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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.

This introductory paper aims to provide an overview of the significance of the theme issue.

This paper sheds lights on issues that post-colonial, post-conflict and post-disaster destinations are facing, and more importantly provides strategies to overcome the issues. The solutions are tailored to the particular profile of the destination.

For post-colonial, post-conflict and post-disaster destinations to enhance their image to potential visitors and to be able to compete equally with established destinations, it is important to provide solutions that are tailor-made to their own situation and circumstances, as one size does not fit all.

The value of this paper is that it re-visits the realities faced by post-colonial, post-conflict and post-disaster destinations while highlighting their potentials and barriers.

Destinations are focal points for tourist activity and thus for the study of tourism. They are, however, notoriously difficult to manage due to their complex systems of stakeholders. Such complexity implies that destinations are driven by a wide range of forces in their internal and external environments. The purpose of this paper is to highlight the diversity and depth of the challenges at play in destination management and, in doing so, review the primary contributions in the field.

This is a "perspective" paper (i.e. critical literature review).

The study of destinations remains an area of active research interest, with the many challenges that arise from within and external to destinations offering much food for thought with respect to their longevity as viable, sustainable and competitive places for tourists to visit. For the future, the need to view destinations as part of a wider system is paramount with them being inescapable from debates on urban planning, economic inequality, transportation and housing and the omnipresence of all things “smart”. Such debates need to incorporate both tourists and resident communities, as the well-being and quality of life of both groups is under threat in many destinations, particularly heritage and culturally rich city destinations around the world, where the term “overtourism” is increasingly heard.

This study has implications for the integrated and more holistic management of tourist destinations.

This is a "perspective" paper, so it does not offer individual practical implications for destinations. Moreover, it offers a concise and precise summary of core studies in the field and provides a platform for a more future-looking critical debate on the sustainable management of tourist destinations.

Looking ahead, destinations need to be considered as part of a wider system, one that is inclusive of urban planning, economic inequality, transportation and housing, and “smart” initiatives among others. Most importantly, the views of tourist and resident communities need to be considered and incorporated into future planning at the destination level with wellbeing and quality of life indicators being used to identify the real benefits of tourism to both communities.

Integrated and holistic forms of destination management is the way forward, with the exponential growth of technology, as well as the need to manage the exchange of knowledge and data at the destination level, critical to the sustainability of the competitive destination long into the future.

Investigates the relationship between tourists’ destination loyalty and their preferences as to destination. Destination loyalty is operationally defined as the level of tourists’ perceptions of a destination as a recommendable place. On‐site surveys of Korean outbound travellers were conducted at the Seoul International Airport, South Korea, in March 1997. Of 285 questionnaires collected from Korean outbound travellers, 265 useful questionnaires are analyzed. Multiple regression analysis reveals that three destination preferences, including different culture experiences, safety, and convenient transportation, have a positive relationship with tourist’s loyalty to the destination. Results from a path analysis show that past trip experience affects tourists’ destination preference. The implications and limitations of the study are discussed in the conclusion.

This article aims to provide a critical review of the articles included in this special issue and highlight their findings and contribution to events, festivals and destination management research.

The article critically reviews methodologies, findings, themes and conclusions offered by each article included in this special issue.

The articles in the special issue identify the latest thematic trends in events, festivals and destination management research and propose conceptual frameworks for event and festival life cycle trajectories. They build on previous research confirming how accessible tourism and a balanced event portfolio can increase the sustainability and competitiveness of the destination. Based on sound methodologies, they offer specific theoretical and practical implication for the successful planning, marketing and management of events, festivals and destinations. They provide suggestions on how event innovation, participatory sport events, mega sport events, food and wine festivals and meetings, incentives, conferences and events (MICE) can assist in the marketing and branding of the tourism destination.

The articles in this special issue lay the foundation for future research in events, festivals and destination management. Articles in this special issue apply various research methods and analysis, indicating the growth of event and festival research. Research methods and analysis techniques used in the special issue include content/theme analysis, case studies, qualitative studies and questionnaires. The research articles and methodologies used in this issue should help both researchers and industry practitioners.

This study highlights key findings, theoretical and practical implications and contributions of the articles included in this special issue. It provides a holistic view of events, festivals and destination management research and suggests areas for future research.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a detailed description of the various activities and processes undertaken by a particular national tourism organization (NTO) in carrying out its goal of developing a destination brand.

A single qualitative case study is primarily employed, though the study draws on data from multiple sources of information.

The study affirms the co‐creation and stakeholder viewpoints from having modeled the branding process and outlining the complex interaction of destination‐branding activities in the country‐level context. The study provides a critical discussion of the different approaches to branding, and the adoption of branding philosophies, in the destination context.

