Role of Destination Management in Destination Life Cycle

This article discusses the role of destination management in different stages of the destination life cycle. It explores how destination management organizations prioritize their strategies and improve the management of destinations. The article also provides recommendations for improving destination management.

Destination
Management Services

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION ..........................................................................................................................3
PART 1............................................................................................................................................3
Covered in PPT.......................................................................................................................3
PART 2............................................................................................................................................3
PART 3............................................................................................................................................6
CONCLUSION .............................................................................................................................10
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................1

INTRODUCTION
Destination management services are the professional services which are associated with
conducting various tourism plans. They posses local knowledge about various destinations, they
have various resources and expertise with the help of which they design various events, tours,
programs logistics etc. In this report various features and characteristics of destinations, the
resources and the attractions of various destinations are considered. Along with this the role of
private and public organisation in developing and delivering the destination management is also
taken into consideration. Apart from this a report is prepared which includes the evaluation of
role of destination management at different stages in the destination life cycle.
PART 1
Covered in PPT
PART 2
Concept of Destination Management
Destination Management is considered to be a coordinated management which includes various
elements with the help of which a destination can be made attractive. Such elements could be
amenities, marketing, attractions, pricing etc. It is considered to be the professional services in
which the individual posses knowledge of local places, expertise in the planning and managing
resources. This helps them to design, plan and organise for various events, tours, activities,
transportation and many more. Effective destination management offers various benefits such
as:  Ensures tourism sustainability: It helps in managing the environmental integrity of the
destination , thus making it preferred destination for the tourist. This also helps in
avoiding the social, ethical and cultural conflicts which has impact on the lifestyle of the
local people as tourism becomes their source of income. Building a strong and vibrant identity: The destination management organisations has
realised and determined the value of strong destination brand. For this they are
consistently planning and taking necessary steps which can increase the brand loyalty,
that will increase the number of visitors to the destination (Sharma, Pulido-Fernández,
and Hassan, 2019).

 Establishing a competitive edge: For taking a competitive advantage it is important to
build a strong brand as it will help in providing the unique position to the destination.
This can be by way of providing better quality of the services at the destination and this
can be done by way of effective management at the destination.
Various organisation has been engaged in destination management who coordinates various
elements related to the tourism. The main aim of such organisation is to attract the visitors
which will help in enhancing the economy as it will generate income. The objectives of
destination management organisation is:
 to market the destinations which will attract the visitors by way of advertising the major
attractions which can be food, culture, places etc.
 to manage and control the quality in the destination of the experience by providing them
a comfortable environment (Holmes and Ali-Knight, 2017).
 to create plans for developing the infrastructure and controlling the development of the
destinations
 to increase the market share of the organisation in the existing market
Destination Management Organisation seeks to promote the destinations which helps them to
manage the demand and supply aspects of the tourism. With this they maximize the use of the
resources at the destination. Such organisation are considered to be a convention or a bureau
which are held responsible for undertaking the tourism process so that they can lead, monitor,
stimulate and co-ordinate the development of various tourism destinations. Such organisation
performs at different level such as:
 at local level, they have to contribute to the development and promotion of the
destination within a city or a town (Strobl and Kronenberg, 2016).
 at regional level, the DMO are held responsible for the promotion and management of
the places in a specific area or a geographic location which has been defined for the
tourism purpose. Such specific area can be the region of the local government or the
administrative region of the state\ provision.
 at national level, various organisations such as national tourism organisations or national
tourism authorities are held responsible for promoting the destinations at national level.
They have to take all the necessary steps to effectively manage the development of the
tourism and their promotion. Such organisations can promote tourism cross borders\

transnational level . For example, Europe travel commission has been cooperating with
32 European National Tourist Authorities and National Tourist Organisation in
developing the tourist destinations in the Europe with the help of promotional campaign
'Visit Europe' (Michailidou, 2016).
Various public and private destination management organisation has been operating which
helps in managing the destination effectively. Some of them are given below :
 Tourism Australia is a government agency which is responsible for attracting the tourist
across the globe i.e., it is operating at national and international level in promoting and
developing the destinations. Tourism Australia is active in 15 countries from where they
get the maximum tourist. They are engaged in various activities such as advertising the
places, planning and organising various media programs, trade shows and even in
building personal relations. Their vision is to make Australia a desirable and memorable
destination.
 The DMC Kathmandu, is a leading regional organisation which has been operating
successfully by way of identifying and developing new opportunities in this field. They
focus upon developing the destinations and also they organise various seminars,
corporate events, business tours etc. which leads to promotion of the tourist destination
of Nepal. The DMC Kathmandu has significant experience with which they manages
various projects at international level which popularises the destination (Innerhofer,
Fontanari and Pechlaner, 2018).
 The Italian State Tourism Agency, is an agency which is working under the supervision
of Department of Tourism. It is responsible for promoting the destinations, cultural
heritage and natural beauty of the country. They promote all the places at national and
international level.
These destination management organisation effectively promote the destination and take
necessary steps in the developing such destinations by way of various infrastructural
developments, ensuring availability of funds, attracting visitors at all level. But the some of the
organisations specifically operates such as for attracting the corporates to conduct their
meetings, seminars etc. Due to this they focus only on those places which can attract them.
Further it increases the number of visitors with which the revenue of the economy also increases
but it leads to utilisation of the resources of the economy which can affect the lifestyle of the

