Many entrepreneurs are eager to incorporate innovations into the field of tourism and hospitality, but they face a formidable challenge: the resistant customer.

AIRTH contributing member Isabel Rodríguez Sánchez, in collaboration with Allan Williams and Hugo García-Andreu, has recently published in the Journal of Travel Research (March 2019) her work on this underdeveloped but critical area in the tourism innovation literature: why customers give negative responses to some types of innovations from the innovators’ perspective.

Through qualitative methods,“Customer resistance to tourism innovations: entrepreneurs' understanding and management strategies” seeks to address two aspects relating to innovations: (1.) the manner in which tourism entrepreneurs understand the main causes of resistance from prospective customers and the causes of the unfavourable reception, and (2.) what strategies tourism entrepreneurs implement in order to mitigate customer resistance to innovations.