Branding as an essential element in the creation process of the image of the brand in national tourism destinations

Purpose: Presentation of branding as an important element in the creation process of the brand image of national tourism destinations on the example of the operation of 39 National Tourism Organizations (NTOs) in Europe. Design/Methodology/Approach: For the selection of NTOs the following criteria were taken into account. 1. The functional criterion: the main functions attributed to NTOs were accepted as the grounds for the verification, firstly, it was considered whether the promotion of a given country on foreign markets is included among these tasks. 2. The economic criterion: possession of an autonomous financial budget by a given organization (regardless of the percentage share of funds from the budget of the state or from the private sector, or from any other sources) was accepted as the grounds for verification. 3. The organizational criterion: a separation of a given organization in the structure of a superior body was accepted as the grounds for verification. The research methods used include a method of diagnostic survey including a questionnaire technique, a direct interview and a statistical analysis. Findings: The analysis demonstrated among others that the vast majority of the NTOs examined (92.3%) implement the objectives of branding in practice. At the same time, a significant part of these organizations (86.1%) recognized the activities taken within branding to be very effective. Moreover, the vast majority of the NTOs analysed (91.7%) undertake the initiatives realized as part of branding on the global tourist market. Practical Implications: The conclusions following the study can be used by various entities which are responsible for an effective realization of the management process of the brand of tourism destinations on the different levels of administration. Originality/Value: The study constitutes an entirely new insight into the functioning of NTOs while presenting a substantially broader spectrum of the areas of interest for this type organizations as compared to those presented in the source literature till now.peer-reviewe

DEVELOPMENT OF HUMAN RESOURCES AS THE SPHERE OF THE COMPETENCES OF DESTINATION MANAGEMENT ORGANIZATIONS

The present article includes deliberations concerning the significance of widely understood issues connected with the development of human resources in the activities of destination management organizations (DMOs). The first part covers strictly theoretical issues connected with the concept of the DMO and its objectives with a particular emphasis on the development of human resources. The second part includes a presentation and an analysis of the results of the author’s own research on a group of 83 DMOs from 23 European states

Information technologies in the activities of destination management organizations

The purpose – The purpose of the article was an attempt to assess the significance of two spheres connected with the functioning of DMOs, i.e. internet marketing and the development of modern technologies and information systems. Design – The study covers theoretical issues connected with the essence of destination management organizations as the basic organizational structures in the tourism sector, and with the significance of the Internet and modern information technologies in the activities of these organizations. The second part of the study covers the empirical issues of the problem analyzed. Approach and methodology – Apart from theoretical deliberations, it provides the review of previous research. Moreover, the results of the author’s research were used with the aid of the diagnostic survey technique. The results from 53 DMOs that represent 19 European states were obtained. Findings – The quantity of expenditures on information technologies was defined in the structure of the total expenditures on the part of DMOs. The average value for all the organizations under analysis was 10.9%. Owing to the application of the point grading method (Likert scale), it was demonstrated that internet marketing and the development of modern technologies and information systems are becoming increasingly more important areas of the activities. Originality of the research – The originality is evident in the insights it provides about use of modern information technologies and the Internet in the activities of DMO. The empirical deliberations presented in this article should become an important point of reference for many DMOs and should emphasize the growing significance of information technologies

Destination management organizations and health tourism visual identification in Central and Eastern Europe

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to identify and diagnose the activities of national destination management organizations (DMOs) from Central and Eastern European countries (CEEC) in the scope of a visual identification of health tourism destinations. Design/Methodology/Approach: The investigations were conducted on three stages: (1) a verification was performed of the existence of national DMOs in CEEC; (2) when making targeted selection, a questionnaire interviews were performed with 16 DMO representatives; (3) desk research was conducted, i.e. an analysis of the contents of the official websites/ portals and social media of DMOs. Findings: The role of health tourism is to grow in the coming years in the opinion expressed by the DMOs examined. The organizations under examination try to address this trend by indicating that health tourism, even at its current stage, constitutes a fairly important tourism product. The current status of the visual identification of HTD created by DMOs in the states under examination is rather poor. A small part of organizations identify themselves directly with the health tourism product. A significant part of the organizations do not undertake any activities in this area. In turn, those that do undertake such activities rely primarily on fairly common elements such as: an internet website, possibly a logo and an advertising slogan. Practical Implications: The results may serve as a point of departure for taking adequate activities aimed promotion at the health tourism product not only by other national DMOs but also by similar organizations on the regional or local level. Originality/Value: The variety of health tourism products available at CEEC puts new tasks for DMOs. The article highlights the important role of the entity that is responsible for the management of the HTD brand.peer-reviewe

