E-Democracy and Web 2.0: A Framework Enabling DMOS to Engage Stakeholders in Collaborative Destination Management

Destination management (DM) is a collaborative process requiring destination marketing organizations (DMOs) to reconcile the diverging interests of various stakeholders and actively involve them in decision- and policy-making processes. Web 2.0 tools and e-democracy applications empower DMOs to further enhance the role and deepen the participation of tourism stakeholders in such collaborative DM processes. however, the literature has paid limited attention to such issues. this article synthesizes literature from four fields [namely stakeholder theory, collaborative decision making, collaborative destination management (CDM), and e-democracy] for developing a framework showing how DMOs can exploit Web 2.0 for developing collaborative decision-making processes for DM. the theoretical and practical implications of this framework are discussed. Refereed/Peer-reviewed