Social Systems and Tourism Design

Abstract

Tourism destinations represent both social systems and a bundle of products and services that constitute the overall customer experience. However, destination management challenges strongly differ between corporate- and community-model destinations. The latter are guided and marketed by a destination management organization (DMO) which attempts to stimulate tourism development processes through cooperation and collaboration initiatives. Service design is proposed as a major attitude and behavior of stakeholders in the tourism destination. It enables a constant discussion and on-going process of co-development and co-production and is finally labeled as “tourism design”. This chapter highlights the need for tourism design thinking in tourism destinations and discusses the stimulus of tourism design activities for cooperative behavior and tourism chain optimization processes. Customer-orientation of all stakeholders in the destination can be increased and will lead to a strong consistent tourism value chain. Future research should gather empirical evidence through action research and or case studies in community-model destinations.