Abstract
A focus on tourism destination competition can be of particular interest to collective strategy theory aiming at destination development Tourism destination competition is generally dominated by small and medium sized enterprises and more precisely by micro-businesses which often have reservations in employing such collective strategy. This situation implies that the local tourism organizations which want to develop their destination through a collective strategy have to have a good knowledge of these type of organizations. The aim of this paper is to investigate and clarify such small tourism business reservations in participation in local collective strategies. Its contribution lies in the interpretation of such resistance in relation to the 'proximity management' of small and medium-sized enterprises theory, Illustrated by the demonstration of the strategy used by a seaside destination in the south of France.