQ3. What type of innovative entrepreneurship are presented in each territory to the call for Emprendetur?

The article begins with the presentation of the theoretical framework used, to continue with the methodology and the presentation of results and conclusions.

2 Theoretical Framework and Literature Review

2.1 The Characteristics of Innovation in Tourism

Innovations and entrepreneurship play a key role in the development of increasingly fragmented and plural societies. They are seen as drivers of economic development, offering opportunities for improved competitiveness, especially in the tourism industry.

Innovation has different definitions that approach it from different points of view: innovation is the creation of something new; it is dissemination and learning; is changes in processes. Innovation can be defined as a business event and as a context-level process that sees innovation as an act that captures institutional frameworks in a geographical region (Ahmed & Shepherd, 2010). The main pilar of innovation is entrepreneurship. The entrepreneur has been widely described by Schumpeter and Nichol (1934) as a visionary who is able to visualize the new world and who creates new products and processes through the creative destruction of old institutions, processes and products.

The report on Tourism Innovation and Smart Specialization, carried out by SEGITTUR and COTEC (2021) shows how there is a low level of innovation spending by tourism companies, despite the importance that the sector itself gives to such innovation. There is a lower innovative intensity, with a scarce realization of internal R + D activities, compared to other sectors and presents a decreasing trend over the years. The largest expenditure on innovative activities is in capital and equipment expenditure, with a great shortage of own funds or public subsidies. This fact denotes a certain disconnection between tourism companies and the main existing public funding programs. Among the main constraints to tourism innovation are, firstly, access to funding (both external and from the company or business group itself); difficulties in finding cooperative partners with whom to develop innovations; the fact that the market is dominated by established companies; and finally, the lack of qualified personnel.

2.2 Innovation and Territory

Innovating and entrepreneurship are important, but impossible to do alone. The promotion of innovation within a TD involves all the actors of that destination and the interactions created and must be carried out in an inclusive way. Organizations need to cooperate with partners to bring innovative resources and capacity and generate networks (Favre-Bonte et al., 2019; Grillitsch & Trippl, 2014; Van Egeraat & Kogler, 2013).

As in the case of innovation, entrepreneurship develops within an ecosystem, which is co-created by entrepreneurs, at the same it influences people’s intention to become entrepreneurs. In fact, Lowrey (2003) and Lundström and Stevenson (2005) define the entrepreneur as an individual with a perpetual desire for achievement, and entrepreneurship as an economic system consisting of entrepreneurs, an economic, social and institutional environment. To understand and promote innovative and technological entrepreneurship, it is necessary to understand and involve the entire system, the entire TD, and all its members, women and men.

Research in the field of innovation and technology has resulted in a diverse set of theoretical models that explain the intention of individuals to use technology and innovate. These studies have their origins in information systems, psychology and sociology (Dwivedi et al. 2019; Venkatesh & Davis, 2000; Venkatesh et al., 2003). This article follows the Spillover Theory developed by Acs et al. (2009) that states that entrepreneurial activity does not simply involve the identification, evaluation and selection of opportunities, but also the exploitation of intra-temporal indirect knowledge effects that established companies have not appropriated and that spill over into the environment. The theory focuses on individual agents with new knowledge endowments that allow them to identify these “spills” and use them. This theory is especially important in the case of territory and tourism, as stated by Gretzel and Koo (2021).

The combination of technology and urbanization, present in cities, promotes radical and incremental innovations, which generates an explosion of data generation of both residents and visitors, in direct relation to the development of smart cities (Andrisano et al., 2018; Silva et al., 2018). In fact, cities are clearly the context in which the concept of Smart Destinations can be developed, and the promotion of innovation and technology considering the concentration of know-how, infrastructure, services and the high density of business and tourists (Trinchini et al., 2019). And to be smart, the territory must support the intelligence of the people who settle in that territory, in addition to “smart” people encouraging the development of smart destinations. This is what Giddens identifies through his Structuration Theory (Giddens, 1984).

