THE MOST IMPORTANT JOB IN TOURISM
THE FUTURE OF DESTINATION MANAGEMENT
If sustainable tourism development is the new zeitgeist for the industry, then destination management is the holy grail now becoming the most important job in tourism. According to the UNWTO, “Globalization has now made it necessary for destinations to stay at the leading edge of new products and ideas to remain competitive. Creative entrepreneurs must contribute to the development of destinations and tourism policies must be geared to innovation. De-centralization to destinations is the watchword of the modern tourism industry”[1].
The importance of the geographic destination is made clear by Van Hove in his seminal (2007) text, The Economics of Tourism Destinations, in which he states: “The fundamental product in tourism is the destination experience. Competition, therefore, is centered on the destination. For most tourists, this experience takes place in a rather small geographical area. This is an entity which, from the tourism and community management point of view, is managerial.”
This ultimately means that destinations have to be managerial in scale, governance, and in their structure – compact, coherent, cohesive, with critical mass and competency.
This managerial emphasis was reinforced and contextualized by Maj Pak (Director, Slovenian Tourist Board) at the 2022 Bled Strategic Forum when she stated that, “Covid has become the managerial norm. There is a new reality for the powerful collective effort for a fair, equitable, resilient, sustainable tourism industry. That matches the expectations of demand and supply, host, and guest. Good governance is essential. It’s a balance between profits, people, and place”
This means that there is a need for well-developed eco-systems (networks and clusters) for collaboration and innovation within the destination, its various interdependent yet operationally independent sectors, and host communities.
It has to be acknowledged that more is achieved when everyone acknowledges their role in contributing to the prosperity agenda and work in closer partnership to realise the net benefits and “high value” multipliers of tourism.
At the heart of the future of destination management is the imperative for geographic destinations is to do the good things for the right reasons. DMOs are now challenged to think about a new concept of defining a “caring capacity” for their community to replace the traditional perspective of the destination’s “carrying capacity”.
This approach demands destination moves to a community in balance where tourism is fully integrated within all aspects of community planning and development.
As a result, there is now an urgent need for all tourism and other stakeholders in destinations to work and play better together, for optimal sustainable outcomes and benefits for their citizens, the visitor, and their environment.
This means building common trust, a common vision, based on common sense, and common(unity) is essential. This demands a shared responsibility in very destination to deliver the UN’s sustainable development goals.
THE TIMES ARE CHANGING
In pursuing these sustainable development goals, DMOs need to consider the clear paradigm shifts taking place in tourism impacting on both demand and supply. Shifts that give rise to exciting new opportunities for new ways of working. These shifts include:
• The rise of hybridity – exciting novel concepts produced by hybrid thinkers that are blurring transforming and challenging the traditional ways we define tourism experiences and products. Many of these hybrid solutions may appear as ‘outliers’ or left-of-field ideas however, they are rapidly become mainstream.
• These hybrid solutions are built on intense layers of collaboration meaning greater levels of co-creation and high levels of co-dependency between different actors. Often the success of these innovative ideas relies more on the talent and attitudes of those involved rather than their formal qualifications. They are also challenging the way we perceive value – moving away from a price / utility measure to a more complex motivation / lifestyle measure of value.
Change is in the air. Destinations will need to deliver the new extraordinary.
The next 5-10 years will be a period of unprecedented experimentation. Traditional ways of working will have to change. New formulas, new ways of collaborating and new types of business models will emerge. The eve of transformation in is with us. The future of tourism demands a change of mindset built upon greater levels of cross-disciplinary collaboration and co-dependency.
DMOs will have to become more agile, flexible, and dynamic in their way of working. They will have to source new, and different, sources of revenue. New business models will prevail, and different interests welcomed into the tourism industry.
These changes must be built on wider recognition of the contribution tourism can make to all our lives; a mutual respect between all parties; the relevance of what we do within our communities; and the shared responsibility to do the right things.
CONCLUSION
A paradigm shift is taking place in destination management. This is particularly pronounced in destinations within protected areas. As a result, there needs to be a transition from traditional top-down to participatory bottom-up approaches to planning, management, and governance. This shift reflects changing expectations of governance towards systems that can legitimately empower and benefit local communities.
Top-down ‘command and control’ governance approaches are often criticised as they fail to consider the wide range of stakeholders who can affect or are instrumental in making things happen. Change is need to turn this traditional model on its head. More leadership: less command and control is required.
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 2021, 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 five Rs (Stevens & Associates©, 2021) comprising:
• Recognition – recognising the importance of tourism to the destination and the rural / urban economy and communities.
