A model for the evaluation of national tourism destination marketing programs

The increasing commitment of national governments to the funding of their tourism administrations ’ marketing activities abroad has been accompanied by demands for more rigorous evaluations of the effectiveness of these activities. More rigorous and compre-hensive approaches to evaluation are also required to furnish a more solid foundation for strategic decision making. However, many evaluations to date have been ad hoc in the sense that they have relied on one or two techniques that address only part of the problem. A framework for systematically integrating a range of techniques is proposed as a way to overcome this deficiency, while an alternative approach to market share analysis is described in an effort to add to the battery of techniques in this field. With the emergence of tourism as a major growth sector in the global economy, national governments have become increasingly aware of the role this industry can play in enhanc-ing a country’s trade performance. Many have thus sought to improve their competitive position with respect to the inter-national touris_m market by either increasing funding alloca