Spatial diversity of tourist function development: the municipalities of Poland’s West Pomerania province

This article examines the spatial diversity of tourist function development using the example of one of Poland’s sixteen main administrative regions: the West Pomerania Province (Polish: Województwo zachodniopomorskie). The analysis was carried out based on the values of the Defert tourist function index, which is one of the basic indexes used in tourism geography. The analysis demonstrated significant differences between the individual municipalities in the region examined. This confirms the assumption that seaside municipalities have the highest tourist function development

The significance of promotion in Destination Management Organizations' activities

The present articles covers basically two issues. The first one concerns the understanding of the DMO and a discussion (based on scholarly literature) as to whether in the case of this organization, the word "M" stands for "marketing" or "management". The views of various scholars concerning the definition of DMOs and the nomenclature are presented. The further part of the study constitutes an attempt to provide an answer to the question as to what the significance is of promotional activities (based on an analysis of the DMOs' expenses). This was done based on the results of research carried out in relation to a sample of 168 European DMOs from 23 countries. It was found that promotional operations still constitute an essential (and frequently leading) sphere in the functioning of these organizations. Keywords: destination management organizations, destination marketing organizations, promotion. Jacek Borzyszkowski Department of Tourism Faculty of Economics Koszalin University of Technology Poland Phone: +48 606 320 940 E-mail: [email protected] Mr Jacek Borzyszkowski, PhD, is a lecturer at the Koszalin University of Technology. His main research areas include tourism, in particular: tourism policy, organization of tourism, tourism management, marketing in tourism. He is interested in Destination Management Organizations' activity, e.g. national tourism organizations (NTO), regional tourism organizations (RTO), local tourism organizations (LTO) and convention bureaus (CB). e-Review of Tourism Research (eRTR), Vol. 11, No. 5/6, 2015 http://ertr.tamu.edu 84 Introduction DMOs are rightly referred to as leaders and primary tourism entities which are responsible for the development of tourism at a given destination. This mainly results from the role which is attributed to them (Gartrell, 1994; Increasing numbers of studies related to the operations of these organizations are appearing in scholarly literature. However, as suggested by One may observe that individual authors differ in the interpretation of the DMO name: concerning "M", some talk about "marketing" (destination marketing organizations), while others refer to it as "management" (destination management organizations). The primary goal of this study is an attempt to find an answer (at least in part) to the question: For this purpose, the author has carried out research which allowed him to define what the significance is of promotional activities in the hierarchy of DMOs (based on an analysis of the expenses on the part of DMOs in question). Thereby, it was assumed that the leading role of promotion could not prove the legitimacy of the use "management" in the DMO abbreviation. Obviously enough, this assumption is very general and cannot provide an e-Review of Tourism Research (eRTR), Vol. 11, No. 5/6, 2015 http://ertr.tamu.edu 85 explicit answer as to whether a DMO is a marketing organization or an organization in the area of management. Harssel Idea of DMO: Destination A partial answer to the question as to whether in the case of DMOs one can talk about "marketing" or "management" can be obtained by studying the scope of the activities of these organizations as presented by various scientists. Presenza Presenza, Sheehan and Brent Ritchie (2005) take a similar formulation into consideration. According to them, DMOs were historically treated as organizations responsible for marketing, yet due to a number of transformations in the scope of their activities, there was an evident expansion of their competences including those in the scope of management. Crouch (2007) points that in the case of DMOs, "M" stands for comprehensive "management" rather than merely "marketing". The range of the activities of DMOs is considerable. It involves not only strictly marketing activities but to a significant extent it concerns any undertakings in the area of destination management (Borzyszkowski 2011). Hence, it can be accepted that in many cases, the majority of tasks which are the result of activities in the scope of the development of a competitive destination, are attributed to organizations of the DMO type. The problem of finding out whether regarding the DMO name one should talk about marketing or management was presented by Batarow, Bode and Jacobsen (2008). They believe that the presentation of marketing issues was formed historically. However, at present one can talk about other tasks that are realized and fulfilled by DMOs. These include above all the following: e-Review of Tourism Research (eRTR), Vol. 11, No. 5/6, 2015 http://ertr.tamu.edu 87 Research methods: Data collection and data analysis The variety of ways to understand DMOs leads one to a broader analysis of this issue. It is worth a while to pose this question: does the DMO acronym refer to marketing or management? It is hard to find an explicit answer. As indicated above, individual scholars accept different approaches to this issue. The primary argument they present is the scope of responsibilities and tasks realized by DMOs. The author made a decision to find an answer to this question. He accepted that if promotional activities still remain the leading objective of e-Review of Tourism Research (eRTR), Vol. 11, No. 5/6, 2015 http://ertr.tamu.edu 88 DMOs, one needs to talk about destination marketing organizations. The author is aware of the substantial limitations of this assumption. Firstly, it refers merely to the sphere of promotion. Other activities related to destination marketing are to be excluded. Secondly, the author is not analysing the area of non-marketing activities that are related to destination management. Nevertheless, by showing the importance of promotion in DMO activities, the role of marketing can be presented. The research was carried out for this purpose. In the period from January 2013 to March 2014, the author carried out research with the use of a questionnaire. The research was conducted via e-mail (by sending questionnaire forms to appropriate organizations). The research was carried out in January e-Review of Tourism Research (eRTR), Vol. 11, No. 5/6, 2015 http://ertr.tamu.edu 89 Results As mentioned above, the primary objective of the research was to determine what portion of the budgets of the DMOs in question is constituted by expenses for promotion On average, the organizations examined assigned 52% of their expenditures on promotional activities. It is worth noting that the greatest part of them (52; 31%) allotted from 31% to 50% to promotional activities. It is also important that as many as 58% (98) of the organizations spent a maximum of half of their budgets on promotion. The data presented above demonstrates that promotional activities constitute in many cases a very important sphere of the operations of DMOs, even though it is difficult to explicitly indicate that it is a dominating sphere. As 42% of the organizations spent over half of their budgets for promotion, it is in these cases that one can speak of DMOs as organizations with a dominant promotion (marketing) agenda. For this reason, in these cases one may talk about typical destinatio

