ABSTRACT
This study examines how collaborative thuggery emerges within a multi-stakeholder decision-making process, such as the Gold Coast VeryGC destination branding process. Although collaboration has been widely (Bramwell & Sharman, 1999; Erkuş-Öztürk & Eraydın, 2010), yet arguably (Marzano & Scott, 2009), described as a necessary condition for destination competitiveness (Baggio, 2010), the tourism literature did not thoroughly examine how multi-stakeholder decision-making processes could be shaped to match the needs and interests of a few stakeholders. By examining the Gold Coast (Australia) VeryGC destination branding process, this study shows evidence of the existence of collaborative thuggery, defined as the behaviour of stakeholders who invest time and effort in shaping the agenda to fit their interests, and who play politics (Huxham, 2003). However, the question of whether thuggery is pathology, a necessity or just an unforeseen occurrence within a multi-stakeholder decision-making process in the context of tourism is outside the scope of this study.
