Review Reports - Marketing Communication and Creative Tourism: An Analysis of the Local Destination Management Organization

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The article presented for review entitled Developing Creative Tourism Through Marketing and Organization Capabilities: An analysis of the Local Destination Management Office concerns the assessment of a structural theoretical model related to creative tourism.

First, the Author (s) misuse the colloquial name Destination Management Organization in English by using the word "Office" instead of "organization" repeatedly in the text (regardless of their different legal forms). The linguistic correction of the DMO name is necessary throughout the text.

It is not precise whether the subjects of the research were DMOs or tourist information offices.

The author (authors) set themselves difficult tasks concerning quite poorly defined, researched and calculated creative tourism, which is more of a target model of visitors' behavior than a real, measurable phenomenon.

A serious drawback of the article is the lack of reference to the situation of all destinations as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic and the recommendations of many institutions (including European Cities Marketing) regarding changes in the goals and tools in the functioning of the DMO. It is also worth reaching for analyzes in this area on the specialized portal www.skif.com.

The analysis of the literature on creative tourism presents a number of theses and points of view, not supported by scientific research, and the term of creative tourism itself is not precisely defined. One gets the impression, but it may be wrong, that literature review is a collection of weakly related theses.

Treating DMO as the only institution influencing local tourism and marketing communication is from a practical point of view a simplification.

The author (authors), on the basis of literature, even 10 years ago, describe the features of creative tourism, quite ephemeral and do not compare it to the already existing tools of building "customers experience", tourist journey maps whether also used and defined "keys of experience" . Collecting marketing or sales leads with the use of Big Data is becoming commonplace, but according to the knowledge of the reviewer, paradoxically, DMOs use such tools to a limited extent compared to hotels, OTAs or local tourist operators.

Local DMO strategies are mentioned but not what their priorities are, what they concern .

Meanwhile, the research concerns the competences of employees and members of DMO as well as other tourist actors in the field of stimulating the experiences of tourists through marketing communication. Hence, the reviewer proposes to change the title of the article, more adapted to the content of the research.

A lot (too many) of hypotheses have been put forward, which are more of a research question. The hypotheses are not very clear.

Some of the quoted statements from the research, although true, are a truism because they are known and described for many years, such as: "Since 2017 through craft fairs' presences, we have been able to observe that there are more and more tourists who approach us by saying that they have already visited the tourism destination and that they have recommended it to friends and family ".

Author Response

R: We agree with the reviewer. The use of DMO was revised for an uniform approach to the concept. More specifically we substituted the use of "Office" for "organization"

It is not precise whether the subjects of the research were DMOs or tourist information offices.

R: Thank you for pointing this out. We now specify that the research set by stating that it is constituted by Portuguese LDMO’s. Please see section 3.2., 1^st paragraph.

R:We agree with the reviewer. This is a very sensitive topic in this research. As such, we revisited the methodology section to provide a better explanation of the ‘cretive tourism context’ construct and how it was validated, stating in the variables section that “Creative tourism context destination variable was measured in a four-item scale and based on literature review resulting in the following items: “In my tourism desti-nation, internal stakeholders have complete knowledge of what creative tourism is; In my tourism destination, a high percentage of companies fit in the creative tourism context; Creative tourism activities have grown in the last five years; If there is a wider range of creative tourism activities provided, tourists will participate more”. These items were validated by three tourism scholars.”

R: Thank you for suggesting this website. Although, we visited the website and verified it was down and the following message appeared: “This Page Is Under Construction - Coming Soon!”. We agree that this is an interesting topic, however it was not considered in the objectives of the study. The article used two methodologies to reach existing objectives, resulting in a long article. Including more objectives will increase its length, as such we recognized this as a limitation and included in the conclusions a reference to that. Please see ‘limitations’ section last paragraph.

R: Thank you for pointing this out. The text and references were updated, meaning that some references resulting from low quality journals/thesis were substituted by more recent and better-quality references.

Treating DMO as the only institution influencing local tourism and marketing communication is from a practical point of view a simplification.

R: We totally agree with the reviewer. By no means we intended to say that DMO is the only institution influencing local tourism and marketing communication. To avoid this potential confusion we clearly stated this point of view in the 5^th paragraph of the introduction.

R: Thank you for this very important topic. We agree that several tools and techniques can be used to provide a better tourism experience. We add to select the topics to be discussed in the literature review and took the risk of missing important topics like this pointed by the reviewer. Acting according to the request, we expanded section 2.1. to explore a concept that is very important in the tourism context and creative tourism activities: co-creation. This does not mean that other topics are not important, but we had to select based on topic relationship.