Based on the structuring theory of Giddens (1984), Sarason et al. (2006) emphasize that entrepreneurship does not simply respond to existing opportunities but plays a creative role in making them a reality and, therefore, can bring about changes in institutions and structures: the entrepreneur and the opportunity cannot exist independently. In addition, they argue that the different types of structure-agent interactions conceptualized by Giddens can be applied to entrepreneurs’ understanding of resource discovery, evaluation, and exploitation (Shane & Venkataraman, 2000). In short, the territory and the people who relate and reside in it can attract more entrepreneurship and innovation.

In the case of leisure and tourism, Gretzel (2020) highlights that smartification leads to the connectivity of urban space, leading to cities “characterized by the hyperconnectivity of infrastructure and devices, the hypermobility of humans and data, and the hyper-personalization of tourism value propositions” (p. 394), In essence, Smartification encourages tourism to spread to all areas of the city and blurs the lines between tourists and residents. Spillover theory in leisure provides support for this trend.

Connectivity is higher in urban spaces (Magasic & Gretzel, 2020), and the need for mobile devices arises from the spatial and social complexities of cities that require “on the move” decision-making (Gretzel, 2020; Gretzel, & Koo, 2021). This approach to innovation determines the impact that the territory and its characteristics generate in innovation and entrepreneurship in tourism.

Despite the growing importance of the relationship between innovation, technology, entrepreneurship, territories and inequality, studies in this area are still very limited, when they can help the management of dynamics in territories (Ratten et al., 2019).

3 Methodology

This study analyses the financing scheme of Emprendetur that aimed to support companies in the Spanish tourism sector through the large areas or subprograms of ‘Research and Development’, ‘Innovative Products’ and ‘Young Entrepreneurs’ from 2012 to 2016. During this period, 996 applications were received, and 313 approved projects were approved.

A content analysis of the applications made by the participants in this call is conducted. The following is the content analysis process, detailed in Figueroa-Domecq et al. (2022):

  1. 1.

    Applications: Participants must submit three types of documents. First, legal documentation, which has been excluded as not relevant to this study and due to privacy concerns; secondly, a business plan, not included in this exploratory analysis; and finally, a standard application form, which includes all the relevant features of the project. Only the last document has been analysed.

  2. 2.

    Coding: A quantitative and qualitative content analysis allowed for topic coding. During 2021, three researchers participated in the design of the content analysis, to ensure the consistency of the coding process that adopted the following process: Two researchers participated in the coding of the 996 applications. After eliminating repeated cases and incomplete applications, a total of 932 applications were analysed. From a deductive perspective, several variables were identified as plausible and homogeneous in the coding process. The basic variables analysed were the following: name of the company, whether it has obtained funding (Binary: Yes/No), Subprogram (Nominal: ‘Research and Development’, ‘Innovative Products’ and ‘Young Entrepreneurs’), Gender of the applicant (Binary: Woman/Man); Requested budget (Ordinal transformed into continuous variable); Company size (Number of employees and total budget); CNAE category; geographical location (Autonomous Community, Province and Municipality).

  3. 3.

    Statistical analysis: A descriptive statistical analysis was performed through SPSS. Contingency Tables have been made.

It is important to highlight the limitations of this study being based on a policy to support entrepreneurship developed between 2012 and 2016. Even so, the results are relevant in the area of policy development.

4 Results

The analysis of the results of the Emprendetur call yields relevant results in this area. There is a geographical inequality in entrepreneurship, innovation and technology, which focus, as Gretzel (2020) and Gretzel and Koo (2021) already advanced, in territories with important cities and in relevant tourist destinations at the national level.

In relation to RQ1, an analysis by Autonomous Communities shows (Fig. 1) how 33.4% of applications come from the Community of Madrid and 26.3% from Catalonia. At a great distance are Andalusia (9.1%) and the Valencian Community (6.2%). The rest of the Autonomous Communities have a minority stake. 52.04% of the applications are located in the municipalities of Madrid (246, 26.39%), Barcelona (153, 16.42%), Valencia (41, 4.4%), Palma de Mallorca (27, 2.9%) and Seville (18, 1.93%) and as a consequence the province of Madrid collects 33.37% (311) of the applications and Barcelona 23.5% (219).

Fig. 1
A map of Spain exhibits the distribution of applications received by Emprendetur. Comunidad de Madrid, 33.4%, Cataluna, 26.3, Andalucia, 9.1%, Islas Baleares, 3.6%, Region de Murcia, 3.2%, Castilla La Mancha, 3%, Galicia, 2.9%, Pais Vasco, 2.1%, Castilla y Leon, 2.1%, Principado de Asturias, 1.3%, Aragon, 1.1% and others.

