Destination dynamics: travel goals unravelled

KEYWORDS:

• Destination
• development
• governance
• collaboration
• creativity

This special issue of the Scandinavian Journal of Hospitality and Tourism presents six articles on tourism destinations and their development. Destinations are locations that people travel to or through – depending on their trip pattern – glancing at from a vehicle, making a rest stop, or staying for a night or more (e.g. Lue, Crompton, & Fesenmaier, 1993). In an endeavour to unravel travel goal ideas, Viken (2014) refers to several academic concepts roughly synonymous with destination, such as journey's end, tourism place, tourism area (Butler, 1980), tourism region (Saarinen, 2004), and tourism attraction system (Leiper, 1990). Destinations are seen as socially constructed, dynamic and historical units related to specific discourses that yield certain impressions or images (Jacobsen, 2009; Keskitalo & Schilar, 2017; Saarinen, 2004). What has been termed tourism destination has thus been discussed and examined from numerous research perspectives and disciplines over the years, even as new research gaps are created with the appearance of more destinations and novel challenges.

Much tourism and hospitality research has focused on destinations because they have been of primary interest for travel-related businesses and industry associations; after all, destinations are where most tourism products are delivered (see Sasser, 1976; Siferd, Benton, & Ritzman, 1992), to phrase it in business terms. Moreover, destinations have also been scrutinised because several tourism challenges arise wherever travellers congregate (e.g. Neuts & Nijkamp, 2012). In a discussion of destination as a concept, Framke (2002) cites Georgulas’ (1970, p. 7) early definition of a destination: “Tourism as an industry occurs at ‘destination areas’ – areas with different natural and/or man-made features, which attract non-local visitors (or tourists) for [a variety of] activities.” Framke (2002) maintains that economy/business studies have implicitly put forward a need for collaboration among actors at a destination while socio-cultural research on destinations has typically featured connections and social practice.

Policymaking is a central issue in destination dynamics – the way in which destinations are administered. Hall (2011) has observed a gradual change in tourism policy studies from government to governance, anticipating that governance will be a significant concept in tourism destination planning and policy (see also Lourens, 2007). Governance denotes novel governing processes (Kettl, 2015; Rhodes, 1997), for example inter-organisational networks bringing together governing bodies and cooperating organisations to solve what are regarded as public problems (Sørensen & Torfing, 2009). Because of limits to both hierarchical power and horizontal self-coordination (Whitehead, 2003), there has been an advance of meta-governance; practices and procedures contributing to public organisations’ want to retain some control over decentralised decision-making organisations (Amore & Hall, 2016; Meuleman, 2011). For instance, Garnes (2014) has exhibited the public sector's importance and influence as a stakeholder in collaborative destination-based organisations dealing with area promotion, planning and development. In addition, dependence on public resources has been decisive for such organisations (Garnes, 2014).

A study of a food tourism project associated with tourism routes in Norway has shown that relationship-building and knowledge-sharing as part of networking and collaboration are difficult (Mei, Lerfald, & Bråtå, 2017), although food and tourism are closely related (Andersson, Mossberg, & Therkelsen, 2017). In this issue, Åberg and Svels (2018) maintain that formalised involvements and collaboration at destinations have been encouraged, referring to theoretical models advocating a community approach based on local multi-actor involvement (Flagestad & Hope, 2001; Murphy, 1983; Murphy & Murphy, 2004). However, Åberg and Svels (2018) suggest rethinking such common normative approaches in destination development models. For instance, not all stakeholders necessarily want to be involved. Moreover, they show that expected cooperative benefits from combining private and public actors’ resources, such as more community involvement, may not be given precedence even by public sector actors (Åberg & Svels, 2018).

In this issue, Syssner and Hjerpe (2018) explain destination management professionals’ main challenges, what they comprehend as central destination management tasks and how they think local governments can contribute. Destination management professionals anticipate that local governments can institutionalise the destination, advocate cluster initiatives, integrate destination development in strategic planning and ensure relevant knowledge. This investigation also shows that local governments are expected to move from a narrowly defined role of service provision, to a broader and more active role in tourism development. Even so, it is concluded that destination management professionals often have unclear understandings of local government mandates (Syssner & Hjerpe, 2018).