SEX AND EROTICISM AS TOURIST MOTIVES

Tourism combines a number of motives: a couple of these are sex and eroticism. This problem is the subject matter of many studies and analyzes mainly in the foreign-language literature. The analysis which was undertaken in the present article concerns the significance of this motive in tourist trips. For this purpose, the results of author's own research were used with the aid of a questionnaire technique. The questionnaire form was placed on one of web portals. The research carried out made it possible to present several interesting results. It was demonstrated that sex and eroticism constitute a fundamental motive of travelling, yet some fundamental differences were observed in the case of the individual groups taking into consideration among others the age criterion, education, marital status etc

The use of the Internet in tourism on the example of destination management organizations’ activities aimed at models in e-business

The present article covers one of the elements of the use of the Internet in the activities pursued by European destination management organizations (DMOs), namely an implementation of business to business (B2B) models and business to customer (B2C) models. The paper presents the results of research carried out among 184 national and regional DMOs. The main objective was to examine the interest of the organizations in the implementation of both models, thus showing the percentage of DMOs applying these solutions. As demonstrated based on the organizations analysed, the issue is quite common, and it is undertaken by the majority of the entities studied. Among the objectives of the article there was also an attempt to examine differences between DMOs that represent two European regions, i.e. Western Europe and Central-Eastern Europe. The analysis of this question is preceded by theoretical deliberations with reference to understanding DMOs and the use of the Internet in the activities pursued by these organizations

Społeczność LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual & transgender) – atrakcyjny segment współczesnego rynku turystycznego

Turystyka społeczności LGBT, tj. lesbijek, gejów, osób biseksualnych i transgenderycznych, staje się coraz bardziej atrakcyjnym segmentem współczesnego rynku. Wynika to głównie ze znacznej aktywności turystycznej tych osób, a tym samym ich wyższych wydatków na turystykę. W artykule przedstawiono podstawowe założenia aktywności turystycznej segmentu LGBT, w tym najważniejsze motywy podróżowania i wyboru destynacji, kierunki wyjazdów, przeciętną liczbę wyjazdów oraz wielkość wydatków na turystykę. Tym samym określono, jak ważny z ekonomicznego punktu widzenia staje się analizowany segment. Dotyczy to wielu destynacji turystycznych. Również w Polsce zauważa się wzrost zainteresowania społecznością LGBT wielu podmiotów zaangażowanych w rozwój turystyki