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The purpose of the paper is to study how the local stakeholders of three different tourism destinations consider who is responsible for the development of a tourism destination (if identifiable) and why.

This study takes a multiple case study approach. Three different destinations are compared. A qualitative research method was chosen. The data are based on the interviews of tourism and wellbeing professionals (tourism entrepreneurs, experts and regional developers).

The interview results suggest that destination leadership seems to be context-dependent. Competition, co-operation and coopetition all occur in different forms in different regions. Various kinds of co-operation are distinguishable between stakeholders of case regions, and the level of leadership among actors varies in the regions; one region is strongly managed by marketing company, while on other the co-operative store chain is apparently dominant. The roles of local educational institutes also varied depending on the case area. In addition, some entry barriers were identified.

The data were collected three to four years ago, so some changes in the areas and in the roles and relationships of diverse stakeholders may have occurred.

By identifying challenges faced in diverse regions diverse destination managers can identify challenges likely to occur at destinations with similar management structures.

The paper discusses the challenges and roles of diverse stakeholders in destination management by using empirical cases.

The purpose of this paper is to identify potential Finnish wellbeing tourism segments based on factors connected to tourists' lifestyles, and find out if there are statistically significant differences between the segments concerning demographic factors, factors related to travelling behaviour, and interests in diverse activities.

Potential tourists are segmented based on activities, interests and opinions (AIO‐segmentation). The data of the tourist profiles for the research were collected during 2007 and 2008 by self‐administered electronic questionnaire. In total 1,012 sufficient responses were obtained. Collected data were analyzed by using factor‐cluster method in order to group respondents into different segments.

Altogether six segments were identified: Sport and nature people interested in technology; Home appreciating travellers; Family and health oriented sport and nature people; Culture appreciative self‐developers; Material wellbeing appreciatives; and Indifferent about travelling and social issues. Statistically significant differences were found between the segments considering geo‐demographic factors, travelling habits and also interest in different activities.

General research concerning the wellness and wellbeing of tourists has been rather rare. This research provides more comprehensive and general information about potential wellbeing of tourists in the Finnish context.

The preservation of social structure in slow cities has not been adequately examined in the literature. Therefore, the aim of this study is to examine social change perceptions of local people in a slow city. Whether the dimensions of social change differ according to gender and inhabitancy was investigated.

Multivariate analysis of variances was used for data analysis. Data were collected from 399 participants in Seferihisar.

Results showed that the perception of local people related to social change differs according to their gender and duration of stay in Seferihisar. Differences were also examined for each sub-dimension of social change.

The preservation of social structure in slow cities has not been adequately examined in the literature. Accordingly, this study explores social change with five sub-dimensions in the context of Cittaslow.