Source Authors

Distribution of applications received by Emprendetur (% of total).

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The analysis of the success rates by Autonomous Communities shows (Table 1) how the regions with the highest number of applications are those with the highest success rate when it comes to finding funding (RQ2). Table 1 shows how Catalonia is the most successful (40.4% of the proposals are approved), followed by Cantabria (40%), the Balearic Islands (38.2%) and the Community of Madrid (36.5%). Consequently, the largest negative gaps between applications and approved applications are Andalusia (−4.2%), Murcia (−3.2%) and the Canary Islands (−1.8%). And these results contrast with the Communities that receive the largest number of international tourists. According to data from 2016, the most visited Community was Catalonia (18,139,177 tourists, 24.1%), followed by the Canary Islands (17.6%), the Balearic Islands (17.3%), Andalusia (14.1%) and the Community of Madrid (7.7%). Therefore, there is no direct relationship between the number of proposals, the success and the importance of tourism in the territory, even so, there is a relationship between the number of proposals and success depending on the level of urbanization of the territory.

Table 1 Projects submitted and approved by Autonomous Community (%)
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In a previous analysis, through a decision tree (Figueroa-Domecq et al., 2022) it was observed that the variable with the greatest classification capacity when determining the success of a proposal was the type of economic activity with which it was related (CNAE code). The most successful type of business is related to ICT, with 395 projects and an above-average success rate of 40.5%. The other two types, with below-average success rates, are “Hospitality” and the residual “Other economic activities”. The type “Other economic activities” shows a success rate of 27% for 460 projects, while hospitality has a very low success rate of 5.2%, with only four of the 77 projects accepted.

In relation to RQ3, Table 2 shows how the Community of Madrid and Catalonia present the highest number of proposals related to ICTs (35.9% and 32.2%, respectively) and Professional, scientific and technical activities (43.8% and 18.3%, respectively). Then there are Autonomous Communities that only present proposals related to ICTs, such as Cantabria, hence its high level of success. The case of Andalusia stands out for a great diversity in economic areas, while they have an important participation of activity in hospitality that have not been successful when it comes to receiving funding. In hospitality, the communities with the highest % of participation, with respect to all the proposals, are Navarra (50%), Galicia (25.9%), Murcia (30%) and Ceuta (33%).

Table 2 Applications by economic activity and Autonomous Community (%)
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These results show that there is a direct relationship between the type of innovation in which the Autonomous Communities specialize and the level of success in obtaining funding, since ICT-related activities are the preferred in this call.

5 Conclusions

The main conclusion obtained in this work indicates the existence of a geographical inequality in entrepreneurship, innovation and technology in the tourism field. There is a concentration of applications from entrepreneurs in the regions of Madrid and Catalonia, while the autonomous communities of Andalusia and the Valencian Community have a lower level of participation. These data show a regional disparity in terms of entrepreneurship, innovation and technology in the tourism sector, where certain geographical areas stand out for a greater activity and concentration of applications compared to others.

From the perspective of spillover theory applied to tourism entrepreneurship, it is argued that promoting entrepreneurship in tourism stimulates the creation of new companies and startups that offer innovative products and services to meet the demands of the sector. These companies can cover various areas and generate multiple spillover effects on the economy, such as the generation of direct and indirect employment, the development of supplier industries at the regional level and the promotion of innovation and technology, which not only benefit the tourism sector, but can also have applications in other economic sectors.

On the other hand, it is relevant to highlight that the success of tourism entrepreneurship depends on an enabling environment that encourages innovation, facilitates the creation of companies and provides support to entrepreneurs. Some of the key elements to promote tourism entrepreneurship and maximize the spillover effects on the economy include government policies, adequate infrastructure, training and access to finance.

However, considering that the call analysed, Emprendetur, has a national scope and all regions can participate on equal terms, the results raise questions about the territorial factors that can act as “drivers”, causing a greater presence of entrepreneurs in some regions and not in others. The question arises as to whether entrepreneurship in tourism requires conditions or territorial factors different from those of other sectors of activity. This question becomes a relevant future research line.