• Relationships – 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 wellbeing 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.”
The DMOs that are succeeding are open minded.
They are willing to innovate and to try new ways of working. They adopt the adage, ‘change your thought and it will change your mind’ and they apply the relevant elements alchemy to their work once the destination leaders understand that the job to be done is doing what is right for the wealth of their community and the visitors.
As Van Morrison says in the song ‘Spirit will Provide’: ‘there is no mystery when you can see clearly and understand your purpose’ (Van Morrison, 2019).
In summary, therefore, DMOs are about creating the vision, implementing a dynamic strategy and managing the reputation and performance of tourism by delivering the promise across their destination by adopting a clear leadership role, driving collaboration through internal and external networks, normalising innovation and creativity in all aspects of the work of the organisation, delivering exceptional visitor experiences using tourism to create shared values and wealth across the resident community. So, if vision, strategy, positioning, and co-ordination are then the key and the key to co-ordination is the establishment of a well-resourced, competently managed destination management organisation.
As the tourism industry enters a new period of dynamic change. Where the industry has to re-imagine its purpose; its measures of success and how best to deliver these goals, DMOs have to take command, become strong leaders, and turn the challenges into opportunities.
Often these opportunities involve a new generations of investors and developers. These can be local heroes or global nomads. They have been described as ‘the new pirates.’ They have radical, innovative, ideas. They have novel business models, and they believe in community values. Their investments are shaking the very foundations of the traditional approach to tourism development..
All of these factors have significant implications for the structure, governance, funding, and modus operandi of DMOs
A new integrative, more dynamic, agile, and flexible approach is essential.
Adaptive co-management and co-production will be the way forward.
Adaptive co-management and co-production can be visualised as a governance system involving networks of multiple heterogeneous actors across various scales which solve problems, make decisions and initiate actions.
A driver of innovation is awareness of a gap between what there is and what there ought to be, between what people need and what they are offered by governments, private firms and NGOs and DMOs --a gap which is constantly widened by the lack of proper engagement, the emergence of new technologies and the availability of new knowledge.
Adaptive co-management is a paradigm of governance, learning and management that builds upon the principles of adaptive management. The novelty of adaptive co-management comes from combining the iterative learning dimension of adaptive management and the linkage of collaborative management in which rights and responsibilities are jointly shared.
It encourages an approach to governance that encompasses complexity and cross-scale linkages, and the process of dynamic learning. Adaptive co-management thus offers considerable appeal in light of the complexity of the tourism system.
Adaptive co-management assumes that change is an inherent property of systems, whether the system being considered is social, cultural, ecological or a hybrid. It can create innovative outcomes under changing conditions because it spans an organisational continuum running from highly formal, rule-rich, goal-oriented governing behaviours to informal, process-focused, visioning creating behaviours.
Adaptive co-management has been defined as ‘the sharing of power and responsibility between the public sector and governments of all levels and local resource users’. It creates a systems approach that combines state control with local, decentralized decision making and accountability and which, ideally, combine the strengths and mitigate the weaknesses of each.
Indeed, the World Bank has defined co-management as ‘the sharing of responsibilities, rights and duties between the primary stakeholders, in particular, local communities and the nation state; a decentralized approach to decision making that involves the local users in the decision making process as equals.’ (The World Bank, 1999: 11).
In essence this is the same definition as the one adopted by the World Conservation Congress, Resolution 1.42: ‘a partnership in which government agencies, local communities and resource users, nongovernmental organizations and other stakeholders negotiate, as appropriate to each context, the authority and responsibility for the management of a specific area or set of resources’ (IUCN, 1996).
Why has co-management been looked upon with such positive connotations? The immediate answer is simple; co-management is a logical approach to solving resource management problems by partnership. Partnerships are essential. Local users alone cannot manage most assets and resources alone in the complex contemporary world. At the same time, there is overwhelming evidence that centralized management of local resources is problematic.
Even very centralized systems are dependent on the local level, for example, for the knowledge and skills of local users. Since many resource management systems are cross-scale, different management problems must be solved simultaneously at different levels.
There are a number of tasks that can more easily be accomplished by establishing well-functioning co-management systems: (1) data gathering, (2) logistical decisions such as who can harvest and when, (3) allocation decisions, (4) protection of resource from environmental damage, (5) enforcement of regulations, (6) enhancement of long-term planning, and (7) more inclusive decision-making.
[1] Francesco Frangialli. Secretary General UNWTO, May 2007
