Destination Positioning
[Prepared by Gillian MacDonald, UBC Graduate Student]
Gateway Sites
- Tourism Research Links http://www.waksberg.com/index.html.
Rene Waksberg created this comprehensive gateway site with the
tourism researcher in mind. It states directly on the home page
that the site is not intended for travelers, but rather for the
researcher specifically. The site is divided into three main categories:
Research, Niche Marketing, and Technology. Within those three
categories are hundreds of links to organizations which manage,
consult, or research tourism, as well as tourism schools. This
gateway is a perfect starting point for any individual interested
in conducting research on the travel industry, or more specifically
on destination marketing and positioning. It is somewhat tedious
going through the numerous sites available in order to find the
best ones, but having such high quality travel research sites
all in one spot is indispensable. Additionally the site is maintained
regularly so as to ensure that the links are as up to date as
possible.
- Tom Rourke's Home Page http://hubcap.clemson.edu/~trourke/.
Tom Rourke is a doctoral student majoring in tourism planning
at Clemson University in South Carolina. He has put together a
web site that is useful for the tourism researcher. Similar to
Rene Waksberg's site, it provides links to numerous academic journals
as well as to organizations which deal with tourism and research.
Rourke's web site, however, is more user friendly and is significantly
more aesthetically pleasing that Waksberg's site. Many of the
web sites found on gateway site #1 are the same as those on gateway
site #2, but there are enough differences between them to merit
including both as gateways.
- The Christchurch Polytechnic Institute of Technology Library
http://www.chchpoly.ac.nz/library.
This web page is located on the Christchurch Polytechnic Institute
of Technology's web site. On the library page of the web site
is a category entitled "Resources by Subject". After clicking
on that category, the "Commerce" heading will appear somewhere
on the page with subheadings for "Hospitality", "Marketing" and
"Travel & Tourism". All of these subheadings provide links to
a variety of sources in their specific fields. Under the "Travel
& Tourism" section, for example, there are links provided to a
number of resources on the World Wide Web related to travel and
tourism research. Some of the more important links with information
concerning destination positioning are the Asia-Pacific Journal
of Tourism Research, the Journal of Travel Research, as well as
Eclipse 1, Eclipse 2 and ProQuest. ProQuest is a useful search
engine for online ejournals.
Other Sites
- Alastair M. Morrison - Hospitality Consulting & Tourism Consulting,
Tourism Marketing and Tourism Research http://www.omni.cc.purdue.edu/~alltson/Alastair.html.
Alastair M. Morrison is a professor specializing in the areas
of marketing and tourism with Purdue University's Restaurant,
Hotel, Institutional and Tourism Management Department. He is
also the director of Purdue Tourism and Hospitality Research Centre
(PT&HRC). This particular web site is Morrison's own home page
and is extremely useful as a starting point for researchers interested
in learning the basics of destination positioning and marketing.
The most impressive and useful aspect of this particular site
are the extensive PowerPoint presentations (ppt) Morrison provides
for each chapter of his books the Tourism System and Hospitality
and Travel Marketing. These ppts provide a wealth of information
concerning marketing and the travel industry, and include some
fabulous sections on positioning. Morrison's web site further
includes a section on suggestions for World Wide Web (www) site
design and development for destination marketing organizations.
The web site also provides links to 79 tourism, hospitality, and
leisure journals, as well as a link to a web site dedicated to
current indices and abstracts from various journals (http://www.bubl.ac.uk/journals).
The site also provides a bibliography of 632 tourism, hospitality,
and leisure books, as well as a bibliography of Morrison's articles
and conference papers.
- North Carolina Tourism: Resources in Education and Development
http://www.nctourismresources.net/index.htm.
This site was designed to bring together many different types
of information in order to assist communities in their tourism
development efforts. Similar to Alistair M. Morrison's home page,
this web site provides several useful PowerPoint presentations
dealing specifically with tourism and destination marketing located
in the Hospitality/Tourism Education section. The site also provides
links to tourism journals as well as sites providing travel statistics.
- Indiana University http://www.indiana.edu/index.html.
This web site provides a function that searches through 180,000
IU web pages. When the words destination, marketing are entered
into the search function a number of useful documents appear.
For example "The Pictorial Element of Destination Promotions in
Tourist Destination Image Formation", "The Effect of Pull Factors
Used to Influence Tourist Destination Choices on Retirement Destination
Choices".
- International Centre of Studies on the Tourist Economy (CISET)
http://helios.unive.it/~ciset/index.html.
Established in 1991, CISET is an international centre of tourism
economic studies, and is a member of the Business Council of the
World Tourism Organization. CISET's mission is to carry out research
and studies on tourism with particular emphasis on its national
and international, regional and local, Italian and foreign economic
aspects. The web site provides the researcher access to its publications,
conferences and online documents. Of particular interest are the
documents dealing with the Centre's research on tourism and hospitality
management specifically one entitled From Destination to Destination
Marketing Management. The Centre also offers its working papers
to be sent free of charge to University libraries, teachers, researchers
and consultants interested in tourism studies.
- Hotel Online - Where the Hospitality Industry Meets...Online
http://www.hotel-online.com/Neo.
This web site provides the latest and most relevant news, trends
and discussion forums in the hospitality industry. The search
function on this website provides access to numerous articles
from various sources including academic journals and conferences.
Entering the key words destination and positioning yields numerous
results including "Positioning a Tourism Destination To Gain a
Competitive Edge" from the Asia Pacific Journal. Numerous case
studies also appear including "Positioning Sabah as an International
Tourist Destination", presented at the Fourth International Conference
"Tourism in Southeast Asia and Indo-China: Development, Marketing
and Sustainability".
- Eclipse http://www.chchpoly.ac.nz/library/subject/eclipse1.pdf.
The journal Eclipse is a destination marketing journal. Each issue
covers a single theme in three sections, namely discussion, case
study and research. Issue number one deals specifically with destination
image, and thoroughly describes destination, image, perception,
and positioning. It includes a case study on Japanese outbound
travel, as well as a comprehensive section on "what the academics
say" about the topic.
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