Strategic Benchmarking related to the Planning of Tourism Development

The presented dissertation thesis deals with a set of problems related to the strategic planning of tourism development in the context of tourism policy. By making full use of the strategic benchmarking method, the thesis tries to make a certain contribution to the improvement of strategic planning in tourism which represents an important factor of tourism destination competitiveness. The objective of the presented dissertation thesis is to postulate and in practice verify a methodology related to strategic benchmarking, aimed at regional tourism development strategies and at selected aspects of the process of their formation. The dissertation thesis postulates a complex procedure thus making it possible to evaluate and compare the tourism developing strategies of the Czech, Slovak and British regions on the basis of stipulated criteria and fuzzy scales. This procedure is implemented into an on-line evaluating application, which can be used by key regional actors for the evaluation of the particular developing strategies. The evaluation results are used for benchmarking gap analysis and for selection of suitable benchmarking partners by means of fuzzy TOPSIS method. Consequently, selected partners are submitted to an external benchmarking investigation focused on methods of how to create strategies, and managerial approaches to planning. The acquired information is used for an identification of good practices for a regional planning of tourism development