Welcome to Stockholm?
En studie om destinationsmarknadsföring och exportmognad
Destination marketingMarketing alliancesTourism developmentDestinationsmarknadsföringMarknadsföringsallianserTurismutveckling
An increasing global tourism offers great opportunities for Sweden as a tourist destination. However, an attractive destination requires competitive destination marketing strategies. Tourist destinations often include a complex network of stakeholders of small and large en-terprises that represent both the public and private sector. One condition for successful des-tination marketing is that all of these stakeholders collaborate in their marketing to create an integrated and powerful image. Another important aspect in terms of increasing the des-tinations competitiveness is that the local tourist companies are "export-oriented", in order to ensure that international tourists are looked after appropriately.This study has focused on the destination marketing of Stockholm. The aim of the study was to find out to what extent the local tourist companies collaborate in their marketing, how "export-oriented" their marketing is, and who ultimately controls the tourism development of the destination.The organisation in charge of coordinating the destination marketing of Stockholm is the local government organisation Stockholm Visitors Board (SVB). We interviewed them plus six local tourism companies to study if and how they collaborate in their marketing. The study showed that some of the smaller businesses felt excluded from the marketing activities due to lack of financial resources. SVB also has a product that competes with a product of a pri-vate tourist company. This result has a negative effect on SVB?s reputation as being the offi-cial representative of Stockholm, and leads to a more fragmented destination marketing. For SVB to change this negative image they need to build good relationships with the local tour-ist companies and adjust their pricing policy so that the smaller companies can participate in their marketing activities. The local tourist companies did however participate in other forms of marketing collaborations, which is a first step toward more integrated destination marketing.Some companies were more "export-oriented" than others, which mean that the foreign tourists are subject to varying standards of service. Despite this, the majority displayed an awareness of their role on the destination; that they together with other tourism companies form the "tourist product" that is Stockholm. Nonetheless, more thorough market research is needed to learn more about what foreign tourists want and expect from their visit to Stockholm. In that way Stockholm as a destination can become more competitive interna-tionally.We also interviewed the Swedish Agency for Economic and Regional Growth (Tillväxtverket), which is the public authority responsible for the tourism industry, in order to find out who is in charge of the tourism development of the destination. We found that the tourism devel-opment of Stockholm is purely market driven. This can have a negative effect on sustainabil-ity issues. Our proposal for future research is therefore to examine which are the mecha-nisms that drive the development and how one can secure a sustainable tourism develop-ment without centralized control.