local people (Moutinho and Vargas-Sanchez, 2018).
The effective destination management is crucial for promoting the tourism as they take all the
necessary steps that can lead to its development. But further some steps need to be undertaken
by them which can improve the management of the destinations. The recommendations to
destination management companies are given below :
 the interest of the local and regional people need to be considered which can maximize
their profitability .
 the DMO which have powers must focus on building various resources and must take
necessary steps in preventing the natural resources so that they can attract the tourist
easily.
 various long term strategies need to be developed by them so that they can effectively
maintain the quality of the services which can satisfy the visitors.
PART 3
Role of destination management at different stages of destination life cycle
The destination management helps in developing the sustainable tourism which helps in
developing the economy as it generate revenue and various employment opportunity. It
coordinate with various elements and integrates them so that the performance of the destinations
can be improved and the quality of the services can also be enhanced. The role of destination
management can be understood properly by considering all the destination mix. Various
destination mix includes physical products, packages, people and programs (Holden, 2016). This
helps in attracting the customers by way of providing and managing all the services such as
transportation, hospitality etc.
Evaluation of the destination life cycle and its implications on destination management
Destination are the places where people visit or travels to and the destinations has a life
cycle. Destination Management helps in managing various stages of the life cycle of the
destination. The destination life cycle helps to determine the development that has taken place at
the destinations. Along with this successive stages can be determined over time through the
curve. The destination life cycle has six stages which includes exploration, involvement,

development, consolidation, stagnation, rejuvenation and decline (Henderson, 2017). The
destinations along with their life cycle stages are given below:
Exploration: This is the life cycle stage those people are interested who have interest in
adventurous activities. The local people of the destination may not be involved in such activities
from money making point of view. The beauty of the Himalayan range attract the people and the
diversity in the religions, festivals, foods etc. make the destination tempting. This destination
falls under the category of exploration as the people visit to the destination with the purpose of
adventurous activities and also it is famous for their culture, natural beauty and landscape (Van
Niekerk, 2017).
Involvement: In this destination life cycle stage, local people take part in providing
tourist activities and for this they provide accommodations, foods, transport facilities to the
tourists. Italy also attract the tourist more often as it is considered to be the home of art and
literature. The culture richness attract the tourist more as the stakeholders analysis lifestyle,
cuisines makes it the inspiring landscape. The stage in which the Italy fall is involvement as their
the local people are involved in providing the services to the tourist. A large number of food
services, accommodation facilities, guides are available for a large number of tourist
(Cornelissen, 2017).
Development: This is the stage in which various big companies identifies the
opportunities in making investment in the hotel and restaurants due to attraction of people
globally. It creates various job opportunities for the local people etc. All the destinations Nepal,
Australia and Italy fall in this stage as in all these destination people can easily be attracted thus
the companies finds tourist industry attractive for making investment.
Consolidation: This is the stage in which the local people are primarily dependent upon
the tourism for their live hood. Due to this all the other industry get affected as people shift from
one industry to tourist due to which other occupation such as farming, fishing gets affected
(Najafi, 2017).
Stagnation: Stagnation is the stage in which their is stiff competition which leads to loss
of original features of the destination. Australia tourism is one of the most attractive destination
among the tourist as it has a blend of plains, culture, waterways, natural beauty etc. The
Australian tourism is at stagnation stage as the large companies has invested in tourism by way
of building various resorts, hotels etc. due to which they faces stiff competition. This takes them

towards the stage of decline as more and more such resorts and hotel opens which threatens the
local businesses.
Decline: Decline stage of the destination life cycle reflects that the attractiveness of the
destination reduces which can be due to poor environmental conditions, excessive visitors etc.
Australia faces stiff competition due to presence of more of hotels and resorts and this take them
towards the declining stage as their natural features are destroyed.
The destination management priorities changes with different stage of the life cycle as
they have to shift their focus with change in the stage of the life cycle. Such as Nepal is at
exploration stage because people who are interested in adventurous activities visits the most. But
the cultural diversity, pilgrimage and the natural beauty also attracts the people. Due to this the
focus has shifted from adventurous activities towards establishment of better accommodation
facilities, better transportation etc. for the visitors. This will enable them to attract visitors easily
as they will have all the services of better quality (Choi and Cai, 2018 ).
Appraisal of the role of destination management at different stages in the destination life cycle
While managing the destinations various strategies need to be formulated by the
organisations such as marketing strategies, arrangement of funds as per the developmental
requirement, development of the infrastructure etc. With the changing stages in the destination
life cycle the role of the destination management companies also changes. For example, the
Australian Tourism industry is growing as it became a preferred destination among the visitors.
Due to this the various resorts, hotels, transportation facilities are developed with the aim to meet
up with the increasing demand. Various destination management companies are accordingly take
necessary steps to attract more tourist so that the investment so made can easily be recovered
(Camilleri, 2018).
In different phases of the destination life cycle, various roles are played by them such as
in exploration phase the focus of the management will be on the advertising the adventurous
activities while if the destination is in the growing stage then the focus will be on advertising but
in this the role of the marketer becomes to persuade the customers by constantly reminding them
of the destinations and the attractions. In case of the decline stage the focus will be on
identification of the opportunities which can be availed to make the destination attractive. With
the help of such strategies the destination management effectively attract the customers by
managing the different stages of the destination life cycle (Brouder and et. al. , 2016).

