Tourist Destination Governance: Practice, Theory, and Issues

Citation

Ford, R. (2012), "Tourist Destination Governance: Practice, Theory, and Issues", International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, Vol. 24 No. 5, pp. 810-812. https://doi.org/10.1108/ijchm.2012.24.5.810.1

This book is an ambitious attempt to present the key issues in a very large knowledge domain. Its ambition is both its strength and weakness. How does one cover the diverse ideas and literatures underlying the political dynamics of destination governance in 222 pages? The answer is in a tantalizingly abbreviated way. Thus, the book offers contrasts as it is exciting in the ideas covered but somewhat frustrating in its limited treatment of those ideas, broad in its array of case examples but narrow in its emphasis on small destinations in the Pacific Asia geographic region, well grounded in its coverage of the tourism literature but limited in its incorporation of related literatures. Overall, this is a book that will appeal to the scholar seeking an introduction to the dimensions of this emerging topic and, hopefully, whet that reader's appetite for more. Fortunately, in many cases there is more and the extensive references provided at the end of each of the 16 chapters will give readers plenty of opportunities to dig deeper into the literature of destination governance.

The authors (editors) introduce the book in their first chapter as an effort to do two things: “to contribute to the understanding of best practices in tourist destination governance and to benchmark and advance ways of theorizing on these practices” (p. 1). After acknowledging that this is a complex topic involving many stakeholders, the authors organize the book into three parts detailed below. The first part provides an introduction to the issues of destination governance. The second part emphasizes case examples of how governance decisions are made in tourist destinations. The third part offers further exploration and discussion of how governance decision‐making happens in tourist destinations. The last chapter is an effort to sum up the component parts of this book and tie them together with concluding statements. A book review should give the reader a comprehensive view of what is in the book and the following paragraphs provide that. Because of space limitations, however, most of information about the contents of this book must be derived from the titles and authors of the separate chapters.

Part I has five chapters. The first is an introductory chapter for this section of the book, “Tourist destination governance challenges and concerns: questions of development, community involvement, responsiveness and future outcomes”, by the four editors, which notes that destination governance is complex and details how the rest of the book will demonstrate that well. The second, “Governance approaches in new tourist destination countries: introducing tourism law in Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam”, by P. Semone, E. Laws, L. Ruhanen, Z. Wang, and N. Scott, is a focused discussion of how tourism governance law in these three countries has evolved. The third chapter is “Tourism in St Andrews: conflicting governance in the Mecca of Golf”, by R. Butler, and describes the challenges of managing the interplay between a major tourist attraction and the small town in which it is located. In the fifth chapter in Part I, H. Richins offers an excellent typology to identify 17 issues regional governance stakeholders must face in his “Issues and pressures on achieving effective community destination governance: a typology”. Finally comes a contribution by G. Moscardo, “The role of knowledge in good governance for tourism”, which reviews a content analysis of 100 case studies to identify 12 barriers to effective tourism development in peripheral regions and how they relate to knowledge and power.

Part II has four chapters. The first, an introductory chapter, written by the editors, is “Tourist destination governance decision making: complexity, dynamics and influences”. This reviews this Part's chapters. The second chapter, “Responding to crises in Thailand: a governance analysis”, is by K. Campiranon, E. Laws, and N. Scott, and describes the way in which Thailand's government responded to several recent crises that impacted its tourism. The third chapter, “Controversial ecotourism and stakeholder roles in governance: ‘swim with Humpback Whales’ in Vava'u”, by K. Walker and G. Moscardo, is an interesting case account of the governance dynamics among stakeholders in a destination that allows this unique tourism practice. The last chapter, by J. Agrusa and G. Albieri and entitled “Community empowered tourism development: a case study”, is a detailed case study of a community in Brazil that found an effective way to respond to developers and preserve its culture.

The third and final major Part of the book is again introduced by an aptly titled chapter by the editors, “Tourist destination governance approaches and solutions: structural change, community engagement, networks and collaborations”. The second chapter is “Structural change and re‐engineering in tourism: a chance for destination governance in Grisons, Switzerland?” by P. Boksberger, R. Anderegg, and M. Schuckert, who review the role of a DMO in reengineering a splintered governance structure for this destination. The third chapter, by R. Baggio, N. Scott, and C. Cooper and entitled “Design of tourism governance networks”, offers an overview of network theory and its relevance to destination governance. The fourth chapter, “A stakeholder approach for sustainable community‐based rural tourism development in Thailand”, by T. Choibamroong, reviews how diverse stakeholders can be brought together and how such collaborations worked in empowering the homestay industry. The fifth chapter, by T. Spyriadis, D. Buhalis, and A. Fyall, titled “Dynamics of destination governance: governance and metagovernance in the composite industrial environment of destinations”, points out the importance of balancing stakeholders' interests in determining governance performance. Finally, the concluding chapter, again by the four editors, and entitled “Tourism destination governance: some approaches and suggestions for future research”, seeks to draw the array of ideas presented across the entire book together.

In reviewing this book, it seems important to note that my perspective is that of a North American, management scholar who has studied DMOs that are mostly North American and affiliated with DMAI. While this book is by design focused on non North American examples and illustrations, it is largely left to the reader to compare and contrast how the lessons learned and theories proposed in the context of Cambodia or Tonga or even St Andrews could be applied or extended to New York, Montreal, or Orlando.

Also as a management scholar, I wished the authors had explored further outside the tourism literature silo. While I appreciate that a focus on the tourism reader requires an emphasis on the tourism literature, there is a lot going on in other literatures on this vast topic that was less well represented. There is, for example, much in the political science and management literatures that relate to the same issues of governance, decision‐making, and the challenges of balancing the competing interests of various stakeholders in governance that could inform many of the points made.

Overall, this is an interesting book on an interesting topic that should intrigue scholars in this research area. The editors are to be commended for taking the initiative to focus attention on this increasingly important part of the tourism literature. I learned much about governance issues from a non North American perspective I seldom see. My greatest complaint is a compliment. I wanted more detail than the authors were allowed to give me in their limited space. When, for example, the citizens of Prainha do Canto Verde in Brazil organized to push back on the developers or the rural tourism participants in Thailand or the whale swimmers in Tonga organized, I wanted to learn more about how they did what they did. I wish the editors had allowed their authors more space to provide more detail about their interesting cases, to develop further the relevant theoretical frames for analyses, and to expand the discussion of implications. The authors had too much to share for the too few pages they were allocated in their chapters. Perhaps this book represents the first of a series where these topics can be explored further to satisfy this reader's thirst for more.