Governance in tourist destinations: the case of smart tourist destinations (STDs) in Spain

Abstract

Since the 1990s, governance has become one of the great challenges in the field of tourism destinations. This new style of government has a major impact on the design, implementation and evaluation of tourism policies, requiring, among other things, the collaboration of various stakeholders. The presence of very diverse stakeholders, with sometimes conflicting needs and interests, as well as the significant impacts generated by tourism and the challenges faced by the sector and society in general, make the operationalisation of the concept complex and require evaluation instruments to achieve progress towards it. In Spain, the Secretary of State for Tourism, through SEGITTUR, is developing the Smart Tourism Destinations (DTIs) project, in which governance is established as one of the five main pillars of the model. The aim of this paper is to assess the progress made in terms of governance in the DTIs. To this end, four key dimensions are identified: strategy and planning, participation, performance evaluation and transparency, which are evaluated with 24 indicators. Through an exploratory approach, the public information of the DTIs is analyzed to evaluate their actions in each of these dimensions. The results show that managers are progressively incorporating different governance instruments, although there are still issues where further development is required.