Critical evaluation of the priorities of the destination management organisation at different stages
The priorities of the destination management cycle changes with change in the stages of
the life cycle of the destination such as initially the focus is on developing the infrastructure at
the destination so that quality services can be provided to the tourist and on promoting the places
so that the tourist can be attracted to the destination. This increase the requirement of the funds
for the companies as they have to develop the infrastructure. Gradually the focus will shift to
advertising and development in which the funds are not required at a greater extend (Abou-
Shouk, 2018).
Recommendations for improvements
On the basis of above analysis various recommendations are made to the destination
management organisation which can help them in managing the destination life cycle effectively:
 the time to time analysis need to be done by the organisations so that the stage of the life
cycle at which the destination is can be identified (Baker and Magnini, 2016).
 the analysis of the strategies of the destination management companies of different
destination need to be done so that similar strategies or ideas for strategies can be taken.
 The changes in the taste and preference of the tourist need to be analysed so that services
can be provided accordingly also it will help them in improving the quality of the
services provided to them.

CONCLUSION
It is concluded from the above report that the destination attract people on the basis of
various common characteristics such as culture, religion etc. but such features only attracts
tourist to the destination. The destination management companies need to consider various
resources which are managed while managing the destinations. Also the importance and
contribution of various destination management companies are analysed which formulates
various strategies to attract the tourist and to provide various quality services to them.
Destination life cycle stages need to be considered as with this the changes required for
maintaining the attractiveness of the company can easily be identified.

REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Abou-Shouk, M.A., 2018. Destination management organizations and destination marketing:
adopting the business model of e-portals in engaging travel agents. Journal of Travel
& Tourism Marketing. 35(2). pp.178-188.
Baker, M.A. and Magnini, V.P., 2016. The evolution of services marketing, hospitality
marketing and building the constituency model for hospitality marketing. International
Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management. 28(8). pp.1510-1534.
Brouder, P. and et. al. , 2016. Tourism destination evolution. Routledge.
Camilleri, M.A. ed., 2018. Strategic perspectives in destination marketing. IGI Global.
Choi, S.H. and Cai, L.A., 2018. The role of relationship quality in integrated destination
marketing. Journal of Travel & Tourism Marketing. 35(5). pp.541-552.
Cornelissen, S., 2017. The global tourism system: Governance, development and lessons from
South Africa. Routledge.
Henderson, J.C., 2017. Destination development: Trends in Japan's inbound tourism.
International Journal of Tourism Research. 19(1). pp.89-98.
Holden, A., 2016. Environment and tourism. Routledge.
Holmes, K. and Ali-Knight, J., 2017. The event and festival life cycle–developing a new model
for a new context. International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management.
29(3). pp.986-1004.
Innerhofer, E., Fontanari, M. and Pechlaner, H. eds., 2018. Destination Resilience: Challenges
and Opportunities for Destination Management and Governance. Routledge.
Michailidou, A.V., and et. al., 2016. Life Cycle Thinking used for assessing the environmental
impacts of tourism activity for a Greek tourism destination. Journal of Cleaner
Production. 111. pp.499-510.
Moutinho, L. and Vargas-Sanchez, A. eds., 2018. Strategic Management in Tourism, CABI
Tourism Texts. Cabi.
Najafi, B., and et. al., 2017. Identifying factors affecting destination choice of medical tourists: A
systematic review of literature. Journal of Fundamental and Applied Sciences. 9(2S).
pp.1309-1328.
Sharma, A., Pulido-Fernández, J.I. and Hassan, A. eds., 2019. Sustainable Destination Branding
and Marketing. CABI.
Strobl, A. and Kronenberg, C., 2016. Entrepreneurial networks across the business life cycle: the
case of Alpine hospitality entrepreneurs. International Journal of Contemporary
Hospitality Management. 28(6). pp.1177-1203.
Van Niekerk, M., 2017. Contemporary issues in events, festivals and destination management.
International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management.
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