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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.

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 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 actors in a tourism destination, the atmospheric turn initially means looking at themselves in a more holistic and differentiated way. Through the analysis of strategic visitor flows, it is possible to identify subspaces with high frequency, which thus become identification spaces of a destination. Together with other identification fields, they shape the destination brand understood as spatial and atmospheric entity. This enables a different view of a destination, its structure and generates new opportunities for destination management, which wll be discussed in the form of an outlook. A destination manager, for example, could in the future collaborate with governmental bodies responsible for spatial planning and with private builders on spatial design projects and introduce the perspective of the destination as a branded space.

The growing tensions related to overtourism and its influences, such as environmental harm to nature and residents' well-being, loss of authenticity and visitors' satisfaction, have triggered a rethinking of destination marketing strategies. Many destinations consider stricter measures to cope with this situation. Among others, demarketing initiatives, which aim at discouraging demand, are discussed as an alternative strategic orientation. Demarketing is not a new concept, but in complex tourism destinations with many attractions, stakeholders and tourists, its potential remains mostly unexplored. This chapter presents findings from two tourism destinations: one on a national scale, New Zealand, and one on a regional scale, the Lofoten Islands, Norway. Our results show that destination demarketing mix strategies are emphasised by both destinations. In an overtourism situation, it is surprising that general demarketing has limited relevance. Instead, we find evidence for a mix of mainly selective demarketing, but also synchromarketing initiatives (redistributing demand spatially and temporally) and counter-marketing efforts (tourists' code of conduct). Decisions related to the implementation of a demarketing mix depend not only on destination management in general, but also on long-term, sustainability-oriented and dynamic processes where stakeholders negotiate how they can adjust visitor demands. We refer to such strategic work as ‘Stakeholder Integrated Demarketing Approach’ (SIDA). The chapter provides an original contribution to tourism academia and practices while opening avenues for future research, particularly with reference to a demarketing mix strategy and the feasibility of SIDA in times when demarketing could develop as a tool to mitigate overtourism.

The objective of this paper is to examine the ways in which tourism can be regarded as a catalyst for positive change, benefiting both people and the planet. The authors consider the integral role of community engagement as a tangible component within the governance frameworks of destination management organizations (DMOs).

Originating from the authors' professional experience and academic expertise in managing and marketing tourist destinations, both at the local and regional levels, the article explores the pressing requirement for reevaluating policies and strategies. It aims to emphatically underscore and reiterate the role of tourism as a pivotal driver for enhancing peoples' quality of life and ensuring the sustainability of tourist destinations. This effort involves not only maintaining equilibrium among the four widely recognized pillars of sustainability but also pondering the significance of an equally crucial aspect of destination management – the political sustainability of the governance framework of tourist destinations.

Current realities encourage the authors to contemplate and act, guided by the unfolding of tourism's swift regenerative influence. It is anticipated that people have gleaned vital lessons from the collective pause people underwent during the pandemic, coupled with the stark realization of being unable to partake in the favourable contributions of tourism in everyday life. This article highlights the urgency of implementing DMO models that are capable of conceptualizing and operationalizing a human-centred tourism development policy and the resulting sustainability strategies, enhancing representation and guidance for the satisfaction of stakeholders.

It is neither a widespread practice, nor are there many prior studies that tackle the potential of forecasting the comprehensiveness of governance and management models for tourist destinations that encompass stakeholders who represent the direct interests of local communities within the tourism system. Supported by a literature review, analysis of secondary data and the first-hand experience of the authors, it becomes apparent that the operational landscape of most organizations functioning as tourist destination managers is predominantly at the regional and local tiers. These very organizations are the ones that have been progressively evolving, displaying a readiness to introduce innovation in this realm. Implementing these models would represent an approach to governance more inclined towards a bottom-up style, thereby posing a challenge to the more rigid and commonly employed strategies that emanate from a centrally structured national framework.

The tourism sector of the state of Kerala in India is highly vulnerable and has been extensively impacted by the global pandemic disaster. This paper aims to analyze the impact of COVID-19 (Corona virus pandemic) on houseboat operators and homestay managers.

This paper indicates a multi-stakeholder assessment method to examine various pandemic disaster facets through a structured discussion with different destination stakeholders. This study examines qualitative data collected through semi-structured interviews from homestay owners, houseboat operators and government designators in Kerala. This study proposes a conceptual community resilience competency framework that could facilitate speedy crisis management responses. In this study, the sample comprises of nine respondents who play a pivotal role in the travel business, comprising the public sector, private sector, NGO's and community leaders.

The qualitative findings identify India’s and the state of Kerala's roles in handling crisis management scenarios over internal strategies and strategy formulation. The results indicate that the supplementary industry practitioners explore tactical and strategic management initiatives to sustain their businesses. The dynamics of stakeholder engagement adopted by the state is given prominence.

