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This paper investigates the usage and trust of Chinese social media in the travel planning process (pre-trip, during-trip and post-trip) of Chinese tourists.

Through a combination of structured online survey (n = 406) and follow-up interviews, the research identifies the diversification of the demand-and-supply patterns of social media users in China, as well as the allocation of functions of social media as tools before, during and after travel.

Social media users are diverse in terms of their adoption of social media, use behaviour and scope; the levels of trust and influence; and their ultimate travel decisions and actions. Correlations between the level of trust, influence of social media and the intended changes in travel decisions are observed. Destination marketers and tourism industries should observe and adapt to the needs of social media users and potential tourist markets by understanding more about user segmentation between platforms or apps and conducting marketing campaigns on social media platforms to attract a higher number of visitors.

This paper demonstrated the case of social media usage in mainland China, which has been regarded as one of the fastest growing and influential tourist-generating markets and social media expansions in the world. This study further addressed the knowledge gap by correlating social media usage and travel planning process of Chinese tourists. The research findings suggested diversification of the demand-and-supply pattern of social media users in China, as well as the use of social media as tools before, during and after travel. Users were diversified in terms of their adoption of social media, use behaviour, scope, the levels of trust, influence and the ultimate travel decisions.

Destination marketing organizations should note that some overseas social media platforms that are not accessible in China like TripAdvisor, Yelp, Facebook and Instagram are still valued by some Chinese tourists, especially during-trip period in journeys to Western countries. Some tactics for specific user segments should be carefully observed. When promoting specific tourism products to Chinese tourists, it is necessary to understand the user segmentation between platforms or apps.

Social media is a powerful tool for tourism development and sustainability in creating smart tourists and destinations worldwide. In China, the use of social media has stimulated the development of both information and communication technology and tourism.

Notwithstanding a growing interest on destination management, little is known about the formation and evaluation of destination managers' strategies. Strategy assessment is essential to understand whether, and how, destination managers allow the reconciliation of the diverse stakeholders' interests within an integrated destination plan, pursuing the development of the destination. The purpose of this paper is the exploration and building of a strategy assessment approach.

A qualitative methodology is adopted, to identify key dimensions of strategy assessment and their combination within an integrated destination plan. Data come from the city of Turin, and the destination management organization developed for 2006 Winter Olympic Games.

The use of balanced scorecard approaches points out how a financial dimension is key in meta‐management contexts, notwithstanding the public interests of the destination supply system. Also, this work discloses the formative process that characterizes strategic planning within supply networks of tourism destination. It describes the hierarchy of strategy assessment, taking into consideration externalities emerging from integrated supply systems developed at the destination level.

Limitations are intrinsic to case study methods, and points on findings generalizability.

The paper offers insights on developing analytical capability within meta‐management organizations, to diagnose value creation and competitiveness gaps. Also, it gives insights on developing co‐ordination capabilities, allowing different strategic goals to be drawn into an integrated design.

The paper offers a novel approach for developing a strategy map, and contributes to prior research on strategy assessment in meta‐management.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse past tourism planning and discuss how it is going to evolve in the future.

The paper is based on literature review, but it also advances a model for future tourism planning.

The paper demonstrates that there is a strong need for tourism planning to be carried out with close links between territorial planning and its economics and management.

The paper is not based on primary data collection.

The paper is useful for planners, academics and practitioners. It shows how a new planning model may be put in practice in the future.

By linking physical and economic planning, the paper has good management implications to involve people and make them benefit from tourism.

Most tourism models fail to associate physical and economic planning, while this paper brings an innovative perspective of doing this.

Travels and vacations organised by a large number of people to certain destinations in certain periods cause some negative impacts on the destinations in question. The concept of overtourism, which has become a current issue especially with the anti-tourism demonstrations in certain destinations such as Venice, Barcelona and Dubrovnik as a result of the increasing tourism carrying capacity, has been drawing attention in recent years regarding the sustainability in the destinations. Popular destinations that are affected by overtourism try to develop some strategies in order to minimise the negative impacts of overtourism. One of these strategies is the demarketing strategy that is developed by the destination stakeholders towards the target group. In this chapter of the book, the significance of the concept of demarketing in terms of struggle against overtourism was revealed and how demarketing strategies applied to the marketing mix and different strategies were approached in tourism studies was discussed in detail by addressing the current literature. In addition, suggestions were proposed to the popular destinations that feel the negative impacts of overtourism and will be affected by overtourism also in the future concerning creating their own demarketing strategies and destination planning.

This paper aims to introduce a structuring and processing model (SPM) as a framework for tourism decision making research.

The study employs McCracken's long interview to collect data in field settings. The study introduces advances in Mintzberg et al.'s approach to structuring seemingly unstructured decision making to explain travelers' decision‐making processes.

SPM enables mapping and comparing visitors' plans, motivations, choices, and consequences. The results demonstrate nuanced decision‐behavior dynamics and complexities of visitors' travel‐related unconscious/conscious thinking and behavior.

SPM does not attempt to generalize findings to large survey samples.

Travel planning and execution dynamics dictate that a decision‐making funnel metaphor in consumer research does not capture such trip complexity because additional decisions are made when the traveler arrives at the destination.

SPM is dynamic and inclusive explaining simultaneous planning elements as well as considering sub‐decisions occurring before and after different phases in the process. This model includes both conscious and unconscious internal retrievals as well as contextual influences relating to current planning affect the decision‐making process.

The aim of the study is to determine the benefits of transforming a destination into smart destination (SD) to restart tourism after the COVID-19 outbreak, to match the dimensions of SD with restarting strategies, and to make conceptual inferences to serve this. For this purpose, two reports published by the World Tourism Organization (WTO) in 2020 were examined: Priorities for Tourism Recovery and Global Guidelines to Restart Tourism. Then, the contents of these reports and the dimensions of SDs were matched and a guiding model for tourism decision-makers was developed.

This paper aims to explore the Kinh and ethnic stakeholders’ participation and collaboration in tourism planning in Sapa, Vietnam.

The primary data collection involved semi-structured interviews with 33 key tourism stakeholders, and data were analyzed using qualitative content analysis.

The findings reveal that in terms of participation and collaboration in tourism planning, there is little difference between the Kinh and ethnic groups. Tourism planning is viewed as a top-down approach, and both groups at the community level have very limited participation in tourism planning activities. However, at the on-site management level, there are opposing views between high (Kinh) and low (ethnic) management levels about participation in tourism planning. Both groups recognize the need for interdependence regarding collaboration in tourism planning. They also share similar aspects in regard to facilitating and hindering their participation in tourism planning.

The limitations of this study include the use of a qualitative method, which limited the number of respondents. Future research could benefit from the application of quantitative research methods to include a greater number of local tourism stakeholders.

This study contributes to a better understanding of tourism planning in the Vietnamese context and has some practical implications for destination management and policymaking.

This is the first study to investigate the perspectives of Kinh and ethnic groups in term of participation and collaboration in tourism planning in the Vietnamese context.

The practice of destination branding for cities has been increasingly adopted by communities of all sizes and has enjoyed success to varying degrees. The focus of many of these branding initiatives has frequently been on the creative elements of logo, tagline, and advertising theme, with only limited consideration for the importance of generating stakeholder support and experience delivery. Active stakeholder engagement, to build the brand from the inside out during its planning process, has been shown to be an important factor in those initiatives that are considered more successful. This chapter highlights the need to engage stakeholders in the brand planning for destinations from the earliest stages. It illustrates a consultative model for destination brand planning, primary with a US case study, along with examples of some other cities.