Microsoft Word 2007 ichrie conference Proceedings Final-Final 06-06-07. doc

 
2007 Annual International CHRIE Conference & Exposition 
533
Strategic Stakeholders Alliance 
Interdependence alone is not sufficient to bring about collaboration. The collaborators must recognize that 
the benefits of joint attempts are of great importance and outweigh the costs and the loss of autonomy that they must 
relinquish to partners. Faced with functional specialization in one aspect of tourism development and a scarcity of 
resources, the alliance needs to reduce the uncertainty by exchanging resources for mutual benefits (Frazier, 1983). 
The important elements of this resource exchange are information and funding (Palmer and Bejou, 1995). Tourism 
development and the preservation of heritage are unifying projects, in which the initiatives and funding of public 
authorities create a multiplier effect by mobilizing the resources of the entrepreneurs and the rest of private force.
Communication and teamwork between public and private sectors, guidelines and incentives for 
entrepreneurs’ cultural projects, and engagement of community residents for a live staging of the culture, are all 
important forms and functions of the strategic alliance. Alliances between the private and public sectors are 
particularly attractive in tourism development, because there is a congruence of motives between the two sectors - 
attracting more tourists can benefit not only the narrow financial objectives of tourism developers and operators, but 
also the more diverse social objectives of the public sector. Cultural destinations attract tourists in their own right, 
and tourist visits sustain the local economy as well as the profits of the private developers. 
Figure 1 gives a graphic view of communication flow and funding dynamics among the stakeholders of the 
alliance to display the potential benefits each stakeholder may have in the alliance. While information exchange is 
the common form of the alliance for all stakeholders; funding takes place largely among public, NGOs and private 
sectors in developing projects and when public and NGOs provide incentives to business developers in their 
adaptive reuse of heritage sites.