Correspondence: Alan, Fyall, International Centre for Tourism & Hospitality Research, School of Services Management, Bournemouth University, Talbot Campus, Fern Barrow, Poole, Dorset, BH12 5BB, UK. Tel: +01202 965496; Fax: +01202 965228; E-mail: afyall@bournemouth.ac.uk

¹is Reader in Tourism Management in the International Centre for Tourism & Hospitality Research and Head of Research for the School of Services Management at Bournemouth University, UK. He has published widely with his areas of expertise spanning the management of attractions, heritage tourism and destination management. He has co-edited Managing Visitor Attractions: New Directions and Managing World Heritage Sites published by Elsevier Butterworth Heinemann, while he has co-authored Tourism Marketing: A Collaborative Approach and the third edition of Tourism Principles and Practice published by Channel View and Prentice Hall, respectively. He has conducted research in many countries around the world while he serves as an elected member on the Bournemouth Tourism Management Board, one of the nine sub-regional DMOs in the South West of England.

²is Senior Lecturer in Tourism at Napier University, Edinburgh, UK. Her teaching and research interests combine and lie principally in the areas of heritage visitor attraction management, visitor attraction pricing and general conference management. She has also co-edited Managing Visitor Attractions: New Directions (2003) with Alan Fyall and Brian Garrod and Heritage Visitor Attractions: An Operations Management Perspective (1999) with Ian Yeoman. She has presented and published extensively in the field of visitor attraction management in both UK and international contexts. She is currently leading research in the School of Marketing & Tourism and the Centre for Festival and Event Management at Napier University.

Received 6 June 2006; Revised 6 June 2006.

Abstract

Although pivotal to the travel and tourism system, the destination is widely acknowledged to be one of the most difficult products to manage and market. Over the coming decade, the challenges facing destination marketers are likely to be even greater with a whole host of issues likely to impact on the future marketing of destinations. This paper seeks to utilise an exploratory framework that brings together those issues deemed to be of significance to the future marketing of the destination product and examine the extent to which the framework can be applied to the marketing of two major destinations in the UK: London and Edinburgh. Both London and Edinburgh represent significant destinations for both domestic and international tourists and have been impacted by forces external and internal to the UK in recent years. For example, externally, 911 in the United States and SARS in South East Asia have both impacted on international travel patterns while the outbreak of Foot and Mouth Disease in 2001 and the devolution and 'regionalisation' of tourism within the UK has impacted on the management and marketing of destinations within the UK at the local, sub-regional, regional and national levels. In addition to conducting a thorough review of the relevant literature and organising focus group sessions within their working environments, the authors also conducted a series of face-to-face interviews with appropriate stakeholders in the two destinations to identify and explore those future issues and strategic challenges facing those marketing destinations in the future generally, and specifically to the two destinations representing the focus of enquiry in this study. The one consistent finding — and the one that perhaps best encapsulates those 15 challenges identified in the proposed framework — is the issue of collaboration and the need for those within the destinations to work together in solving problems deemed too demanding to solve in isolation. For collaboration to succeed in the context of destinations, the destination management organisation needs to act as a strong unifying force that is able to bring all component parts of the destination together and develop the wider destination in its entirety. To conclude, both London and Edinburgh have ambitious growth targets for the future. Collaboration is key to the achievement of such targets as is the need to continue to diversify markets. The need to be cognisant of all those issues and forces impacting on their future direction is, however, vital if both destinations are to keep abreast of competing destinations; both at home and overseas.