DESTINATION MODELS AND PROPERTY REGIMES: An Exploration

Abstract

This paper suggests that property regimes determine destination structures; and compares—positioning them in an analytic framework —two destination models based on a different allocation of property rights. It then proposes a third model founded on an altogether different institutional regime, intellectual property, claiming that it could be considered superior to the previous two. In Creative Tourism Districts participation in tourism development is favoured and at the same time competition among a heterogeneous network of producers is prevented from become destructive of place and product. Though the various points of this argument are illustrated by means of real-world examples, this is a purely conceptual paper which inaugurates a research track on property rights and tourism development.