Elsevier

Tourism Management

Volume 30, Issue 3, June 2009, Pages 429-440
Tourism Management

Tale of two cities’ collaborative tourism marketing: Towards a theory of destination stakeholder assessment

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tourman.2008.07.012Get rights and content

Abstract

This paper focuses on collaborative tourism marketing practice, particularly the relationship between the Destination Management Organization (DMO) and tourism firms. It applies stakeholder theory as a framework for such performance assessment concerning the capability of a DMO to gain support for decision making, which contributes towards optimizing stakeholders' rewards while minimizing risks.

Whilst destination performance measurement and collaboration evaluation have been recurring themes, there appears to be a dearth in the tourism literature on the relationship between collaborative tourism marketing and the effects of social relations on DMO performance.

From the empirical analysis of two comparative case studies concerning Barcelona and Vienna emerges the significant role ‘social inclusion’ plays in coordinating networks. It is concluded that a strategy of social inclusion is a precondition to jointly carry out contingent activities, converge the goals of firms into a congruent DMO goal, decrease free-riding behavior and, consequently, bring about stable relations.

Section snippets

Managing DMO stakeholders

This paper attempts to assess collaborative tourism marketing from a stakeholder's theory approach, particularly the relationship between the Destination Management Organization and tourism firms in the context of two comparative case studies notably Barcelona and Vienna. Such analysis is relevant, because to be effective a DMO should assess its relationships and understand stakeholders so as to have an insight that can help answer questions such as: What are their intentions and interactions

Literature review

Atkinson, Waterhouse, and Wells (1997) view the “Modern organization as a web of contracts”. Such a perspective implies that, firstly, the planning process plays an important role in identifying and undertaking activities with a firm's stakeholders. Secondly, relationships between the firm and its stakeholders, both public and private, play a central role in DMO decision making. Two contrasting components of advanced service-based urban economies that characterize Barcelona and Vienna are the

Research strategy and methodology

For our “research strategy” we apply a comparative case study approach (Yin, 1981, Yin, 1994), which has a proven track record and enables one to understand the development of a complex phenomenon observed within its context.

These studies are based on several sources of information to enforce the validity of the research structure, such as: personal interviews of representatives from the DMO, local authorities and local tourism industry, and secondary data from DMOs' annual reports, statistics

Empirical findings3

The application of the theoretical model to the two case studies affords us to chronicle the evolution of the relationships between the DMO and its main destination stakeholders.

Evaluating collaboration from destination firms' perspective

Applying the Friedman and Miles dynamic model to Barcelona and Vienna it turns out that from 1993 to 2005 changes have occurred in the relationships between the DMOs and destinations' stakeholders. In particular, in both the cities interdependence, power struggles and strive about resources have shaped the collaborative interactions over time, creating a nexus of stable formal agreements between tourism firms and the DMO.

In the Austrian as well as in the Cataluña capitals, besides their public

Conclusions and implications

The present study represents the DMO as a social network wherein cooperative behavior is complex, variable and to a certain degree institutionalized through DMO intervention for purposes of enhancing the stakeholders' decision-making outcomes.

Moreover, it examines the nature and dynamism of collaborative relationships between the DMO and destination stakeholders with the purpose of assessing a DMO's social performance in terms of stakeholders' satisfaction.

The empirical research is both

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      This has an impact on the overall destination experience as the tourism product is created from the services between tourism providers rather than by any single operator (Mossberg, 2007). The tourism destinations in this study are predominantly SME dominated and so finding common ground for the strategic net and destination management as a whole between these diverse stakeholder groups can be very difficult (d'Angella & Go, 2009; Lemmetyinen & Go, 2009). Indeed, the required level of coordination and collaboration that is needed to deliver a destination product is made even more complicated by the significant fragmentation of actors within a destination (Baggio, Scott, & Cooper, 2010).

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