Search results

This paper aims to contribute to theory concerning collaborative innovation through stakeholder engagement with reference to Glasgow City Marketing Bureau’s (GCMB’s) management strategies, which represent UK best practice in events procurement, leveraging and destination branding.

The research adopts a case study design to facilitate an in-depth evaluation of the destination marketing organisation’s (DMO’s) critical success factors. Multiple perspectives on GCMB’s collaborative innovation are achieved through semi-structured interviews with senior managers from the bureau, key stakeholders and other DMOs.

GCMB’s success results from long-term, extensive, collaborative engagement, a unique institutional structure and sustained political and financial support through to transformational leadership, strategic event selection and targeted marketing through “earned” distribution channels.

The study takes a single case study approach and focusses on GCMB’s event-led branding strategy. Given the importance but relative neglect of long-term inter-personal relationships in collaborative innovation, future research should focus on the development of social capital and adopt a longitudinal perspective.

The paper provides insights into the collaborative innovation process with a range of stakeholders, which underpins GCMB’s events strategy and its leveraging of the city brand. In particular, the study highlights the need for entrepreneurial leadership and the development of long-term relationships for effective engagement with stakeholders.

Previous research has focussed on outcomes and neglected pre-requisites and the process of collaborative innovation between destination stakeholders. This study examines this issue from the perspective of a successful DMO and presents a conceptual framework and new engagement dimensions that address this gap in knowledge.

The purpose of this paper is to gain an insight into the perspectives of a senior policy‐maker on university‐industry partnerships and, especially, on the utilisation of academic research in policy formation and evaluation.

An informal interview with Dr Leo Jago was undertaken via email. Dr Jago has recently been appointed as the Chief Economist for Tourism and General Manager of Tourism Research Australia (TRA). TRA is the branch of the Australian Government's Department of Resources, Energy and Tourism (RET) that provides statistics, research and analysis to support industry development, policy development and marketing for the Australian tourism industry. Dr Jago was previously a Professor of Tourism and Director of university research centres in Australia and the UK. For six years he was Deputy Chief Executive Officer and Director of Research for the Cooperative Research Centre for Sustainable Tourism (STCRC). He has published widely and is Co‐Editor of the International Journal of Event and Festival Management. Dr Jago also has 18 years' experience of owning and operating small and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs) in the tourism sector.

The interview provides valuable lessons for researchers who wish to engage effectively with policy‐makers and other practitioners.

The transcript offers a rare opportunity to garner a more detailed understanding of the values, experiences and practices of this elite interviewee than is usually possible in academic publications.

Ensuring an excellent visitor experience and meeting customer expectations is a key goal for most tourism businesses and of primary concern to government industry organisations. The Better Business Tourism Accreditation Program, underpinning a broad tourism accreditation initiative, has been implemented in Victoria across a range of tourism sectors. The program provides business management and operational guidelines for tourism businesses. Winery tourism, the process of visiting a Winery and the associated cellar door experience, is now acknowledged as an important part of regional tourism in Victoria. To assist in establishing benchmarks for cellar door operations the Victorian Wineries Tourism Council, in consultation with the industry, has developed Cellar Door sector guidelines. The program assists winery operators to identify and document cellar door operational procedures that contribute to the visitor experience. This article discusses the development of the Better Business Tourism Accreditation Program and Cellar Door sector guidelines, and feedback gained from a series of industry workshops. These workshops addressed concerns raised by participants and provided them with support in completing the accreditation program. A self‐complete questionnaire was administered at the workshops that sought to identify participant views on cellar door activity, the importance of tourism and accreditation. The results suggest that accreditation can provide a useful means of identifying and implementing business and operational practices that will improve the cellar door experience for visitors.