Harald Pechlaner

A Ranking of International Tourism and Hospitality Journals

Attempts to assess the quality of academic publications have been increasing lately. Due to the number of existing journals, it is hard to make a representative selection and to find criteria for determining quality. Hence, questions arise, including what sort of journals are more important in terms of reputation, readership frequency, and relevance to scientific research and practice. Recent studies on journal rankings have been carried out on the basis of both objective data (citation counts) and the quality perceptions of experts. This study attempts a rating of tourism and hospitality journals among the scientific community according to the journals’ readership frequency, scientific and practical relevance, overall reputation, and the importance of being published in the journals to the academic career of the respondents.

Tourism Policy, Tourism Organisations and Change Management in Alpine Regions and Destinations: A European Perspective

Tourism is of great economic importance and significance for the European East Alpine regions. But to an increasing degree, low productivity resulting from the small-business structure of the Alpine region weakens the economic and social leadership of tourism. In the last few decades overcoming these difficulties often included substantial supporting of institutionalised tourism organisations by tourism policy, with the intention to bundle forces and to achieve growing global competition. Change in international tourist markets demands the pursuance of completely new strategies, particularly because the small-business structure of Alpine tourism in the past has always been the basis for its many positive effects for the local and regional population alike. By keeping its function of balancing regional economic growth, tourism policys main responsibility for the future in the East Alpine region will be to create the prerequisites required for an adaptation to the new situation in the tourist markets. In addition, the support of tourism organisations is needed for achieving corporate success, which cannot be realised by individual entrepreneurs in the tourist industry owing to their small-business structure. The key to adaptation lies in the improvement of qualifications. This improvement should lead to the development of new skills for tourist cooperations as a basis for the strategic transition from institutionalised tourism organisations to flexible and market-oriented destination management companies.

Destination management organizations as interface between destination governance and corporate governance

Destination management organizations (DMOs) play a major role in managing destination networks and in fostering cooperation between destination actors. DMOs are central figures in the governance of tourism destinations. However, being organizations, their operations are also judged according to their organizational efficiency and effectiveness. This paper applies the concept of corporate governance to capture these internal performance indicators, and investigates its relationship to the external performance of DMOs as promoters of cooperation. Very few studies have considered such inter-dependencies between DMO performance and destination performance; and even fewer have explicitly analysed the relationships between the destination governance and the corporate governance of DMOs. Therefore, this research uses an exploratory, theory-generating case study approach to develop testable hypotheses for future generalizing research attempts. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with several destination actors, and qualitatively analysed using the GABEK toolset. From this qualitative analysis four hypotheses emerged, which generally indicate a positive link between a DMOs corporate governance characterized by a broad stakeholder involvement, an efficient way of working, visible signs of performance on the one hand, and both the DMO acceptance and the level of cooperation in the destination on the other hand.

Leadership and Innovation Processes—Development of Products and Services Based on Core Competencies

SUMMARY The new challenge for destinations is to professionalize the continuous development process of innovative products and services. In this context, innovation is regarded as a bipolar process between market and resources. From the resource-oriented perspective, the concentration on regional core competencies will therefore become a source of innovation for destinations while the customer is the source of innovation from the market-oriented perspective. Resulting from the nature of the destination product, the innovation process is interpreted as an inter-organizational network process. The aim has to be the implementation of continuous innovation processes in the form of networks within a system of a learning destination. Given the fact that, especially for innovative activities, networks play a minor role in tourism at present, the question is raised of how to overcome the obstacles of cooperation and to initiate network activities to foster innovation networks within a destination. A study was conducted that focused on the identification of forms of cooperation that strengthen and reinforce innovative behavior in a destination. The article aims at discussing the enhancement of the attractiveness and the quality of innovative network activities by increasing the value of cooperation for the providers of the destination.

Cross-Border Destination Management Systems in the Alpine Region–The Role of Knowledge Networks on the Example of AlpNet

