Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / Past studies are focused on measuring competitiveness factors that are significant to a destination, while lesser focus is provided to capturing specific tourists’ attractiveness factors. The purpose of this study was to explore Millennials’ perception of destination attractiveness (DA) and their propensity to visit a destination. The objectives of this research include 1) To explore the perceptions of the millennial tourist when deciding on visiting a destination, 2) To determine which destination attractiveness factors are significant to the millennial tourist, 3) To identify Millennials propensity to visit a destination and 4) To explore other preferences that affect propensity to visit a destination. To accomplish the purpose and objectives, millennial college students and recent graduates from multiple universities in the USA were surveyed. A total of 103 Millennials participated in the study. Descriptive statistics and multivariate analysis were used to analyze the data. The results of this study will contribute to the existing knowledge in the areas of Millennials’ propensity to visit a destination and their perception of destination attractiveness.

Destination management is a management method, which is based primarily on the cooperation of stakeholders from the private and public sector while ensuring the effective development of tourism in the destination. The aim of the thesis is to evaluate the status of destination management organisation in the promotion of tourism. The actual impact of the functioning of destination management organisation on tourism cannot be directly analyzed. However destination management organisation, through implementing projects focused mainly on marketing and cooperation with other stakeholders, positively promotes tourism in the destination.

This diploma thesis is worked out on the theme Marketing study of selected tourist destination. As analysed destination, the author chosed the town of Mělník which dispose of high tourism potencial which is not exploited enough. The author has specified the task of this theses as analyse the application of every single used marketing tool of selected destination by offer analysis, demand analysis and analysis of marketing mix. The aim of this theses is to suggest following steps to develop tourism (increase arrivals, repeatability of visits or receipts of tourism) in this destination. The diploma thesis is divided into three main chapters. The first chapter introduce the teoretical specification of the terms as destination, destination management or marketing destination management. Following practical part contains application of information forenamed in the theoretical part to particular marketing activities of this town.

This research investigates Destination Management Organisation (DMOs) in China, and looks at their functions and their adoption of Performance Measurement Systems (PMSs). A two-stage questionnaire survey has adopted to achieve the pre-determined aims of the research. Finally, ninety-three DMOs took part in the first stage survey and thirty-four DMOs were involved in the second stage survey. The key findings from the research are as follows. (1) Irrespective of their nature and level, Chinese DMOs attached most importance to the functions of “economic-driver”, “marketing” and “coordination & collaboration”. (2) DMOs attached a second level of importance to the functions of “operator”, “administrator”, “statistics” and “training”; however, particularly at municipality and city levels; also Chinese public DMOs paid more attention to these aspects. (3) Chinese public DMOs, particularly at provincial and city level, placed more emphasis on the functions of “regulator” and “legitimacy”. (4) Chinese higher-level public DMOs paid less attention to the function of “public awareness”, “funding” and “international relations”, however they did performed much better than non-public lower-level DMOs to these tasks. (5) Chinese governmental DMOs at higher-level, and private DMOs, were the best at adopting PMSs in their organisations. (6) The PMSs of Chinese DMOs paid greatest attention to measuring the aspects of “visitor”, “earning” and “marketing”, and medium levels of attention to the aspects of “stakeholder”, “operation” and “event”, and relatively low attention to evaluating their performance of the aspects of “employment” and “innovation” in their organisations. Finally, a refined PMS model that could be adopted by Chinese DMOs in the future was developed at the end. Based on the above findings, the refined model aimed to measure the performance of “stakeholders”, “employees” and “customers” by assessing the outcomes of the aspects of “management” and “marketing” for Chinese DMOs. The refined PMS model was developed and based on the top-down operation system that currently existed in China and was supposed to pursue every major aspect of the system for each stakeholder in the DMOs.

The thesis deals with the issues of the rival tourist destinations and the question concerned with the measurement of competitiveness. The objective is to propose tactical measures for the Destination management company of the town Český Krumlov and thereby strengthen the competitive position of this destination. To meet the goals of the thesis it proceeds from the research of foreign approaches to measure competitiveness that is modified in conditions of the Czech tourist destination. It specifically uses AHP method to determine the importance of the competitiveness's factors and combination of different techniques for gathering information to assess the degree of fulfilling these factors. The data obtained from Český Krumlov are compared with other competing destinations in the Czech Republic and on its basis it formulates appropriate recommendations (measures).

The thesis inquires into the issue of involving stakeholders in the process of implementation of the regional strategy for tourism development, in which the priorities for the realisation of tourism politics in a given area are indicated. This process is being investigated in two domestic regions and one region abroad. The aim of this work is to formulate a set of measures based on identified good practices that will lead to an improvement of the process of involving stakeholders in the implementation strategy for the development of tourism in the South Bohemian Region. To achieve the objective, the thesis utilises findings from previous research, which is then developed towards the proposal and verification of the methodology for determining the attitudes of key groups of stakeholders towards the process of cooperation with the regional destination management organization during the implementation of the development strategy, or rather its priorities

The thesis is devoted to marketing study of the tourist destination Prague and its aim is to analyze and evaluate the potential of tourism development in Prague and its utilization in marketing of Prague as a tourist destination. It defines basic terms about destination marketing - marketing analysis, market segmentation, marketing strategy, marketing mix and implementation plan together with the control. The thesis includes analysis of primary and secondary offer of destination, identification of main competitors, the results of marketing research and presents the basic elements of marketing mix of destination Prague. Based on the findings, the final part of study contains proposals and recommendations for destination marketing and improvement of current situation.

The thesis deals with the application of destination management in the area of Beroun which is located in the Central Bohemia Region. Nowadays there is no organization of destination management which operates and promotes this area. The aim of this thesis is to analyse the area and mainly to create an organization of destination management which would deal with the tourism development in the area of Beroun. Next aim of this thesis is to set up the advertising strategy.

The thesis is focused on a relatively new concept of wine tourism in France. The main aim of this work is to evaluate a current situation of wine tourism in a region of Burgundy based on existing demand and supply. A partial objective is to evaluate an organization and cooperation of entities within the destination. The theoretical part deals with basic characteristics of wine tourism and destination management. The practical part is largely based on the analysis of current wine tourism demand and supply leading to an overall evaluation of wine tourism destination of Burgundy.

Innovation in the services sector is becoming increasingly important to understanding the innovative behavior of the US economy, as more and more sectors become increasingly populated with services. Traditional goods-manufacturing sectors remain a dominant theoretical and empirical force with respect to the measurement and management of innovation activity at different levels of the economy. This includes industry, sector, and firm levels of theory and practice. As the shifting trajectory away from traditional technology-manufacturing to services, it becomes incumbent on researchers in service dominated sectors such as tourism to better understand effective ways to measure and manage innovation in services. This dissertation comprises three essays which singly and in combination, focus on the measurement and management of innovation in services with specific and increasing attention to the role of the destination management organization. The major bodies of literature used in these essays are the innovation literature, destination marketing and management, and networks. There are multiple lenses used to analyze services within the tourism context at the industry, destination, and organization levels. In addition to multiple lenses, multiple analytic methods are employed raging from latent growth modeling techniques to convergent parallel mixed methodology. The thesis contributes to the destination management and marketing literature in three ways. First, the thesis integrates tourism production industry into the comparison of between and within group trajectories. Second, the study empirically tests the mediating effect of network orchestration, and contributes mixed methods to the tourism field. / Tourism and Sport