Obstacles to achieving cross-border tourism governance: A multi-scalar approach focusing on the German-Czech borderlands

Abstract

This paper aims to identify distinctive obstacles to the establishment of tourism destination governance in both transnational and within-country borderlands. Analysis of the German-Czech borderlands, a region also incorporating within-country borders between three German federal states, indicates the multi-scalar and political contestations of cross-border tourism collaboration. Local tourism projects are generally successful, both on a transnational German-Czech level and between the German states of Bavaria, Saxony and Thuringia. However, structural cross-border destination management does not exist because of (transnational) multi-scalar institutional alignment problems and (internal) tourism-specific destination-level power contestations. Understanding destination management processes in borderlands, therefore, requires: (i) explicit multi-scalar analysis; (ii) recognition of both transnational and within-country contexts; (iii) more cross-pollination between tourism planning and cross-border governance research.