MULTI-LEVEL GOVERNANCE AS A CHALLENGE FOR TOURISM DESTINATION DEVELOPMENT A tale of many sandwiches Professor Henrik Halkier Aalborg University, Denmark 1. Introducing Destination Management Organisations (DMOs) 2. Institutionalist perspectives on destination development 3. Challenges of flexible geographical scales 4. Between public and private challenges 5. Linking consumers and producers

Henrik Halkier, DMOs: Rationales and cross-pressures What?  ”.. the organisations responsible for the management and/or marketing of destinations” (UNWTO)  public, national/regional/local, diverse tasks Why?  handling of cross-pressures  improving outcomes DMO Inter/national Local Private Public Producer Consumer

Henrik Halkier, INSTITUTIONALIST PERSPECTIVES on destination management Focus on three central relations  the destination and its political, social, economic contexts  the DMO and it targets: firms, workforce, tourists, institutions  last but not least: the DMO and its sponsors Socio- economic context Destination Targets State/region Tourists Competitors Sponsoring Strategy Resources Organisation Aims Instruments Knowledge DMO

Henrik Halkier, CHALLENGING GEOGRAPHIES of destination management Top-down intervention  National institutional engineering  EU (de-)regulation Case: Regional DMOs Danish Tourist Board Local associations Destination partnerships Tourism export groups Regional Tourism Boards Product partnerships Regional partnerships

Henrik Halkier, CHALLENGING GEOGRAPHIES of destination management Top-down intervention  National institutional engineering  EU (de-)regulation Case: Regional DMOs  Uneven process  Overlapping competences  Difficult coordination  New international competition

Henrik Halkier, CHALLENGING GEOGRAPHIES of destination management Top-down intervention  National institutional engineering  EU (de-)regulation Bottom-up ungovernability  Inter-local competition  Civil society anchoring Case: VisitMariagerfjord

Henrik Halkier, CROSS-SECTOR CHALLENGES of destination management Public-private interactions  Essential for tourist experience  Many faces of public sector  Strategic dilemmas  Competition/cooperation Case: Top of Denmark Strategy development from service optimisation via joint marketing to experience development DMO as cluster organisation? external network link for local organisations/SMEs

Henrik Halkier, THE ULTIMATE DMO CHALLENGE Linking producers and consumers EURODITE case studies Attraction CulturalNatural Organi- sation IndividualRuhr heritage Skaane film Antalya branding North Jutland museums Achterhoek rural North Jutland DMOs CollectiveAntalya footballAntalya coastal Scope for policy development  creative market intelligence  extra-regional sources  skills of DMOs/SMEs DMO activities  development of new services  knowledge-intensive policies

Henrik Halkier, THE ULTIMATE DMO CHALLENGE Linking producers and consumers Local/present producers  More of the same  Imitative enterpreneurialism  Mobilisation of tacit knowledge Consumers far away  Mobilisation of tacit knowledge  Standardised market intelligence  Competition largely ignored

Henrik Halkier, CONCLUSIONS Beyond multi-level governance Good news  Necessity of vertical networking  Scope to act at destination level Unsurprising news  Horizontal networking equally important  Pragmatic involvement of private actors Akward news  Need for more informed action  Creative intelligence on demand and competition