Call for papers: "Tourism Governance during Public Sector Reform and Financial Uncertainty: How Can Destination Management Organisations Adapt?"

For a special issue of the International Journal of Tourism Policy.

The current trend for decentralisation of tourism policy to the local level coupled with public sector reforms and expenditure cuts is transforming tourism governance arrangements. Destination management organisations (DMOs) are experiencing resource constraints at a time when they are increasingly expected to create and lead on added value initiatives and make up the shortfall in public funding through product innovation and other means.

These changes in the policy environment precipitate a fresh perspective on destination management and necessitate the reconfiguration of relationships with other actors in tourism policy networks. However, there is evidence (Halkier, 2009; Coles et al., 2014; Slocum and Everett, 2014) that localist interests tend to dominate tourism-related policy networks and that the rescaling and reconfiguration of tourism structures adds further complexity, and thus uncertainty, to the tourism system.

The purpose of this special issue is to map out the experience of different destinations by posing the following questions: How has public sector reform affected tourism policy making and implementation at the destination level? How has the reconfiguration of policy at the local level influenced the roles, functions and performance of DMOs? Where does better practice exist in stakeholder engagement, leadership and financing of destination level organisations?

The issue invites contributions that adopt an interdisciplinary perspective to bring together researchers from tourism, economics, geography, public administration and policy, regional studies and organisational studies.

The issue will carry revised and substantially extended versions of selected papers presented at the International Conference in Tourism (ICOT 2015), but we also strongly encourage researchers unable to participate in the conference to submit articles for this call.

Suitable topics include, but are not limited to, the following:

• (Re)definition of DMO roles and responsibilities
• Top-down and bottom-up approaches to destination management
• Performance measurement and evaluation of DMO strategy implementation
• Corporate governance and inter-organisational dynamics of DMOs
• Stakeholder engagement, management and collaboration
• Knowledge management and product innovation
• Competitiveness and destination governance
• Destination leadership and trust: national, regional and local challenges
• Standards of governance, accountability and transparency
• Best practice in DMO adaptation approaches to change and uncertainty
• Case studies of impact of public policy reform on destination management organisations

Important Dates
Submission of manuscripts: 31 January, 2016