Alone or together? : investigating cooperation between the tourism sector and the municipality's efforts for sustainable destinations

This master’s thesis has investigated the cooperation between the tourism sector and the municipality's efforts for sustainable destinations. The purpose of this thesis was to look at governance of sustainable tourism destination development, by assessing the current interaction and cooperation between 3 different municipalities and the tourism industry within such municipalities, with regards to sustainability efforts from both sides. When looking at sustainable tourism development, it becomes apparent that there is a need to look at governing systems and how collaboration, coordination and transparency between public and private stakeholders are executed. Governance of sustainable tourism is challenging due to the complex nature of the industry, as it spans across different sectors, policy domains and scales. The method which has been utilised is the qualitative method, by use of in-depth interviews. The goal of this research was to get a deeper understanding of the interaction and cooperation between municipalities and DMOs, thus a qualitative method was considered the best approach. Moreover, a case study approach is utilized, with informants from 3 municipalities and belonging the DMOs from Suldal, Rauma and Arendal. This master’s thesis found that there is at least some collaboration between the municipalities and DMOs in sustainable tourism development. The collaboration mainly concern marketing and the Sustainable Destinations Label, where the DMO is the main coordinator between the tourism industry, the municipality and other relevant stakeholders. The results of the Sustainable Destinations Label are first and foremost awareness and cooperation within the tourism industry, DMOs, municipalities and local communities, where planning towards sustainable tourism has become important. Moreover, it has led to future planning within sustainable tourism through strategy development, in the form of one tourism strategy and one visitor strategy. It was also found that all the municipalities and the belonging DMOs have different perspectives on who has the main responsibility for sustainable tourism development within the destination. It is apparent that the tourism industry’s history, with little involvement from public authorities at all levels, is still common and is still an issue. This leaves governance being dominated by the “markets” approach. The findings shows that there is a need for clarification and more communication between the two actors if one is to achieve a more holistic sustainable development. Past research on the subject shows how the approach “networks” governance is recommended for sustainable tourism development. This is supported by this master’s thesis, where it was found that the Sustainable Destinations Label can be a contributor to this. The two initiatives the Sustainable Destinations Label and the Municipal Sustainability Network were also researched, to see if there is any cooperation or coordination in connection with the implementation of the two efforts. It was not found any connections between the two initiatives, which shows that there is a need for better coordination between the two initiatives. There is also a need for better strategic coordination between general municipal planning and development and destination development, as these are mostly seen separate from each other