Since TT Industy is mainly ‘human relations’ oriented, the basic philosophy of ‘satisfaction in services’ is a vague criteria to be fullfilled. When the main concern is heavily on ‘TT commerce’ and especially the regional values are sacrifised against commercial performance, system is directly tending to collapse. It is very important to identify the recent events in Barcelona due to the delicate balance of values and interests.
Travel & Tourism is a complex phenomena, where the natural interactive details within the ongoing mechanism has not been deeply analysed and solved yet. We may possibly name this reality as “iceberg effect” since it is clearly visible over the surface, but is a huge structure that functions in a deep ocean. It is necessary to clarify the main features of this natural social and economic global real life environment.
Within the recent historical developments, there was an important approach injected to facilitate the formation and management of TT within destinations. UNWTO launched the DMO Programme to the attention of all National & regional tourism developments, in order to provide an innovative roadmap for planned growth. But this was not succesful since nobody realized and harmonised within this approach.
Having been personally involved for establishing a healthy tourism development platform for Antalya Destination since 15 Years, the Global Picture can be summarized as; Each and every Nation and potential region is desiring to develop regional tourism, but cannot possibly adopt DMO Model of planned growth. Wheras, there are important deformations within developed regions due to lack of macro management.
There is a globally comical situation that, every stakeholder in TT Industry is running after promotion and selling, that DMO Concept itself has sacrifised its ‘M’ to Marketing. But the main awaking argument is “what are we Marketing without a consciously organised production Management?” which shocks and surprises our marketers but does not wake them up within their fixed roles of selling whatever available.
Since TT Industy is mainly ‘human relations’ oriented, the basic philosophy of ‘satisfaction in services’ is a vague criteria to be fullfilled. When the main concern is heavily on ‘TT commerce’ and especially the regional values are sacrifised against commercial performance, system is directly tending to collapse. It is very important to identify the recent events in Barcelona due to the delicate balance of values and interests.
Barcelona Case: New Mayor Opens Campaign for Re-Constructive Organization
The indispensible role of Spain and its primary destination Barcelona has been carefully recorded within young tourism history with sansational performance. The local visdom has created a pioneering example of destination destination organization, which resulted a fantastic rise of Barcelona Tourism in last 3-4 decades. Today, it can be easily considered as a “leader success story” for the rest of the TT World.
But recently elected Mayor of Barcelona Ms. Colau has clearly declared that ‘local tourism is out of control and she will emphasize on new local measures towards better sustainability’ which is a very respectful and brave political action to be underlined. This case directly reflects that “even Barcelona is seriously sufferring from unfavorable effects of tourism” which needs to be analysed in depth.
Antalya Case: Regional Tourism Collapses Without any Destination Management
The rise of Turkish Tourism was a late event which is viable since last 25 years in international TT market. Today Antalya Destination constitutes two thirds of National overnigts and produces around 20 BnUSD annual foreign tourist Receipts. The central town has only 9% of the regional capacity and reknown as ‘capital of tourism’ for the whole country. But Antalya could not perform to be a Provincial Leader yet.
Most of the local TT operations are at sub-regions of Alanya-Manavgat-Kemer, where consolidation of these at administrative province was never possible. Although there is a clear State rule for DMO regional councils to be established, this was totally unrealized. Recently, the central Municipality has been fully authorized for Provincial Administration, but still there is no single sign of Tourism Destination measures.
Thus ‘the theory and practice of DMO’ needs to be elaborated within the clear and conflicting scope of these recent live cases, for the sake of better Global developments. We kindly call the attention of UNWTO, who has also slowed down the global campaign, which was activated ten years before. Now is a perfect time to pack up DMO Theory/Practice for the service of supporting destinations in technology.
This is a basic outlook of recent Global TT perspectives, with two simple practical cases. Being fully confident that “Destination Management Organization concept” will be a top trend within the next years, we must pay due attention to realize the macro impact of this innovative approach at full consideration. Healthy growth of World Tourism needs further delicate care, for better efficiency and effectiveness.
Zafer Cengiz has gained extraordinary experiences within Turkish Tourism development as multi-disciplinary expert and recently supporting professional media on 'macro analyzed articles' within the recent Decade.
He is a mediatic activist on patiently advocating the Turkish Tourism Strategy, as a member of Turkish Journalists Association TUYED in Istanbul.
