Tourist destination governance: practice, theory and issues

Abstract

This introductory chapter summarizes key aspects of the development of thinking in reference to tourist destination governance. It reviews the changing contexts of tourist destination governance, identifying and analyzing the main sources of its recent transformations. It examines concepts of collaborative contrasted with contested participation and the pluralities of stakeholders and actors with unequal skills, commitment and resources. It considers the roles of administrators in the political process by which destination governance is conducted on a day-to-day basis in contrast with the shaping of policy by political leaders. Finally, it reviews and assesses the strengths of network analysis and of complexity theory in helping to understand the reality of tourist destination governance. This summarization establishes a framework to consider how, or indeed whether, the effectiveness of destination governance has a more general meaning than for a specific condition only. This chapter presents an outline of the structure of the book before concluding with an editorial view of future directions for tourist destination governance research.