Destination Management and Sustainable Tourism Development: A Cross-Country Analysis

Globalization with its associated tendencies towards integration of services and concentration of capital has put pressure on tourism destinations to better position their tourist offers in a highly competitive market. Hence, Destination Management Organizations (DMOs) should constantly re-engineer and adapt their product diversification and commercialization strategy to the changing patterns of “post-modern” tourists’ demand. At the same time, tourism development pressures destination areas through increased resource consumption, waste generation and land fragmentation while policy measures to promote more sustainable tourism are progressing only slowly due to local resistance. Therefore, finding the right balance between economic development of tourism destinations, conservation of their resources and well-being of the local population has become a challenging task for many Destination Management Organizations. The aim of this book is to present the results of exploratory research done in 2011 in six Alpine countries (i.e. CH, A, D, I, F, SLO) and in Poland, to evaluate and compare the efforts of 72 DMOs concerning sustainable management of a tourism destination.