Tourism Destination Governance : The case study of Hemavan and Tärnaby

Destination governance has emerged as a very important issue in local and regional development in Sweden. The article investigates the pattern in which local tourism governance operates based on a single case study of the ski resort of Hemavan and Tärnaby, and evaluates the effectiveness of this governance pattern on local tourism development according to a six-measurement criteria scale. A semi-structured interview approach with open-ended questions was used in this paper. Ten respondents were interviewed in Hemavan and Tärnaby, and they are representatives from both private and public sector. In the concluding section, the results are developed into an evaluation and analysis concerning how the characteristics of the local DMO matter in terms of its governance effectiveness. The results indicate that overall the DMO is an effective form by organizing various actors with mutual resource dependencies. However, the uneven balance of power between Tärnaby and Hemavan, as well as between various network participants, is hard to reconcile, which may strongly influence their governance effectiveness. Managing Heritage Assets as Tourism Products - The case of the World Heritage of the Falun Copper Min