SUMMARY The Alps are the focus of a wide-ranging discussion. Researchers, scientists, politicians, inhabitants, and people who earn their living in the Alpine region are all confronted with difficult challenges. The main topics are the development in the fields of nature, landscape, tourism and leisure, traffic and transport, and its consequences for the Alps as a living space and economic area. About 30 years ago, a cooperation of tourism and political authorities in 11 countries, regions, provinces, and cantons of Switzerland, Germany, Italy, and Austria has been established. Due to globalization and changing traveling patterns, people have become more and more aware that a new international cooperation of the Alpine tourism regions in the field of destination management and marketing is required. This is necessary in order to react to market changes accordingly. This acknowledgment is instead of small and more or less independent and self-sufficient organizations. It also includes the collaboration concerning one of the most important resources of our time-knowledge-and the establishment of a network where it can be consciously managed. The following paper shows the special qualities of networks, especially knowledge networks at the example of AlpNet. It consists of three parts. The first part deals with the change of Alpine tourism management and marketing, the second part discusses the necessities and challenges of a cross-border cooperation in tourism marketing with a special focus on networks and knowledge networks, and the third part presents the results of an empirical study explaining the problems and perspectives for developing knowledge networks of cross-border destination management in the Alpine region. As far as management and marketing of tourism destinations are concerned, it is shown what possibilities-yet what limits-may result in launching cross-border cooperation projects in the future. For decades cross-border cooperation was used for compensating existing competitive disadvantages on tourism markets. The example of the new project AlpNet shows how important cooperation and member-specific requirements are for tourism and other economic industries when it comes to the establishment of knowledge networks.

Knowledge networks of innovative businesses: an explorative study in the region of Ingolstadt

For the transmission of implicit knowledge, personal interaction is needed. This takes place within a spatial context. A region serves as a sourcing platform for knowledge services. Using an empirical investigation in the Ingolstadt region, this paper demonstrates which qualities are common to interactions between innovative businesses, and which resources can be exchanged as a result of these relationships. Through the identification of network gaps or strategic network positions, the paper also provides policy recommendations for regional management.

Strategy implementation in the Alpine tourism industry

Tourist regions with long tradition and years of experience often have a hard time implementing strategic management concepts. This is due to decision‐making and management processes at the level of tourism policy and the different levels of the tourism organization. These levels were bogged down for many years and aggravated the task of carrying out the required modifications. With the example of the Alpine region South Tyrol, this paper explains the errors that are likely to happen in the formulation and implementation of strategic concepts. The idea was to use a concrete example to explain the interdependence of the individual elements of strategic management from vision to implementation while, at the same time, elucidating the barriers and the sources of resistance to change at tourism organizations.

How to promote cooperation in the hospitality industry: Generating practitioner‐relevant knowledge using the GABEK qualitative research strategy

Purpose – While it is possible to classify the previously suggested conditions to the promotion of interorganizational cooperation as either referring to strategic interdependence or to structural and procedural conditions, it is unclear which approach is more critical to the promotion of local and regional cooperation in the hospitality industry at the network level. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is twofold: to inductively develop propositions regarding the promotion of such cooperation in order to evaluate the relative importance of the two conflicting positions, and to demonstrate the suitability of GABEK to the development of these propositions.Design/methodology/approach – Following a qualitative case study design, data were gathered by conducting 15 open interviews in a South Tyrolean destination and analyzed with the aid of the GABEK technique.Findings – The results suggest that the structural and procedural conditions are relatively more critical to the promotion of interorganizational coop...

Destination leadership: a new paradigm for tourist destinations?

Purpose – This special issue of Tourism Review provides an original body of work that complements existing research on tourist destinations, and offers an opportunity for tourism research to contribute to broader leadership theorizing. Design/methodology/approach – This editorial introduction embeds the included papers into general reflections about destination leadership. Findings – This introduction summarizes how the papers in this special issue contribute to two streams of research: First, the papers use and advance leadership theories that are particularly suited to inter-organizational contexts, such as distributed and systemic leadership. Second, they illustrate that destination leadership needs to be treated and understood in relationship to governance arrangements, power structures, and social networks among leaders. Originality/value – Sustainable destination competitiveness greatly depends on effective strategies as well as efficient and inclusive processes and structures. Existing research on ...

Alpine Wellness : a resource-based View

Today, it is essential for destinations to support their unique positioning by offering specialized, differentiated products within the global wellness market. Here, ‘Alpine Wellness’ is presented as a concept, bundling the wellness offers with special Alpine character, developed by hotels and wellness providers of four countries of the European Alps to strengthen their common positioning in the global market. The participating countries were challenged to define their unique profile and to develop a wellness-specific core competence in order to develop competitive products for ‘Alpine Wellness’ based on the roots of their own region that are not easy to imitate. Therefore, the following questions have to be answered: What are the resources and competences of the region to develop competitive products that are highly valued by guests? Who possesses these competences that could be drawn into a network in order to develop core competence? In 2003, the authors conducted a study in the Italian Alpine region of South Tyrol with the aim of identifying the outstanding competences and resources of the region, and to further develop a core competence, ‘Alpine Wellness’ in South Tyrol as the base for the development of marketable differentiated products and services. Based on the results, implications for practitioners in tourism and tourism politics were formulated. The presented approach allows destinations across the European Alpine Area to investigate and develop the regional potential for a competitive positioning in the global market and the development of differentiated products.