Ambient affiliates in virtual cross-organizational tourism alliances: A case study of collaborative new product development

•The paper investigates ambient communities in the tourism sector.•It relies on ethnographic analysis of information-based products for tourists.•Analysis makes use of interviews combined with online ‘tells’.•Togetherness stems from ambient affiliates’ recurrent co-engagement in practice.

The paper presents intrinsic properties of cross-organizational collaboration in shared information spaces and motivates the concept of ambient communities with particular reference to the tourism sector. Our approach is informed by an ethnographic analysis of assembling innovative information-based products for tourists. Qualitative data collection methods combined with online ‘tells’ reveal that in cross-organizational settings togetherness stems from ambient affiliates’ recurrent co-engagement in computer-mediated distributed collective practices. Intriguing aspects of such practices are its boundary function, an underlying emergent knowledge process and its entanglement with socio-material realities of partners.