Tour Leaders as Key Actors of Territorial Resilience
Managerial Insights from the Moroccan Mountain Tourism Sector
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.23882/emss26315Keywords:
#sustainable-development, community resilience, #tourism-development, Moroccan-tourismAbstract
Tourism destinations in mountain regions face heightened exposure to crises that disrupt operations, threaten tourist safety, and undermine economic sustainability. While territorial resilience has emerged as a central concept in tourism studies, existing research has predominantly focused on macro-level institutional and policy responses, overlooking the operational practices of frontline actors. This study addresses that gap by examining the role of tour leaders as informal crisis managers and boundary-spanning intermediaries in the Moroccan Atlas Mountain tourism context. Adopting a qualitative exploratory design, we conducted 20 semi-structured interviews with Moroccan tour leaders and supplemented these with accounts from community-based enterprise representatives. Data were analyzed using thematic analysis supported by ATLAS.ti software. Three interrelated mechanisms through which tour leaders contribute to territorial resilience emerged from the data: (1) crisis sensemaking and rapid decision-making grounded in territorial embeddedness; (2) boundary-spanning coordination across fragmented stakeholder networks; and (3) adaptive leadership rooted in experiential learning. These findings advance a practice-oriented understanding of tourism resilience and carry implications for destination management, tour operator governance, and community-based tourism development policy.
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