The evolution of destinations: towards an evolutionary and relational economic geography approach

Abstract

Analytical approaches from emergent paradigms in economic geography – namely, evolutionary economic geography (EEG) and relational economic geography (REG) – can help to advance and integrate extant research in tourism geography on destinations’ dynamics and organisation. Taking into account concepts such as human agency, contextuality and path dependence, the paper conceptualises local tourism destinations’ evolution as a complex, path- and place-dependent process that is determined by the action and interaction of stakeholders and their ability to adapt or create new paths, as well as to survive in response to local and global changes. Hence, it discusses the bidirectional effects between stakeholder practices and local tourism destinations’ evolutionary performance. Furthermore, it attempts to increase the understanding of how and why destinations change over time, which is valuable for policy formation and to improve local tourism destinations’ competitiveness and sustainability. All in all, the paper presents theoretical insights from EEG and REG to facilitate understanding of the mechanisms underpinning the evolution of destinations and examines the advantages of building an integrated evolutionary and relational approach. This also means an opportunity to integrate the geographical analysis of tourism destinations into mainstream thinking on economic geography.