State of art in tourist destination governance

Abstract

The objective of this paper is to advance the delineation of the relevant dimensions of tourist destination governance from a literature review, which incorporates the experience in public-private tourism partnerships. Assuming that governance involves stakeholders coordination in the tourist destination (structural level) to achieve shared goals (intentional level), we propose to investigate on how the key tourism stakeholders are identified, what resources and capabilities are determinants to participate in management processes, what roles and instruments encouraging participation and problem solving, especially conflict of interest. The participation of the stakeholders is of paramount relevance to the theoretical framework for the tourist destination governance, in order to reflect on how to satisfy needs of all stakeholders and to allow them participation in tourism development process to achieve shared goals. In this way, governance is a useful model of government to identify how to put into in practice an effective exercise of sustainability in tourist destinations. Participation processes can involve the situational diagnosis of tourist destinations, including the design of product, implementation and evaluation of the tourism policy, taking into account transparency and accountability to ensure trust