The Hybrid Organization for the Difficult Heritage of the Holiday Camp Buildings: The Challenges for Sustainable Cultural Tourism

This paper employs a case study analysis to frame cultural heritage recovery projects that are between profit and non-profit in managerial theory, specifically in hybrid organization paradigm, to identify a method for the tourist and social valorization of cultural assets—particularly assets of “difficult heritage”. One such asset, selected as the case study for this paper, is the holiday camp buildings or Colonie located on the Italian Romagna Riviera. Intended as sites to facilitate community and tourist experiences, the Colonie represent a strong heritage of identity steeped in history, architecture, landscape, community values, and national culture. Although numerous initiatives have recently sought to give new life to these buildings, they have usually concerned high-level tourist hospitality, and it would be more appropriate to return this architectural and social heritage to the community through social business entrepreneurship. Such initiatives have often failed despite good intentions, perhaps also due to an absence of a managerial approach guided by research and experiences of similar previous efforts. The paper addresses the problems of governance, coordination, competencies, and citizen engagement for local development and original tourism by developing a model that considers managerial challenges according to business and social innovation theories, particularly to hybrid organizations approach. This paper demonstrates how this model constitutes a replicable method to be applied in interventions for the valorization of cultural assets and offers ideas for public and private operators in promoting regenerative, inclusive, sustainable tourism.