Agile destination management and marketing

Abstract

Destination marketing organizations (DMOs) have faced significant challenges, and as a result, had to adapt their marketing and management strategies to cope with rapid changes and uncertainty. The objective of this study is to draw from stakeholder management theory and connect it with the literature on agile management to investigate how DMOs have embraced an agile mindset that is more flexible as well as employee and customer-focused amidst these difficult times. In-depth interviews were conducted with senior management at executive levels in the European Travel Commission as well as other from national DMOs across different continents (e.g. Indonesia, Australia, Malta, and South Africa). Overall, this study contributes by presenting a ‘Framework of Agile Destination Management and Marketing’ to the tourism literature. From a practical perspective, this study provides insights to DMOs by integrating the roles of management, customers, and employees as they relate to the strategies of re-branding, re-segmentation, and re-allocation, respectively. It provides recommendations on how DMOs could adopt insights from this framework to address changes in the future.