Selecting a tourism-related livelihood sometimes comes out of an interest in moving to or continuing to reside in the place of one's choice (Iversen & Jacobsen, 2016). Still, relations between tourism lifestyle entrepreneurship and place attachment have received limited attention. Responding to this research deficiency, in this special issue Schilar and Keskitalo (2018) address tourism business actors’ relationships to an area in northern Sweden, with particular attention to landscape perceptions. They find strong actor bonds to the places of their engagement. The tourism actors desire to “share their lifestyle” with tourists and pursue work-related activities in the same ways and in the same places as their leisure activities, indicating that place attachment may both stimulate and promote tourism (Schilar & Keskitalo, 2018). Moreover, tourism actors may not identify with the destination as such. While one commonly has aimed at cohesion in destination networks and organisations, Schilar and Keskitalo (2018) emphasise that residents often have assorted perceptions of and attachments to a destination area.

Also in this special issue, yet another enquiry into destination dynamics in rural areas shows that life-style entrepreneurs are crucial in developing creative tourism (Jóhannesson & Lund, 2018). A study of the Museum of Icelandic Sorcery and Witchcraft elucidates how creative tourism expresses itself in a sparsely populated and remote destination through an enterprise theming witchcraft, which adds flavour to the location, enhances the area's cultural landscape and strengthens regional identity (Jóhannesson & Lund, 2018).

Climate (weather) might be an important destination attribute; at the same time climate (change) may create challenges for tourism businesses (e.g. Rauken & Kelman, 2012; Tervo-Kankare, 2011). Several Nordic tourism destinations have experienced climate/weather alterations such as warmer and more rainy summer days (e.g. Førland et al., 2013) and a shorter winter season (e.g. Kaján, 2014). For instance, a study of winter tourism in Rovaniemi (northern Finland) has questioned whether climate change and snow uncertainty at Christmas time will “kill” Santa Claus, as its place branding is partly based on the social construction of Santa's winter home (Hall, 2014).

Landauer, Goodsite, and Juhola (2018) review Nordic countries’ national climate strategies from the perspective of tourism (exclusive of transport) and Nordic national tourism strategies from the perspective of climate change. They conclude that national climate strategies do not pay enough attention to tourism adaptation necessities, nor do the national Nordic tourism strategies present adaptation actions that tourism actors could consider (Landauer et al., 2018).

Festivals might contribute to destination images and developments (Folgado-Fernández, Hernández-Mogollón, & Duarte, 2017). For instance, events could make places better known due to media coverage and participants’ spreading the word (e.g. Jaeger & Mykletun, 2009). In this issue, a study of spatial distance to an urban event location (Dragin-Jensen, Schnittka, Feddersen, Kottemann, & Rezvani, 2018) concludes that event and destination marketers should emphasise socialising, entertainment and the geographical location when designing marketing campaigns for people living close to the event site, while being a true fan of the event should be accentuated for marketing campaigns directed at non-resident attendees. Moreover, it is argued that event portfolios reaching different audiences would improve destinations’ possibilities to diversify and elevate their overall standing (Dragin-Jensen et al., 2018).

Taken together, this special issue demonstrates that destination development dynamics can be studied in various ways and that there are numerous research challenges ahead, particularly related to innovation, creativity, governance, and power aspects (e.g. Amore & Hall, 2016; Hjalager, Kwiatkowski, & Larsen, 2018; Lew, 2017; Nordli, 2017) but importantly also climate/weather change (e.g. Denstadli & Jacobsen, 2014; Lépy et al., 2014; Tervo-Kankare, 2011). With tourism growth in many places, destinations must do more than organise promotion, marketing and product development. Destinations also have to face issue areas such as crowding and conflicts between dissimilar tourism and hospitality stakeholders and between various livelihood interests and population segments that are posing numerous governance and research challenges (e.g. Dredge, 2010; Seraphin, Sheeran, & Pilato, 2018). As most destinations are also communities, they encompass, for instance, diverse and partly conflicting human interests, different livelihood strategies, and leadership disputes.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.