Tourist destination governance through local elites : Looking beyond the stakeholder level
Type
doctoral thesis
Date Issued
2011
Author(s)
Abstract
Aim of research: Community type of tourist destinations face the challenge of being characterized by a highly fragmented offer, by a complex interlocking of public institutions and private enterprises and by numerous, often contrasting stakeholder interests. Consequently, destination planning and management becomes a rather difficult process and destination development policies and strategies regularly fail or experience considerable setbacks during the implementation. Recent research under the term 'destination governance' attempts to understand which norms, rules and routines prevail in tourist destination communities, in order to better steer and 'govern' the processes of planning, implementing and controlling for the whole place.
Methodology: In this paper, the author first presents the logical and historical devel-opment of the state-of-the art in destination planning and management as well as the recent research field of destination governance. The traditional methodological approaches based on qualitative case studies and looking at institutions and stakeholder groups in a rather comprehensive perspective, have proven to be limited in scope. Not only there is a lack of empirical measurement for the postulated mechanisms in destination governance research. Also, most case studies presented in the literature are limited to descriptive reconstructions of events and processes which eventually conclude with the indication that every destination is particular and every case must be seen as 'culturally' specific.
In order to bring forward the knowledge of destination governance and thus to understand which mechanisms affect destination management and planning processes, the author proposes to change the research agenda. In this paper, he presents his research work on destination governance based on (1) quantitative social network analysis, which complements the traditional qualitative case study approach, and (2) individuals, connected to each other in elite networks, as opposed to the previous perspective of institutions and stakeholder groups.
Findings: His results lead to the differentiation between explicit governance (i.e. legal framework, institutional roles, stakeholder interests, etc.) and implicit govern-ance (multiple relationships funded on interdependencies, communication, trust, consensus, etc.). Particularly the latter ones are the reason for the success or fail-ure of collective policies and actions.
Additionally, the results reveal that across various cases, mainly in the Alpine re-gions, there are on one side aspects typically referring to communities of individuals (e.g. closure and openness, interdependencies, communication, trust, consensus). Yet, on the other side we clearly recognize features attributed to organizations (e.g. hierarchy, influence, knowledge, expertise). Independently from these two perspec-tives, it is the overall implicit governance that affects the formation of interest groups, of formalized routines and eventually of many locally developed elements of the ex-plicit governance. The latter consists of the role of institutions (e.g. municipality, DMO) and of organizations as well as the creation of laws and rules.
The author concludes with an outlook for further research and the usefulness of destination governance research as a model for tackling small world problem issues and therefore the challenges of collective action.
Methodology: In this paper, the author first presents the logical and historical devel-opment of the state-of-the art in destination planning and management as well as the recent research field of destination governance. The traditional methodological approaches based on qualitative case studies and looking at institutions and stakeholder groups in a rather comprehensive perspective, have proven to be limited in scope. Not only there is a lack of empirical measurement for the postulated mechanisms in destination governance research. Also, most case studies presented in the literature are limited to descriptive reconstructions of events and processes which eventually conclude with the indication that every destination is particular and every case must be seen as 'culturally' specific.
In order to bring forward the knowledge of destination governance and thus to understand which mechanisms affect destination management and planning processes, the author proposes to change the research agenda. In this paper, he presents his research work on destination governance based on (1) quantitative social network analysis, which complements the traditional qualitative case study approach, and (2) individuals, connected to each other in elite networks, as opposed to the previous perspective of institutions and stakeholder groups.
Findings: His results lead to the differentiation between explicit governance (i.e. legal framework, institutional roles, stakeholder interests, etc.) and implicit govern-ance (multiple relationships funded on interdependencies, communication, trust, consensus, etc.). Particularly the latter ones are the reason for the success or fail-ure of collective policies and actions.
Additionally, the results reveal that across various cases, mainly in the Alpine re-gions, there are on one side aspects typically referring to communities of individuals (e.g. closure and openness, interdependencies, communication, trust, consensus). Yet, on the other side we clearly recognize features attributed to organizations (e.g. hierarchy, influence, knowledge, expertise). Independently from these two perspec-tives, it is the overall implicit governance that affects the formation of interest groups, of formalized routines and eventually of many locally developed elements of the ex-plicit governance. The latter consists of the role of institutions (e.g. municipality, DMO) and of organizations as well as the creation of laws and rules.
The author concludes with an outlook for further research and the usefulness of destination governance research as a model for tackling small world problem issues and therefore the challenges of collective action.
Language
English
Keywords
destination management
destination governance
HSG Classification
contribution to scientific community
Refereed
No
Publisher
Universität St. Gallen
Publisher place
St. Gallen
Subject(s)
Eprints ID
207334
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