Is "cluster" a relevant concept for tourism?

This research is a conceptual reflection around tourism clusters. Cluster is a concept that originates in industrial organization theories. It has to be revisited in order to understand geographical tourist development. Three axes are investigated: the service nature of tourism, the specific proximity processes it activates, and the nature of tourisms embeddedness in the regional socio-economic context. We show that tourism clusters cannot be conceived nor created without tourists, that must be seen as active actors of the cluster. Tourism clusters must also take into account the intermediaries who stimulate proximities and especially supra-local organizations. They finally cannot be understood without taking into account the specific socio-economic context of each destination