Robert Govers

Integrated quality management for tourist destinations: a European perspective on achieving competitiveness.

Abstract Maintaining and improving high quality supply in Europe is fundamental to keeping Europes leading position as a destination in world tourism, to meeting the challenges of competitors and to increasing its market share. The paper presents the results of eight best practice case studies of different destinations in four European countries, which were part of a study, assigned by the European Commission (DG XXIII).The purpose of the study was to determine whether selected European destinations apply integrated quality management as a means to raise their competitiveness. To this end a comparative survey of destinations was conducted, based on the European Foundation for Quality Management (EFQM) model. Its results indicated that integrated quality management in tourist destinations is rather underdeveloped. In general, destinations tend to be strong in one element of the EFQM model, such as policy and strategy or human resources management, as opposed to showing a balanced and integrated approach to quality management.

Virtual Tourist Destinations: Assessing Their Communication Effectiveness With And Through Foreign Intermediaries

Travel and tourism is by now generally perceived to be the market with the biggest online potential for e-commerce. The success of major online travel agents and the growth numbers in online tourist expenditure are proof of that. As this was also recognised by the Flemish government, a research study into the effectiveness of the online communication of Flemish’ tourist destinations was commissioned. This paper reports on the findings resulting from a focus group session with twelve tour operators held in the Netherlands, the first foreign market for tourism in Flanders. It discusses issues such as dis-intermediation, use of the Internet by intermediaries themselves, and roles they play in the new market situation. It shows that, although traditional players are increasingly online, they are still a long way from understanding the new economy.

Towards interactive tourism: capitalising on virtual and physical value chains

The global development of recreation has lead to global brands and standardised products. Standardised recreation products neither capitalise on the uniqueness of place, nor the ‘mass-customisation’ market trend. This paper analyses the peculiarities of the recreation and tourism sector. It suggests the value- chain/network approach as a means of regional co-operation and investment in innovation in order to achieve three objectives: product differentiation, integrated quality and chain optimisation. And proposes that for the theoretical design to be realised, various critical success factors must be met at the aforementioned three levels.

Signature Case Dubai: Projected Image Research

This chapter will investigate online projected place image research, in terms of pictures and text, as discussed theoretically in Chapter 8 and reported by Govers and Go (2005). The research background is Dubai as described in Chapter 5. Dann (1996a) has argued that the visual and textual content of brochures are important in aiding a conceptualization of place, and that this has been studied in the literature. Fesenmaier and MacKay (1996, p. 41) also state that the ‘analysis of media messages has been tackled from a variety of theoretical and disciplinary perspectives’, and indeed text and pictures seem to have long been the main instruments of research (Uzzell 1984). Pritchard and Morgan’s study (2001), discussed in Chapter 8, is similar to what will be reported here, though their approach was based on the content analysis of physical brochures. This section will therefore look at the online projected place image of Dubai, also in terms of pictures and text.

Signature Case Dubai: Brand Strategy

This chapter provides a detailed case study analysis of the Emirate of Dubai, the fast-growing global hub of the Middle East. In other chapters, other case studies will be presented, but throughout the book Dubai will repeatedly receive attention. That is why we have called it our ‘signature case’. This first chapter on our signature case Dubai will therefore discuss the context of Dubai in depth, after which we shall present our empirical studies of the projected image of Dubai in Chapter 9, and the perceived image in Chapter 13. Of interest in these chapters is the extent to which global facts take a local form. In this sense, we would encourage the reader not to interpret the signature case as being about the specific context of Dubai alone. Rather, it is about a typical example of a rapidly developing region or city-state, riding the waves of globalization, having firmly established itself, in less than fifteen years, as an important node in the network of global flows. It is not just the case study of Dubai that is of central interest, but also the results of the phenomenographical analysis of the way in which this newly established hub is projecting itself and being imagined by an international audience, and the way in which these results have been obtained. The following case study description provides an assessment of the sense of place, and facilitates a comparison of the empirical content analysis and survey results, as presented in later chapters, with the actual product offering and local identity.

Case Flanders (Belgium): Place Identity Research

This chapter is based on the Master in Tourism thesis research work conducted by Stephane Leonard, under the supervision of Robert Govers, at the Consortium University of Leuven. Stephane successfully graduated in 2007, but his thesis was yet unpublished. The authors wish to thank him sincerely for his contribution to this book.

Place Brand Performance Elements

The quality of the place experience is derived from the interfacing between host and guest, the outcome of which can make or break the place brand image. Providing quality service encounters is an especially daunting challenge for places where the guest or new resident comes from a different cultural background. Cultural differences are likely to result in miscommunication, which in turn makes it harder for front-line staff to understand guests’ expectations. Of course, repeated interaction between these hosts and guests will alleviate this problem through learning. Therefore, it is expected that familiarity with a certain place, and the level of involvement of the visitor with it, will influence the perceived image. The information acquired through personal experience or by visiting a place, forms the primary image, which may differ from the secondary image, which will be examined in Chapter 11. Indeed, some authors, such as Gartner and Hunt (1987), point out that post-visit image tends to be more realistic, complex and different from the pre-visit image, which is based on secondary sources of information. Echtner and Ritchie (1993) believe that the perceived images of travellers who are more familiar with a place is more holistic, psychological and unique, compared to first-time visitors, whose images are based more on attributes, functional aspects and common features.

Place Brand Satisfaction Elements

The formation of image has been described by Reynolds (1965, p. 69), as one of the first commentators, as the development of a mental construct based on a few impressions chosen from a flood of information. In the case of place image, this ‘flood of information’ has many sources, including promotional sources (advertising and brochures), the opinions of others (family/friends, travel agents), media reporting (newspapers, magazines, television news reporting and documentaries) and popular culture (motion pictures, literature); ‘Furthermore, by actually visiting the destination, the image will be affected and modified based upon first hand information and experience’ (Echtner and Ritchie 2003, p. 38).

Mini Case Zeeland (The Netherlands): Place Experience

The authors wish to thank Gerard van Keken for his major contributions to this chapter; please also refer to Van Keken and Go (2006).

Case Zeeland (The Netherlands): Place Identity Research

The authors wish to thank Gerard van Keken for his major contributions to this chapter, based on Van Keken (2004) and Van Kekenet al. (2005).