The existing literature on tourism cooperation has referred to a comprehensive and sustainable promotion of the destination (Wood & Gray, 1991; Bramwell & Lane, 2000, van Der Zee & Vanneste, 2015). Effective collaboration represents conditio sine qua non for tourism development success and seems to have some common features: partners diversity (Wood & Gray, 2001; Waligo 2013), trust (Czernek & Czakon, 2016), coordination activities (Timothy, 1998), power (Saito and Ruhanen, 2017). The Literature review on cooperation in tourism revealed relevant lacks in nowadays global markets. As first, few studies referred to the spread of digital technologies as one of the main means to facilitate cooperation. Secondly, the Literature usually refers to cooperation as entailing long-term relationships: one of the main features of global markets, a rational use of time (which relates to an agile management of time in hypercompetitive conditions), is not directly considered, although its pervasiveness.

The study aims at filling the gap in the Literature by adapting a model widely considered in several domains, the virtual enterprise (VE) – a form of temporary cooperation, to the peculiarities of the tourism industry in global hyper competitive markets. The adaptation is considered according to the particularities of the industry under examination, and especially when cooperation involves public entities – such as local tourism authorities and Destination Management Organizations.

Through an in-depth systematic literature review, this paper matches the theories on cooperation in tourism with the concept of temporary cooperation, in order to adapt a particular model, the Virtual Enterprise, to the Tourism. Literature review on topic is considered in depth, underlying the main features of the model. The four stages Virtual Enterprise life cycle, described by Camarinha-Matos and Afsarmanesh (2013) for the manufacturing industries, is further developed in a nine-stages life cycle, highlighting the main features of a temporary alliance among public entities: the pivotal role of the destination management organization, the relevance of information and communication technologies for the VE’s operability, the short lifetime of the VE, and the destination’s overall promotion.

The VE offers a model particularly fitting the features of global markets, driving attention around two main features (Rabelo et al., 2016): the relevance of time, as this form of cooperation exists for a short-term life span; but the high reconfigurability, too, fitting and evolving into the global markets using optimal methods, and meeting high turbulence levels (dynamicity).
The VE model for tourism is built by developing the simplified four-stage life cycle model suggested by Camarinha-Matos and Afsarmanesh (2013: creation, operation, evolution, dissolution), in a 9 stages – highlighting the specificity of the tourism industry:
1. Common aim identification (purpose)
2. Partner selection
3. Resources attribution
4. Collaborative VE planning (timing, milestones)
5. Operation of the VE
6. In-process check
7. In-process adaptation of collaborative VE planning
8. Achievement of the common aim
9. Dissolution of the VE or further evolution to a new VE/ cooperation
A focal role is clearly attributed to the destination management organization (DMO) – promoter of the entire life cycle, and responsible for every stage, confirmed by the theory of van der Zee and Vanneste (2015). The aim should be directly related to a joint, inclusive, and comprehensive promotion of the destination; the VE entails the use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) as the basis of making the VE effective, while reducing time and supporting the rational use of resources devoted to the common project by the VE partners.

This work offered a dynamic, short-time perspective on cooperation in tourism, adapting the VE model – especially when cooperation entails public entities. The work clearly states the need to focus on four conditions for effectiveness (the pivotal role of the DMO, the high relevance of Time, the role of ICTs, and the whole destination development as main aim) as enablers for the VE main feature: the enhanced reconfigurability during every life cycle phase.

The model offered in this work highlights the peculiarities of the partners involved, as originating in the public system. Although this qualifies just some of the features of the proposed VE, it can be considered a limitation to extend the model to non-public actors of the tourism industry. Further works should both check the model validity for cooperative situation not entailing public entities in an exclusive base, and support the theoretical construct through empirical cases

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