ABSTRACT

Scotland has experienced a number of organizational structures, models, programmes and initiatives in an attempt to promote and ‘manage’ tourism at a variety of spatial scales. These have utilized a range of interpretations of the destination and incorporated a variety of objectives depending on prevailing political priorities at the time: emphasis has changed on a number of policies such as prominence of public or private sector leadership; rural or urban focus; and economic, social or environmental imperatives. It has been argued that in reality disorganization characterizes tourism destinations (Ritchie and Crouch 2003) whereby a loose association of tourismrelated businesses, organizations and interest groups work together with the local community in a semi-organized, partly cooperative fashion. The term ‘community approach’ has been used to describe this, especially in rural contexts. But like many communities, these frequently lack cohesion and continuity and are often driven in opposing directions depending on the interests of partners involved.