This study suggests mechanisms to re-establish the brand image and the possible strategies and suggestions that could help in the survival of the Kerala tourism industry in the post-disaster period. The “new normal” has been substantiated in the study by incorporating strategies and precautionary methods adopted by the homestay and houseboat operators so as to address the guests' safety concerns.

Co-operation activities play a central role for the development of a tourism destination, and require a co-operative approach among numerous different actors to manage and market a tourism destination. This paper aims to describe the characteristics of leadership networks in tourism destinations and their impact on destination development.

The paper discusses network relationships of destination leaders, as in their collectivity, leaders shape and influence the destination's core services, strategic orientation and innovation capability. The research is based on the examination of relevant literature and a quantitative survey conducted in five selected tourism destinations in the Tirol, Austria.

The article discusses leadership networks in community-structured destinations, providing insights into its organizational structure and dynamic behaviour. Moreover, the paper illustrates the network characteristics and its influence on the development of the tourism destination. Thus, implications for destination management can be derived.

Discussions on leadership have usually been limited to firms and have not yet fully embraced the network and destination level. The originality of the paper is to provide insights in destination leadership and networking activities of leaders within destinations by means of a quantitative approach and thus adds to the growing body of literature on the functionalities of destination leadership networks, their structures and mechanisms.

Climate change will lead to new environmental conditions in winter sport destinations. Even if the motivations of the visitors remain the same, climate change will inevitably influence their behavior. At the same time, tourism destinations try to influence visitor behavior by implementing adaptation strategies and offering new products. The purpose of this paper is to discuss the advantages and disadvantages of possible consumer research approaches from a destination's perspective.

In order to study the influence of climate change on winter destinations in Austria, the authors adapted an existing behavioral framework to the model for proactive tourist adaptation to climate change, which is helpful to understand the influencing factors and the individual decision‐making process towards adaptation intention. Thereafter they used the results of a choice experiment (=intended behavior) to calibrate a decision support tool (DST) for a cross‐country skiing destination in Austria.

The paper presents a DST based on the choice experiment. The DST shows the changing market shares for three segments as a destination and its entrepreneurs attempt to identify the best opportunities for the various adaption strategies they can possibly consider. The authors suggest this as a suitable market research tool for proactive destination management.

Compared to the theory of planned behavior (TPB), Choice experiments (CE) are less suitable to contribute to the understanding of behavior; at the same time, CEs are well suited to model intended behavior, and to predict the demand for currently non‐existing alternatives when past behavior might be a poor predictor.

The authors propose a conceptual framework that explicitly combines the modeling of behavior and behavioral intention with relevant concepts of the individual customer's cognitive process. The authors want to ensure that destination managers are able to understand, and eventually direct and influence travel behavior as it relates to their local conditions, which in the context of climate change implies that the destination must lay the foundation for tomorrow's success while competing today.

The paper focuses on two main challenges related to destination choice in the context of climate change: tourists encounter a rather unique decision context, as their decision to visit is completely voluntary, and predicting visitor reactions to climate change enters uncharted waters as clients have not encountered these situations before.

The integral approach to risk is currently an important background for the local development processes within the sustaintability framework. Given the greater frequency and intensity of extreme climatic events in the period 2005-2015, whose inventory shows a total of 78 extreme climate events in the four thermal stations, the purpose of this paper is to analyze risk situations and their corresponding management in the tourist destinations (TD) of the Atlantic coast of Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Risk management in TDs has not been addressed in depth in the study area. Because of that, this study is exploratory and descriptive, and it was conducted by quantitative and qualitative methods. The occurrence of extreme weather events was the trigger of this study. Thereafter, the existence of risk situations was analyzed from the combination of natural hazards and material and human damage. The actions taken by the public sector were identified to make a diagnosis of the current management of coastal destinations in the province of Buenos Aires.

The result of this study shows that TDs do not apply integral models of risk management, as only 16% of the total registered events were attended by public management from reactive measures to the event. It is believed possible to replicate this study in other TDs, regardless of its main tourism modality, as the analysis carried out in the coastal destinations of Buenos Aires shows that it is necessary to plan and manage risk to avoid and/or mitigate material, social and economic damages of the resident and tourist population.

The main implication of the study, in practical terms, is associated with the incorporation of specific equipment for the detection of storms and other meteorological phenomena. In addition, it should start, from the management, with a process of awareness of the resident and tourist population about the risk and its consequences.

Knowing the existence of natural hazards is a strategic resource for public management. From the identification of the hazards, exposure and vulnerability of the population, it is possible to begin to take measures to mitigate the risk and conduct awareness campaigns about the risk situations that may arise from the occurrence of meteorological phenomena. in beach areas. In this sense, the development of a culture of risk is very important.

The relationship between the occurrence of extreme weather events and tourism has not been addressed in depth in Argentina. Therefore, this work provides an interdisciplinary vision (from tourism and physical geography) about the hazards that extreme phenomena represent in TDs, the situations of risk that they detaches there and the weakness of public management in coastal destinations of Buenos Aires. This case study shows that the absence of planning and risk management has serious implications for the continuity of the development processes of the destinations.