Community-Level Market Responsiveness to Tourism

Abstract

The present case study examines a community’s market responsiveness to tourism. The current axiom in business is that individual organizations must be responsive to customer needs; whether the same holds true for communities as a unified tourist offering is less clear. A mixed methods approach is used to determine whether an award-winning tourism community exhibits the three criteria for market orientation (Slater & Narver, 1999). The findings suggest that market responsiveness as described in the literature may not be a requirement for success when examining communities rather than individual firms.