New Roles and Responsibilities of the Future DMO: Beyond Marketing towards Integrative Management and Stewardship

Dear Colleagues,

We are pleased to invite you to submit your research to the Special Issue, "New Roles and Responsibilities of the Future DMO: Beyond Marketing Towards Integrative Management and Stewardship".

The first community-organised and locally supported tourism associations developed across European tourism destinations in the early 19th century, when leisure travelling became accessible for the middle class and experienced its first growth phase. These community-organised associations focused on the beautification of the destination and dedicated most of their time to infrastructure projects, such as the development of hiking trails or general embellishment to improve the attractiveness of the destination. Such associations are ideographic for the community-based destination model, which is dominant in the European context.

Over the years, relevant tasks related to the management and marketing of the destination were taken over and associations became gradually more strictly organised and adopted administrative structures. With the growing competition across tourism destinations worldwide and the realisation that tourism destinations need to be understood as competitive units comprising multiple individual actors, endeavours to professionalise the destination marketing/management organisation (DMOs) gained in importance. Gradually, tourism organisations were no longer limited to marketing organisations, but assumed responsibility for more strategic development tasks. Eventually, tourism organisations evolved from destination marketing organisations to destination management organisations (DMOs).

However, structural features of community-based destinations and hierarchical top-down approaches led to difficulties for DMOs to fulfil their tasks and responsibilities and coordinate the various activities of tourists and actors satisfactorily. A shift from the traditional single-sector approach to more comprehensive regional, place and multisectoral management approach can be witnessed in tourism practice today. Through this transition, it is hoped that DMOs can fulfil the complex requirements associated with managing a destination. The transition also means that DMOs no longer exclusively care about tourists, but also about residents and how they perceive tourism development in their hometown and region—a topic that is highly relevant given that resident attitudes and sentiments towards tourism have decreased in some destinations, particularly European city destinations such as Venice or Amsterdam. The COVID-19 pandemic is associated with new challenges for DMOs, as it indicates fast-changing market dynamics and the need for more destination resilience. Established destinations have experienced intense pressure to innovate and questions have been raised regarding the future of DMOs and their ever-evolving challenges. Although destination management and destination governance approaches have been widely studied in the past, new dynamics and circumstances require more integrative and holistic approaches.

This Special Issue aims to address the changing environments in which community-based destinations operate and transition and invites authors to discuss the critical success factors of future DMOs. In this Special Issue, original research articles and reviews are welcome. Research areas may include (but not limited to) the following:

• Digitisation, smart tourism / smart destinations;
• DMOs as part of regional and place management;
• DMOs’ possible loss of significance with reference to marketing;
• Areas of tension regarding new strategic management and control processes;
• DMOs and (tourism) politics;
• DMOs’ challenge to balance sustainability goals along the triple bottom line;
• DMOs’ dual responsibility as a competitive unit to attract tourists while maintaining the destination as attractive place of residence;
• New tasks and responsibilities of the future DMO;
• COVID-19 and the new role of DMOs;
• DMOs’ role in fulfilling the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals and ensuring sustainable destinations development;
• Destination stewardship;
• DMOs’ role in education across different stakeholders and interest groups (e.g., potential tourism workers, press, actors within the network).

We look forward to receiving your contributions.

Prof. Dr. Marcus Herntrei
Prof. Dr. Markus Pillmayer
Dr. Sabrina Seeler
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Tourism and Hospitality is an international peer-reviewed open access quarterly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1200 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• destination marketing/management organisation (DMO)
• destination stewardship
• destination sustainability
• destination stakeholders
• destination competitiveness
• destination development
• destination governance
• destination transformation and innovation
• community participation in tourism development
• quality of life in tourism destinations