Tourism Destination Management

Abstract

Tourism destination management is a truly multi-faceted pursuit. This special issue of six papers draws together a number of tourism's contemporary critical issues and pertinent challenges, based upon experience from several different tourism destination cultural and economic environments. In relation to the structure and functioning of tourism destinations, crucial issues that are highlighted in this special number include: product development, place branding, strategic alliances, linkage of peripheral attractions, cross-border cooperation, accessibility, and infrastructure development. Sectoral foci embrace health tourism, sport, business and conventions, and culture. Destination challenges include management for disabled visitors, collaborative responses to seasonal employment problems, and infrastructure investment priority in a rapidly changing society. Physical environments encompass lowland and alpine Europe and northern India, cities, borders and winter resorts. In their paper Product Development for Health Tourism in Alpine Regions, Christof Schalber, Anita Zehrer and Wolfgang Schobersberger examine challenges for alpine destinations in the development of health and wellness tourism products. They do this through literature review and empirical study including an online questionnaire sent to directors of alpine tourism destinations. The stated(prime destination goal is to support visitors in their health consciousness and define individual measures for health support. The paper highlights several implications for destination-based product development. Prerequisites for health tourism products in such regions range from basic and accessible natural resources to specialized tourism services and specific medical treatments. Accommodation providers, human capital and highly qualified employees are seen as most crucial in supporting the provision of specialized products and services. Such requirements can raise costs considerably above less specialized forms of alpine tourism. Close cooperation among single service providers along the destination value chain is necessary to generate a competitive advantage. At a destination level, added value can be generated by involving additional qualified local service providers such as mountain and hiking guides, Nordic walking guides and skiing instructors, by processing local agricultural products and by obtaining sports equipment from local sports shops. Thus sectors such as winter sports and mountain holidays are seen to be well placed for being combined with health and wellness tourism services. The authors conclude that such integration offers substantial development potential for alpine destinations. The second paper, Sport and Tourism as Elements of Place Branding. A Case Study on Poland sees Adrian Lubowiecki-Vikuk and Agata Basinska-Zych focusing on the relationship between sport/tourism and place branding. They suggest that the role of sport and tourism in place branding demands greater attention in Polish public administration, and point to the potential importance of such branding for competitive advantage at local, regional and national levels. The authors contend that Poland needs a systematic and consistent(process for building awareness of a national brand, although they recognize that branding cities and regions is less problematic, with potentially lower levels of conflicting aspirations, than trying to brand a whole country. Further, improving the quality of life of local communities is seen as an important objective in the process of harnessing sport and tourism for place identity. The Polish case illustrates how difficult place branding processes can be as an element of tourism destination management. In the case of(Poland, this paper notes an absence of synergy in the actions of state bodies and the lack of a clear vision and direction of development. According to the authors, this can be partly ascribed to the fact that (at the time of writing) Poland has not yet organized and hosted any significantly large international sports events. …