This research explores the destination collaboration and stakeholder engagement in the context of conventions industry. The research aims at providing understanding how destinations are able to achieve successful stakeholder engagement. The research topic is explored from the structure, engagement approach, activities, capabilities and behavior perspective. Collaboration, alliance and stakeholder engagement literature is studied to form a theoretical base for the research.
This research is qualitative multiple-case study. It allows probing deeply in to attitudes and specific instances of the phenomenon. It enables to compare the studied cases. The study is explanatory in nature, which attempt to find explanations for certain phenomenon. Three case meeting destinations; a Finnish city Tampere, two Swedish cities Jönköping and Gothenburg were the units of analysis. To provide more holistic view of collaborative structures, five European cities Glasgow, Vienna, Helsinki, Espoo and Troms where additionally explored. The phenomena were viewed from the convention bureau executives’ perspective.
The importance of collaboration is highly appreciated in all destinations. Collaboration is the core of bureaus existence. The motivation factors for collaboration relate to destination learning, transaction cost and to destination strategy. The promotion of meetings marketing is most commonly centralized to a destination marketing organization (DMO), which is responsible for the entire destination marketing. The convention bureau (CB) is still the entity, which facilitates the stakeholder collaboration and engages the meeting destination stakeholders. A bureau is typically a part of a DMO. Formal alliance mode basing on public-private platform is an appreciated collaboration format.
The identification of stakeholders strongly relate to engagement approach and activities debate. This research identified four most salient stakeholder groups CBs to engage; critical friends, weak friends, quiet competitors and aggressive competitors. It is important to engage various stakeholder groups differently. Critical friends, which consist of CB members, are the most important group to manage. A university is suggested to belong to critical category, contrary to previous suggestion. The local university and other than obvious stakeholders have an important role for CBs (suppliers), and the members’ engagement is active. The activities relate to events where the CB and stakeholders are able to communicate. Identifying and engaging the non-supportive, competitive stakeholders’ shows positive influence. Transparency, trust and ability to learn showed to relate to successful engagement.
The contributions of this research can be utilized to guide destination executives in designing and planning of destination development and marketing. One needs to realize that the stakeholder engagement is an extensive phenomenon. This research was limited to explore the engagement from the chosen perspectives. The findings in this study however are not exhaustive and recalls for further research. Although the similar findings, the overall generalizability of the findings requires further testing.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:oulo.fi/oai:oulu.fi:nbnfioulu-201511122126 |
| Date | 16 November 2015 |
| Creators | Aikio, R. (Riina) |
| Publisher | University of Oulu |
| Source Sets | University of Oulu |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | info:eu-repo/semantics/masterThesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess, © Riina Aikio, 2015 |
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