Industrial Tourism: Where the public meets the private Defended on Tuesday, 30 November 2010

This thesis is about the development of industrial tourism in urban regions. It presents a systematic analysis of the conditions under which companies and regions can take advantage of industrial tourism development. By combining insights from tourism, marketing, regional economics, urban governance and theories of the firm we develop a theory that specifies the interests of host firms and urban regions. We state that a common agenda creates opportunities for coordinated action in industrial tourism development resulting in benefits for public and private actors. We test the empirical applicability of this theory by means of four case studies of urban regions with a considerable supply of industrial tourism: Cologne, Pays de la Loire, Rotterdam and Turin. 

Keywords

industrial tourism, place marketing, business society management, corporate social responsibility, urban governance, stakeholder theory, involvement theory, common agenda, public-private partnerships