A marketing design approach to destination development

An increasing demand for environmental, socio-cultural and political aspects has led to that moreintegrated methods of tourismplanning has evolved, which emphasize sustainability as a key fac-tor. However, it is argued that the term sustainability is used carelesslyand that the social aspectis often overlooked. In this thesis, local participation is dealt with as an aspect of social sustaina-bility in tourism. Participation has gained ground due to its possibility to handle issues such asreluctance from communities and competing interests among stakeholders. There are too manyprojects that have failed, why participation is alsomotivated by increased effectiveness and effi-ciency of initiatives. However, participation takes place in theory and planning documents butrarely in practice, and it could be argued that the level of participation is often low, consideringlocal communities merely as passive informants. This is an especially interesting and importantaspect in projects in developing countries, where unequal power relations is an issue that must beconsidered throughout, to avoid development workers seeing themselves as legitimised civilisers.Two destination development processes have been identified in this thesis as moving towards aview that stakeholdersshould take part in the process:place branding and experience innovation.It is howeverdiscussed how this participation can take place. Design allows for empathy, intui-tion and user involvement, and the evolutionary nature of the design process fits well with howscholars describe place branding and experience innovation.The purpose with this thesis is todemonstratehow design can enhance participation in place branding and experience innovationin order to achieve sustainable destination development.The case is an ecotourism site by LakeVictoria in Kenya where a collaborative and action-oriented approach is usedfor developing thedestination. The active involvement as facilitator, partnerand participant observercontributes toan in-depth understanding of the context and the situation.The studyrevealsa process that is evolutionary and where visualisationascommunication andidea generating toolis at the core.The theoretical contribution is a beginning of anunderstandingof how participatory processes in destination development can take place where marketing anddesign get the opportunity to collaborate.The practical contribution is inspiration, motivationand tools to work for sustainable destination development