Though this paper is based on a single country case study, it provides a strong and empirically grounded framework for identifying, in‐depth, several key destination branding processes and activities in great detail.

The co‐creation view of brands and branding is a neglected area in destination‐branding literature. Destination‐branding research, in particular, lacks grounded models that profoundly describe branding activities. This study contributes to the lack of empirically grounded knowledge of destination branding.

This paper aims to provide an original body of work that presents and discusses the theory that destination leadership is about proactively shaping the future development of destinations and territories. This is the second part of the special issue of Tourism Review on destination leadership.

This editorial introduces the papers included and highlights a few general thoughts about the interplay between destination leadership and territorial development.

This introduction summarizes how the papers in this special issue contribute to two streams of research: first, the papers reflect on the necessity of adapting the specific form and style of destination leadership to the development status of a destination. Second, papers highlight that local stakeholders, local knowledge and the local context, in general, have a high impact on destination leadership.

By summarizing and condensing the various contributions to this special issue, the editorial introduction highlights that destination leadership is about proactively shaping the future of tourist destinations. Furthermore, it argues that this development needs to respect local networks, territorial characteristics, histories and contexts. Therefore, tailoring destination leadership to their own territories seems to be an essential success factor, and in the future, we may want to define Alpine destination leadership, island destination leadership, city destination leadership, etc.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the influences of information sources, namely organic sources and induced sources, on perceived destination image and destination choice intention of university student travellers to Mauritius.

Data were collected using a convenience sample in a large university in Western Australia. A self‐administered questionnaire was designed using established scales. In total, 388 usable responses were collected and analyzed using a variety of statistical techniques.

The perceived attractiveness of Mauritius as a vacation destination is based on the fact that tourists picture the island as one which offers good value for money and cheap travel. Both information sources are found to have an influence on perceived destination image and destination choice intention. Perceived destination image is found to predict destination choice intention.

The sample is limited to potential tourists in Western Australia. Larger or national sample can be used for future studies. Qualitative methods could be explored in future.

It is recommended that destination marketers should use multiple sources of information to target tourists. In particular, the internet seems to be the highest incidence of information source.

The paper has redressed some deficits in the literature. Prior studies have not examined Mauritius as a tourist destination. Neither have Australians been studied as potential tourists. It has also tested the conceptual determinants of perceived destination image and destination choice intention and has proved that destination image is a multidimensional concept.

As there is still only limited research about expectation formation in destination marketing, the aim of this paper is to enhance this body of knowledge by providing theoretical and empirical evidence about the role of different factors which generate tourist expectations. In particular, since expectations may significantly condition not only the tourist choice process but also the perceptions of experiences, the objective of this paper is to examine the factors contributing to the expectations of a tourist destination. Based on service expectations literature, a theoretical framework postulates the main factors generating tourist expectations.

Empirical research tests the research hypotheses. More specifically, several in‐depth interviews and focus groups (qualitative research) and a survey conducted in a holiday destination (quantitative research) led to data collection.

Tourist expectations are a second‐order factor based on inter‐correlations among several first‐order factors (i.e. past experience, external communication, word‐of‐mouth communication and destination image). In addition, image can be considered as the main factor generating expectations of a destination.

The main limitation of this study is the geographic area (tourist site) of the research process. The tourist destination under investigation significantly influences the characteristics of the sample, of which national tourists are the main constituent.

Managing the destination image and the quality of experience is critical to induce favorable expectations of the destination in the tourist's mind. In addition, the coherence and reliability of destination communication need to be controlled in expectations management.

The study aims to provide a detailed definition of Destination Cultural Reputation while also exploring its impact on tourist satisfaction through an investigation of the dynamics between these two elements. Additionally, the potential moderating role of on-site engagement in sustainable activities has been investigated, examining whether satisfaction prompts tourists to exhibit behaviors such as the intention to return and recommend the cultural destination.

To achieve these objectives, a survey and a structural equation model, based on a sample of 647 visitors to an important UNESCO World Heritage site (i.e. Urbino), have been adopted.

Findings confirm tourists’ recognition of the destination’s cultural reputation, supporting its relationship with visitor satisfaction. Additionally, tourist satisfaction is positively associated with destination loyalty. However, on-site sustainable activities negatively moderate the relationship between destination reputation and tourist satisfaction. This suggests that a favorable cultural reputation should align with quality sustainable activities in the destination to prevent tourist dissatisfaction.

The paper offers valuable practical insights for destination managers and policymakers aiming to enhance appeal and sustainability.

The study contributes to enhancing the understanding of the complex relationship between reputation, satisfaction, and loyalty in cultural destinations. In addiction it measures the reputation of tourist destination through the specific cultural dimension.