Global strategies for destination management organisations: Focus on country brand experience management

Destination management organizations (DMOs) compete for international tourists globally. This study applies Yip’s (2003) Total Global Strategy (TGS) framework to global competition among DMOs in the tourism industry. TGS aims to answer two important questions: 1) how global is the industry; and 2) how global should the business strategy be? Based on the TGS framework this study first addresses the impact of market-, cost-, government- and competitive globalization drivers on the tourism industry globalization potential. The focus is on the special characteristics of tourism services including environmental and social sustainability, safety and security issues. Second, the study investigates how DMOs can apply global strategies based on the five strategy levers of global market participation, global products and services, global marketing, global location of value-adding activities, and global competitive moves. Third, this study illustrates how DMOs can customize and/or standardize these five global strategy levers in the context of brand experience management (BEM) proposed by Laitamaki (2007a). The study uses Australia, Tourism Australia and Brand Australia as examples of how the TGS Framework and BEM principles can be applied to a country, a DMO, and a country destination brand respectively. The focus of this study is on DMOs’ global country brand strategies and the extent to which they should be customized versus standardized in the context of country brand experience management. The study contributes to the existing tourism literature by introducing the Total Global Strategy framework as an alternative for the cluster theory (Porter 2000) and... (see the PDF file)Destination management organizations (DMOs) compete for international tourists globally. This study applies Yip’s (2003) Total Global Strategy (TGS) framework to global competition among DMOs in the tourism industry. TGS aims to answer two important questions: 1) how global is the industry; and 2) how global should the business strategy be? Based on the TGS framework this study first addresses the impact of market-, cost-, government- and competitive globalization drivers on the tourism industry globalization potential. The focus is on the special characteristics of tourism services including environmental and social sustainability, safety and security issues. Second, the study investigates how DMOs can apply global strategies based on the five strategy levers of global market participation, global products and services, global marketing, global location of value-adding activities, and global competitive moves. Third, this study illustrates how DMOs can customize and/or standardize these five global strategy levers in the context of brand experience management (BEM) proposed by Laitamaki (2007a). The study uses Australia, Tourism Australia and Brand Australia as examples of how the TGS Framework and BEM principles can be applied to a country, a DMO, and a country destination brand respectively. The focus of this study is on DMOs’ global country brand strategies and the extent to which they should be customized versus standardized in the context of country brand experience management. The study contributes to the existing tourism literature by introducing the Total Global Strategy framework as an alternative for the cluster theory (Porter 2000) and... (see the PDF file