IT WILL ALL BE ABOUT THE DESTINATION AND ITS MANAGEMENT
Over the past 15 years we have been looking a international best practice in destination management and have arrived at a number of core principles for sensitive destination management that are very relevant for the future recovery of destinations.
These principles are described below. They are rooted in the fact that destinations have to be regarded as managerial entities.
In the future as never before in the history of tourism the destination management organisations (DMOs) MUST understand, determine and calibrate the carrying capacity of their destinations in close collaboration with their tourism stakeholders and their communities.
The carrying capacity must be calculated from an environmental, economic, social, perceptual, psychological, physical, environmental, health care and touristic perspectives with the geography of the destination not set by a business, political or administrative logic but by an holistic model that considers the functioning of a place.
The findings of the work of S&A are now summarised but a detailed discussion of the art and science of destination management and case studies from 50 of the world’s great destinations can be found in the two e-books promoted on this website = ‘Wish You Were Here’.
Destinations are places where people want to be for whatever reasons and motivations. The destination must be accessible, there must be a critical mass of things to see and do as well as places to stay and for the destination to work successfully, it must be professionally and competently managed. This means that the size and scale of its geography; its tangible and intangible assets and resources; stakeholder base and its visitor experiences must adopt a ‘managerial’ approach involving a DMO. These simple truths state the obvious resonating with the observations of Vanhove (2005): “the fundamental product of tourism is the destination experience. Competition, therefore, is centred on the destination… for most tourists this experience takes place in a rather small geographical area - an entity which, from a tourism management point of view, is managerial.”
The analysis reveals ten shared, dominant, managerial characteristics: Conclusion:
1. COMPACT: the destinations are relatively small in scale averaging between 1,800 – 2,500 km² kilometres in size and all less than 3,000 km² but having the flexibility to expand and grow geographically on a temporarily according to the strategic needs of a particular visitor experience, event or product promotion - an approach that is defined as the dynamic geometry of destinations,
2. COHERENT: the destination’s geography, geomorphology, topography, natural and built heritage and infrastructure makes them coherent from visual, social and cultural perspectives creating a strong sense of place and form that is easily understandable to their visitors,
3. CUSTOMER FOCUSED: destination managers are well-informed, through systematic research, annual benchmarking and frequent customer engagement, about tourism trends, visitor behaviour, perceptions and expectations allowing them to develop dynamic strategies responding to this market intelligence on a frequent basis,
4. COHESIVE: the destination makes sense as a logical construct for all stakeholders as perceived from different dimensions (topographical, territorial, cultural and historic, political, economic and strategic),
5. CRITICAL MASS: the destination must have a clear vision, strategy and costed action plan ensuring the development of an appropriate, competitive, sustainable and balanced range of products, experiences, facilities and infrastructure to reflect its brand position and meet the needs and expectations of its residents and its visitors,
6. COMPETENT MANAGEMENT OF CARRYING CAPACITY: the destination must be competently managed by a dedicated, well-resourced, well-organised and committed team of local people. These teams tend to be structured and functioning as an efficient, a not-for-profit company with community intent, led by a board of private sector and community representatives with a strong leadership ethic operating collaboratively with strong networks and communications channels driving investment using innovative methods of raising capital and revenues,
7. CONSISTENT: the destination must ensure that the ‘promise’ made, implicitly or explicitly, to visitors through its marketing are delivered on a consistent basis. The complicated, multi-faceted nature, of the tourism system makes the co-ordination and management of the components the most challenging aspects of destination management,
8. CREATIVE AND INNOVATIVE: creating an environment that stimulates, fosters and supports innovation and creativity is, as will be discussed in greater detail later, of increasing importance to achieving successful, sustainable destinations,
9. COMPETITIVE: driving success is the need for a destination to be competitive in a national and international context over-time. Creativity and innovation are key factors of competitiveness and DMOs need to be acutely tuned to recognising and applying innovative thinking to all aspects of their work,
10. COLLABORATIVE AND CO-CREATED: ‘together stronger’ is oft used to encourage a collegiate, open, inclusive and transparent approach to destination management characterised by common trust and a shared set of objectives.
The ‘responsible’ challenge for DMOs has very strong echoes of the optimism of the early luminaries of our tourism experiences, such as William E Brown (1971) who, in ‘Islands of Hope’, discussed the importance of the visitor experience and the intersection with responsible environmental management: “to move from (simply) managing the resource itself to managing the people who use it. First and foremost, the experience that the visitor gets (in a destination) is the critical thing – not from the political administration approach, size or the way it is organized but from the dimensions of life that visitors can experience such areas”. The future success of DMOs will require fresh thinking about all aspects of their work. In the words of Alvar Aalto who, in 1930, stated that: “Radicalism is required so that superficial cosiness can be avoided. In its place pin down the problems whose solutions we will create forming the basis of the values for the well-being of man that are genuinely worthy of development.
In 2018, S&A identified a new model of successful destination management which represents a significant shift from the traditional reliance on the five Ps of tourism development) to the six Rs comprising:
• Recognition – recognising the importance of tourism to the destination and the rural / urban economy and communities.
• Relationships and Reputation Management – the building of relationships (vertical and horizontal integration) ensuring a shared vision and strategy for tourism based upon common trust and common values.
• Relevance – of products, experiences and the destination to the interests and needs of emerging markets and the host communities.
• Responsibility – the development of a sustainable, empathetic, sensitive and responsible approach to tourism development respecting the assets of the destination, its environment, socio-cultural interests of the tourists and capacity of the host community.
• Respect – for the interests and well-being of all parties including the host community, business community and the visitors to the destination.
In the pursuit of destination competitiveness, the destinations that excel ‘go their own way’ with a bespoke, objective, mission and vision and clear management strategy. This is singular approach is summarised by Jerry Garcia (1942 – 1995), the American singer, songwriter and guitarist with the band The Grateful Dead. Garcia is clear, “you don’t just want to be considered the best of the best, you want to be considered as the only ones who do what you do.”
