The chapter of the book proposes a theoretical model that unifies various streams of literature on destination management. The core idea is that a tourist destination can be analyzed considering four levels of analysis, each of them characterised by its own specificity in terms of problems, interpretation, evolutionary dynamics, and governance. The first level is the territorial system, recognised both as a new unit of analysis and as a player that competes against other territories. In particular, in order to gain and maintain a competitive advantage authors underline two main conditions: on the one hand, the effective exploitation of its resources and specificities and, on the other hand, the ability of public and private actors of “working together”. The second level is the tourism system, meant as the network of local actors involved in tourism development, that develops an offering to create value for specific market segments. The analysis of networks’ characteristics and the use of two synthetic dimensions - degree of interdependence amongst the system’s stakeholders and degree of governance centralization - allow a classification of system configurations that distinguishes four ideal types of tourism system: market cluster, district, tourism local system and constellation. The third level is the tourism product, meant as a specific combination of resources belonging to the tourism system, directed towards a given market target; it is the tourism product that, through the interaction with clients, affects their perception of the territory, i.e. their global tourism experience. In addition, a recognition of the different views and definitions of tourism product is provided and an analysis of the properties of the different types of products is proposed. The paper ends with the study of the evolutionary dimension, i.e. the process which links together the aforementioned three levels of analysis. Two main processes are recognised: the first, that originates from the local resources and leads to the emergence of a tourism system; the second, that links, through a mutual interaction, the tourism system to the tourism products that it generates.

Tourism system dynamics: a multi-level destination approach

SIMONI, MICHELE
2006-01-01

Abstract

The chapter of the book proposes a theoretical model that unifies various streams of literature on destination management. The core idea is that a tourist destination can be analyzed considering four levels of analysis, each of them characterised by its own specificity in terms of problems, interpretation, evolutionary dynamics, and governance. The first level is the territorial system, recognised both as a new unit of analysis and as a player that competes against other territories. In particular, in order to gain and maintain a competitive advantage authors underline two main conditions: on the one hand, the effective exploitation of its resources and specificities and, on the other hand, the ability of public and private actors of “working together”. The second level is the tourism system, meant as the network of local actors involved in tourism development, that develops an offering to create value for specific market segments. The analysis of networks’ characteristics and the use of two synthetic dimensions - degree of interdependence amongst the system’s stakeholders and degree of governance centralization - allow a classification of system configurations that distinguishes four ideal types of tourism system: market cluster, district, tourism local system and constellation. The third level is the tourism product, meant as a specific combination of resources belonging to the tourism system, directed towards a given market target; it is the tourism product that, through the interaction with clients, affects their perception of the territory, i.e. their global tourism experience. In addition, a recognition of the different views and definitions of tourism product is provided and an analysis of the properties of the different types of products is proposed. The paper ends with the study of the evolutionary dimension, i.e. the process which links together the aforementioned three levels of analysis. Two main processes are recognised: the first, that originates from the local resources and leads to the emergence of a tourism system; the second, that links, through a mutual interaction, the tourism system to the tourism products that it generates.
2006
978-0-08-044938-8
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Utilizza questo identificativo per citare o creare un link a questo documento: https://hdl.handle.net/11367/19756
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