ABSTRACT
Co-operative promotion of tourism destinations has conventionally focused on the production of joint publicity brochures, often distributed through shared stands at exhibitions (although many organizations have done much more, such as operating booking services). The development of electronic commerce now offers opportunities for collaboratively marketing tourism destinations. There is the potential to create ‘virtual co-operation’, whereby potential tourists can browse through websites of individual facilities at a destination and develop a coherent picture of the destination experience on offer. The development of sophisticated destination management systems (DMS) allows the resources of a destination to be linked so that a potential visitor sees a coherent visit experience, rather than a series of disjointed resources. There are many challenges in making DMS work effectively, and these are discussed later in this chapter.
