How do external openness and R&D activity influence open innovation management and the potential contribution of social media in the tourism and hospitality industry?

This research focuses on how the tourism and hospitality industry is applying the paradigm of open innovation, supported by social media. Open innovation (OI) has been on the topical research agenda, but the previous literature lacks studies in the service sector and specifically for tourism companies. Moreover, the introduction of social media as a tool to implement open innovation is considered the main research gap. Structural equation modelling is applied to data from 181 Portuguese and Spanish companies to study both customer involvement in new product development and the perceptions and results in terms of turnover and competitiveness. The structure of the relationships between research and development, external openness and open innovation management is highlighted with statistical analysis. In addition, the introduction of social media adds value to the proposed model. Currently, there is a lack of available models to give structure to the OI paradigm and to allow us to manage it. The contribution of this research is a comparison of the explanatory power of three models that allow us to test how certain strategic guidelines in tourism companies influence each other and have a mediating or multiplier effect when linked to each other (nested models method). In conclusion, the originality of this research is based on the relationship between open innovation management and social media and the mediating effect of external openness.