Research on the pathways to high-quality development of tourism SMEs: A perspective of value assigned by quality, standards and brand.

With the advancement of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, the trend toward sustainable and high-quality development has become prominent for tourism enterprises. Tourism small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), which are numerous, constitute a significant part of the global tourism market. However, existing research predominantly focuses on the pathways for high-quality development of large tourism enterprises, with many gaps in understanding the corresponding processes for tourism SMEs. Due to their limited resources and capabilities, tourism SMEs have to selectively explore distinctive development pathways based on their core strengths to pursue high-quality development. To investigate these development pathways, this study draws on the perspective of value assigned by quality, standards, and brand, taking 181 tourism SMEs as the research object, and uses the fsQCA method to analyze the pathways towards high-quality development of tourism SMEs. The results show that there are three pathways to high-quality development of tourism SMEs can be distilled, including "root-deepening", "pioneering and innovative", and "brand-prioritized". Instead, "deficiency in innovation capacity" and "indiscriminate marketing of brands" will hamper the high-quality development pathways of tourism SMEs. Further examination discloses a substitutive relationship among the causal factors of the various pathways. This study delves into how tourism SMEs, under the objective constraints of resources and capabilities, integrate business elements and adjust strategic priorities to achieve high-quality development. It provides theoretical guidance for tourism SMEs worldwide to pursue high-quality and sustainable development in ways that are appropriate to different contexts.