This textbook shows how cities, regions and countries adopt branding strategies similar to those of leading household brand names in an effort to differentiate themselves and emotionally connect with potential tourists. It asks whether tourist destinations get the reputations they deserve and uses topical case studies to discuss brand concepts and challenges. It tackles how place perceptions are formed, how cities, regions and countries can enhance their reputations as creative, competitive destinations, and the link between competitive identity and strategic tourism policy making.

This book examines the political order and the issues, processes and approaches in applying governance insights to tourist destinations. The book consists of 16 chapters presented in three parts. Part I introduces the reader to the issues and considerations of tourist destination governance. The four chapters in this part address the diversity of questions of relevance around regional destination development, community involvement, responsiveness and future outcomes of governance in the context of tourism. This includes an exploration of a variety of challenges regarding governance in emerging tourist destinations within the Greater Mekong in Asia, the conflicts in governance within a regional community in Scotland which has had a long history of golf tourism, the development of a typology of issues and pressures that affect tourist destination governance and the role of knowledge in good governance for tourist destinations. Part II explores the complexities and considerations of decision making and the significant role it plays in its specific relevance to tourist destination governance and tourism development within regional communities. In acknowledging that tourist destination development may involve contentious, complicated and arduous processes, this part recognizes that decision making has a prominent role to play in achieving effectiveness in governance. The three chapters in this part examine tourist destination decision making during times of crisis in Thailand, stakeholder roles in governance and decision making for a wildlife tour in Tonga, and the utilization of community involvement and empowerment as keys to success in regional tourist destinations. Part III provides further understanding regarding the approaches and solutions of tourist destination governance. This includes aspects of structural change, community engagement, networks and collaborations in the context of destinations. The five chapters in this part include the exploration of a process of governance change within a broader mountain tourist destination in Switzerland, utilizing effective networks as assistance to governance in destinations, community-based tourism governance solutions in a case study in Thailand and insights from complexity, network and stakeholder theories as approaches, including an understanding of a micro-macro context of tourist destination governance at its local/regional and national level. The concluding chapter examines the theory and methodology of governance studies, provide insights for tourist destination managers and researchers, and identify opportunities for further research into destination governance issues. This chapter discusses the application of governance concepts to other countries' governance and issues of conceptual importance, such as the need for ideology in the discussion of governance. This raises the question: does good governance of a tourist destination have to be based on democratic principles? Finally, the chapter looks at the concept of governance effectiveness.

This book advances the current literature on destination marketing by using innovative up-to-date case studies from a wide geographical representation. The contributors examine new methods and marketing approaches used within the field through a combination of theoretical and practical approaches. With discussions of topics including image, branding, attractions and competitiveness, the chapters in this volume offer new insight into contemporary developments such as medical tourism, Islamic tourism and film-induced tourism. Presenting detailed findings and a range of methodologies, ranging from surveys to travel writings and ethnography, this book will be of interest to students, scholars and practitioners in the fields of tourism and marketing.

Tourism Destination Quality: Attributes and Dimensions critically compares dimensions of tourism destination quality established in the TDQ study with dimensions of product quality, service quality, place quality and destination service/product quality.

This book approaches the issue of contemporary destination governance from a case study point of view. 16 destinations from across Europe, Australia and Canada are presented in detail and an overview of their respective historical developments, their resource endowments and market positions as well as their stakeholder structure is given.

Destination competitiveness and sustainability are important issues for many stakeholders within the tourism industry. In recent years, destinations have faced some challenges with respect to maintaining sustainability; they must be cleaner, greener and safer in order to safeguard the life quality of holidaymakers and local residents. Providing an invaluable review of the latests research on the topic, global case studies provide a perspective of the worldwide challenges and solutions arising in the management of tourism destinations. The analysis presents an interdisciplinary approach, including contributions of economists, geographers, managers and marketing professionals.

In this revised second edition, Baggio and Klobas build upon the work of their previous volume, offering a presentation of quantitative research methods for tourism researchers. This accessible and rigorous guide goes beyond the approaches usually covered in introductory textbooks on quantitative methods to consider useful techniques for statistical inquiry into tourism matters of all but the most econometrically complex kind. The first part of the book concerns common issues in statistical analysis of data and the most widely-used techniques, while the second part describes and discusses several newer and less common approaches to data analysis that are valuable for tourism researchers and analysts. Updates to the second edition include: • a new chapter on “Big Data” • consideration of data screening and cleaning • the use of similarity and diversity indexes for comparing samples • observations about the partial least squares (PLS) approach to path modelling • a new section on multi-group structural equation modelling • a new section on common method variance and its treatment • revised and updated section on software • fully updated references and examples