ABSTRACT
In recent years, the leisure industry, due to its positive socio-economic effects, has become a prominent economic sector resulting in increasing competition in the tourist market. To be competitive, a tourist destination must seek a balance between short-term revenues at the cost of long-term sustainable development and long-term balanced growth strategies by seeking to reconcile local interests with broader tourist objectives. In practice, we observe that different tourist destinations try to exploit their indigenous growth potential comprising various cultural and environmental amenities. This calls for a fine-tuned marketing strategy in order to get the ‘right tourist’ with the ‘right goals’ at the ‘right place’ (Coccossis and Nijkamp 1995; Giaoutzi and Nijkamp 1993).
