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The study here helps to fill the gap between the current practices of management performance audits for firms and government agencies. The study advances recent theories of program evaluation and marketing management auditing. While the application in this chapter refers to government agencies managing destination marketing programs (tourism agencies), the algorithmic model construction is applicable for all management audits. The study applies the perspectives from two streams of theory to describe five relevant activities for managing destination marketing programs: scanning, planning, implementation, assessing, and administering. The analysis proposes impact assessments to improve management performances of DMOs via checklists for assessing the quality of information in tourism-management performance audits. Checklists can serve as a management tool by management performance auditors and by DMO executives to enhance the quality in executing destination marketing programs. A meta-evaluation of 10 tourism management audit reports identifies good and bad practices. The findings indicate that substantial improvements are possible in the practice of DMO’s management performance auditing, and the proposed checklist may ensure both high quality performance audit reports and improved performances in DMO practices.

The marketing environment is constantly changing due to political, economic, social and technological issues. Therefore, this chapter explains how practitioners in destination marketing can improve their internal capabilities, competences and resources whilst responding to the ongoing changes in the external environment. The strategic management of destination marketing organisations involves continuous decision-making processes due to the nature of the tourism product. Hence, the author underlines the importance of stakeholder management, organisational culture, employee satisfaction, leadership and corporate governance/political environment, as these variables may contribute to the effective strategic management of these organisations.

For many decades, destination marketing organizations have evolved in their structure and in their programming, especially as targeted toward leisure travel and tourism markets. They changed their focus to internet communication, then to brand strategy and destination management, and most recently to address disruptions from the tourism online gig economy consisting of myriad microentrepreneurs, some sharing local experiences directly with tourists. This chapter relates how Raleigh, USA, and its tourism office have begun to embrace tourism microentrepreneurship through strategic planning efforts and specific programs of the last five years. It concludes with implications for how small and medium destinations can structure new programs, policies, and interactions to support marketplaces of tourism microentrepreneurs as part of holistic tourism-related economic development.

Destinations are highly dynamic and complex systems requiring a responsive and relational governance system. Recent tourism literature proposes a network approach to destination management, but empirical evidence shows interactions in destinations remains low. Dominant stakeholders tend to control destination governance systems; less powerful ones are not actively included. This chapter schematizes the network of relations as a destination triangle made up of governance, supply side, and tourists. A quantitative study of tourists and a qualitative study of supply-side stakeholders show that the destination triangle is inappropriately adjusted. The supply side is not actively involved in destination management. The findings show that the absence of a relational management approach can impede initiatives.

American tourism is largely affected by the ability and ease with which one can travel to a tourist destination. Information availability, utility, and value of information on websites are essential in choosing and planning a vacation or business trip. This study compares visa and nonvisa tourist destinations as they relate to American tourism and business travel. Each destination's internet website quality, quantity, and utility are compared through an evaluation rubric with 36 attributes. Four countries are considered to provide two countries in each category of visa required and nonvisa required. The marketing mediums compared are the government run websites and Lonely Planet's private sector version. The first proposition is that countries that require visas lack the quality and quantity in internet marketing in comparison to those countries that do not require a visa. The second proposition is that the government run websites are comprehensive in detailing information in comparison to privately created websites. The eight complete rubrics achieve a comparison that is comprehensive demonstrating variability in quality and information available. The third proposition addresses is the fact that the quality of the government run websites relates strongly to the overall web presence and periodical existence of that particular countries’ tourist destination literature. This chapter is unique and valuable to those considering travel to a visa-required destination but the theories demonstrated highlight the deficiencies of private sector websites and the fast pace growth of internet tourism marketing.

This chapter relies on descriptive case studies from various regions around the world to better explain critical elements for the effective marketing of destinations. The authors put forward a theoretical framework, entitled the destination marketing triangle (DMT), that sheds light on the complex relationships and on the interconnectedness of three dimensions of destination marketing. Their model suggests that destination leaders ought to work closely with tourism service providers and to continuously engage with tourists through traditional and digital media. This way, they can improve the experiences of their visitors and prospects. At the same time, they could build a solid brand identity for their destination.

This chapter aims to conceptualise the role of gastronomy and events in destination strategic development and explore the possibility for destination management organisations (DMOs) to capitalise their potential. Thus, it firstly explores the role of gastronomy and events in contemporary tourism and their impact on destination appeal, authenticity and development. Secondly, it delves into the possible ways by which DMOs can utilise events to achieve destination goals and competitiveness. As gastro events are a common denominator of gastro-tourism and events, they are given special attention. In the empirical part, two prominent destinations in the most developed tourism country of the Western Balkans, Croatia, are analysed. Also, in the empirical part, archival analysis is used to analyse relevant documentation and sources covering the 2016–2018 period. In the analysis, the strategic role of gastronomy, events and DMOs' activities and budgets are explored to unveil the existing interlinkages and patterns among them. The contribution of the study is the systematisation and critical review of existing literature on the role of gastronomy and events in the destination offer and of DMOs' usage of events for achieving destination goals and competitiveness. The chapter provides valuable implications for destination strategic management and marketing as well as for future academic studies on the subject.

The Olympic Region of Seefeld is a popular winter but also a strong summer destination. Together with the city of Innsbruck, Seefeld hosted several Olympic mega-events and gained a strong reputation as an Olympic region, with a main focus on Nordic combination competitions. Seefeld’s strengths include the Nordic cross-country skiing slopes that provide the ideal basis for high-altitude trainings for top sports athletes. Since 2006 five municipalities have been represented by the DMO, which is managed by two CEOs. Individual and group behavior can be observed in the region. Seefeld’s destination network displays a sufficient density where a few key leading actors have come to symbolize the network nodes linking different stakeholder groups.

The extant literature distinguishes sharply between corporate and community models of destination governance. In contrast, the case of Naturns/Naturno illustrates how a specific mixture of corporate and community approaches in governance can yield positive results. In particular, it shows how the existence of a network core characterized by integrative entrepreneurial leadership, an element that would in the first instance be associated with a corporate-driven destination, turns out to be a potential driver of a successful community-oriented destination development. In Naturns/Naturno, through its integrative entrepreneurial behavior, a hotel consortium has been influential in leading the transformation of the whole destination toward increased quality, strategic coherence, and innovativeness, while maintaining its community orientation.

As the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) has stated in their original definition of quality (ISO 8402:1994), quality is “the totality of characteristics of an entity that bear on its ability to satisfy stated and implied needs.” The authors consequently believe that not only learning from challenges – the relevant entity – should be intended as a task aimed to satisfy the needs of both challenged learners and challenged businesses, but also that not all the entity's needs are stated from the beginning of the process.

These were the methodological assumptions of a workshop on destination management held from October 2020 to February 2021 in the frame of tourism studies at the University of Bergamo. Though the workshop was entirely run through digital channels in a time of pandemic, it successfully provided five destination management organizations (DMOs) and an association among hosts in the Bergamo Alps with a variety of digital communication products.

The workshop was special in terms of satisfaction expressed by participants as well as the involved DMOs. The participants' deliveries became active components of the destinations' policies. A professional video came as a welcome addition.

Implied needs which the workshop came across – namely, doubts on the reliability of tourism data, cooperation among local actors, prerequisites in building a new website, the role of food and recipes in promoting a destination identity, best practices in guiding guests through planned itineraries, and the role of a city administration in controlling overtourism – were identified while researching and producing.