A network perspective of cognitive and geographical proximity of sustainable tourism organizations: evidence from Italy

Purpose – This research aims to contribute to the literature on sustainable hospitality and tourism by applying social network analysis to identify sustainable tourism business networks and untangle the role of cognitive and geographical proximity in their formation. Design/methodology/approach – Data mining and machine learning techniques were applied to data collected from the websites of tourism companies located in northeastern Italy, namely, the Veneto region. Specifically, the authors used Web scraping to extract relevant information from the internet. Findings – The results support the existence of geographical clusters of tourist accommodation providers that are linked by strong cognitive proximity based on sustainability principles that are well communicated via their websites. This does not appear to be greenwashing because companies that have agreed on sustainability principles have also implemented concrete actions and tend to signal these actions through a variety of sustainability certifications. Practical implications – The results may guide tourism managers and policymakers in developing tourism initiatives directed at the creation of fruitful collaborations between similarly oriented organizations and methods to support clusters of sustainable tourism accommodation. Identifying sustainable tourism networks may assist in the identification of potential actors of change, fueling a widespread transition toward sustainability. Originality/value – In this study, the authors adopted an innovative methodology to detect sustainability-oriented tourism business networks. Additionally, to the best of the authors’ knowledge this study is one of the first to simultaneously explore the cognitive and geographical connections between tourism businesses.