Local DMO strategies are mentioned but not what their priorities are, what they concern .

R: Thank you for pointing this out. We expanded section 2.1. to incorporate the functions of the DMO. Please see the 5^th paragraph of this section.

R: Thank you for this important suggestion. Based on the reviewer comment we now propose the following title: Stimulating the tourist experiences through marketing communication and creative tourism: An analysis of the local destination management organization

A lot (too many) of hypotheses have been put forward, which are more of a research question. The hypotheses are not very clear.

R: Thank you for pointing this out. We agree that several hypotheses were raised in this study, but we believe they are necessary to reach the research objectives. To provide a more clear presentation of the hypotheses we performed the following procedures: (i) We revised all the hypotheses text for a clearer text; (ii) we consulted other articles and adopted similar approach to hypotheses statement, using “positively relates” in the direct hypotheses; 8iii) we also followed the same procedure for the mediating/indirect hypotheses; (iv) we added a note to figure 1 indicating that the dashed lines represent the indirect relationships.

R: We agree with the reviewer. The sentence was eliminated since no value added was found.

Reviewer 2 Report

The study is very well prepared in terms of content. The authors demonstrated knowledge of the issue, reviewed the literature in an interesting and thorough manner, well justified the choice of methods. Conclusions resulting from the study are not only cognitive but also practical. This study may be useful for people and institutions dealing with tourism development and management of tourist destinations at regional and local level

Author Response

R: Thank you for the supportive comment.

Reviewer 3 Report

I have read the paper "Developing Creative Tourism through Marketing and Organizational Capabilities: An analysis of the Local Destination Management Office". this study should consider the following comments for reconsideration:

1. The last quotes in the first paragraph are out of date.

2. The entire introduction presents outdated quotations, I believe there are more recent studies on the statements.

In the final part of the document the research questions and objectives are not delimited. This complicates the understanding of the true objective of the study and not everything is answered in the results.

3. There is a lot of talk about "tourist offices", I would expect a limitation to a geographical area. If the analysis is at the global level? if the analysis is at the general level of the published literature, I would have expected a parameterized search.

4. Only in the third paragraph of the methodology it delimits and says that the study is in Portugal. Don't you think this should be clear in the objectives?

5. The offices considered to which geographical area belongs, I consider that if they are north, center or south... this analysis will change because the type of tourism is different, in the south a lot of 3S tourism, while going to the north is more city and adventure, hiking....

6. In general the design of the study is very confusing, I recommend redesigning the document in general and delimit with precision.

Author Response

The last quotes in the first paragraph are out of date.

R: We agree with the reviewer. We added more recent references in the first paragraph.

The entire introduction presents outdated quotations, I believe there are more recent studies on the statements.

R: We also agree with the reviewer. We changed a significant part of the references for more recent ones.

R: Thank you for pointing this out. We revised the introduction for a clearer presentation of the research questions and objectives. Please see 6^th and 7^th paragraph.

There is a lot of talk about "tourist offices", I would expect a limitation to a geographical area. If the analysis is at the global level? if the analysis is at the general level of the published literature, I would have expected a parameterized search.

R: Thank you for pointing this out. We revised the article, first to refine the use of the term "tourist offices” as suggested by another reviewer, and substitute for the concept of LDMO, by doing so, we believe we now present a more consistent concept which is limited to the Portuguese reality as described in the methodology.

Only in the third paragraph of the methodology it delimits and says that the study is in Portugal. Don't you think this should be clear in the objectives?

We agree. Our aim was to contribute to existing knowledge on local DMOs and their role on creative tourism development. We incorporated two empirical studies to provide additional support for the research findings. To do so, we based our research on Portugal. This is now recognized in the last paragraph of the introduction.

The offices considered to which geographical area belongs, I consider that if they are north, center or south... this analysis will change because the type of tourism is different, in the south a lot of 3S tourism, while going to the north is more city and adventure, hiking....

R: We agree that Portugal is a plural country, and, although is a relatively small country, a lot of diversity can be observed between its several regions. We didn’t explore the regional dimension as a moderating variable in our construct, but this idea pointed by the reviewer is very interesting and must be explored in future research since it is related to different kind of creative activities. Accordingly, we added this in the future research section. Please see the last paragraph of this section.

In general the design of the study is very confusing, I recommend redesigning the document in general and delimit with precision.

R: Thank you for pointing this out. By combining a qualitative with a quantitative study, we took the risk of confusing the reader. As such, we revisited all the section numbering and designation for a clearer presentation of the studies sequence, as well the separation between the results and the discussion.