Shaping the future of Alpine tourism destinations' next generation: an action research approach.

Long-term planning is crucial for the competitiveness of tourism destinations. However, the complexity of the tourism "product", the variety of stakeholders and growing market-pressure forces destinations to develop strategic plans which are based on solid contributions by the whole community. Although so-called community-oriented destinations are characterized by a large number of small- and mediumsized family businesses there is a lack of research investigating destination planning and destination scenarios by including the utmost relevant stakeholder group of future successors. A case study presents the application of a world café and scenario method in an Alpine ski resort and gathers data to derive destination scenarios of the future. The paper at hand shows how scenario methods can form a solid base for strategy development in destinations and therefore derive implications for community-based tourism planning processes in destinations. The results indicate that target segmentation and positioning of the destination as well as branding strategies are key to communicating authentically what a destination off ers to tourists and residents. The implication is that destination marketers should develop internal and external branding strategies and include the next generation of (tourism) entrepreneurs in today's decision-making to influence future tourism development at the destination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]