European Journal of Service Management

The subject of analysis conducted in the article consists of discussion of business models (in general) and indication of the specific nature of innovative business models (IBM), with particular focus on their structure (in detail). Complexity and heterogeneity of economy as a whole determined the choice of tourism companies as the perceptive-cognitive, as well as empirical subject of research. Accordingly with the methodological assumption made, economy is treated as a system and tourism – as a subsystem in economy, while tourism companies are business units of this specific subsystem. As for the theoretical dimension of the research project, critical analysis of literature (non-serial publications and periodicals) was conducted. On this basis, as well as through verification of empirical material obtained from own research (survey), a uniform definition of IBM has been proposed, constructed from the perspective of its structural elements, that is, the architecture. It is worth underlining that it was indicated that the specific nature of business activity in tourism determined by characteristics of services as such, including the properties of tourism services, implicates the necessity of an individualized approach (apart from the approach which is universally applicable to economy as a whole) not only to interpretation of the IBM concept, but first of all to forming and implementing of these models in business practice.