## 3 Materials and Methods
### Administration of the Survey  
In line with the aforementioned objective, the target of the survey was set as SMEs operating in the tourism sector in different forms (e.g., tourism operators, digital and IT service providers, hospitality, restaurant, food) [17]. Indeed, they all contribute in different ways to providing a comprehensive experience to visitors and, therefore, to a better understanding of customer needs and how to enhance their cultural experience.  
First, starting from the developed questionnaire, an online version was implemented and administered using the Google Modules tool. It offers responding SMEs a direct and easily used tool for questionnaire completion, as well as a user-friendly way for authors to collect and analyze data. Second, the questionnaire was translated from English to the specific languages of the authors' countries in order to facilitate the understanding and completion by local SMEs and rural cultural sites managers. Third, the survey was shared by the authors in each associated country by relying on their institutional and personal channels (e.g., LinkedIn), and on their network of partners and contacts operating in the reference context. Fourth, the authors collected the responses and translated them into English in order to have a common base for the analysis. Fifth, the authors proceeded to analyze the collected information to provide useful insights to answer the research question. To ensure comparability across countries, relative percentages were calculated: the frequency of each response was divided by the total number of responses from each country, yielding the percentages reported in the subsequent sections.  
A total of 122 responses were collected (25.41% from Jordan, 21.31% from Turkey, 21.31% from Spain, 19.67% from Italy, 12.30% from Cyprus), which represented the sample analysis.  
All the collected responses were eligible for analysis since the completion of the questionnaire was restricted to those organizations providing value in different forms for cultural visitors and travelers. Before completing the questionnaire, the basic premise was introduced to ensure the right sample of respondents.  
Respondents were representative of organizations operating in the tourism sector in Italy (24), Jordan (31), Spain (26), Cyprus (15), and Turkey (26). Most of the countries were mostly represented by small and micro companies. Only the Jordanian responses were composed of an almost equal distribution among micro, small and medium enterprises.  
With respect to the typology of core business of the involved organizations, in each country, most of the responses came from SMEs providing services in the tourism sector. Specifically, it is interesting to observe how each group of responses in each country was distributed with respect to the type of services provided, e.g., tourism operators, hospitality, food, and IT services. Figure 1 shows that while Cyprus is mainly represented by IT companies, Italy and Spain are mainly represented by tourism operators. On the other hand, Jordan and Turkey present a quite homogeneous distribution of CH and tourism  
\begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{c c c} \hline
**ID** & **Questions** & **Response** \\ \hline
33 & What factors would influence your decision to enter into a & \\  & strategic alliance? & Open-ended question \\ \hline
34 & Percentage of your revenues from local market? & Closed-ended question \\ \hline
35 & Percentage of your revenues from international markets? & Closed-ended question \\ \hline
36 & What are your long-term goals and objectives for your & \\  & business? & Open-ended question \\ \hline
37 & How do you envision strategic alliances contributing to the & \\  & achievement of these goals? & Open-ended question \\ \hline \end{tabular}
\end{table}
Table 1: Cont.  
stakeholders, with a small presence of cultural IT companies. In some cases, respondents were not classified as tourism operators, hospitality, food or IT companies. This means that they operate in the CH and tourism sectors but in other forms.