All good destination management plans should have strong founding principles the sight of which should not be lost along the way.

These founding principles can be distilled down to the following:

· A collaborative approach by all tourism stakeholders in improving the quality and standard of the visitor experience
· Having a clear understanding of what makes your destination special, authentic and competitive in today’s markets
· Maximising the value from tourism by building up loyal and satisfied customers who return, stay longer and spend more;

All the above should be managed whist being sensitive to the environment, the local community, and long-term sustainability.

Crucial to the destination management process is the internet. The world wide web is just that – a global shop window. Only now, the shop window is a two-way device where user feedback and social networking sites makes it, in some ways, much more difficult to manage.

Studies clearly show that the internet is now the main tool people use to research holiday destinations. But while the internet maybe viewed in some light as a challenge to traditional modes of thinking, there are also massive opportunities for marketing and reaching a vastly larger audience.

Destination management organisations therefore must be acutely aware of the impact of the web and the power of user comments and recommendations in developing long-term relationships. Not only that, but social network sites provide “real time” intelligence for the consumer to gather information about destinations and to use this in forward planning of their trips.

Opportunities undoubtedly lie in strengthening and forging links between tourism businesses in order to provide visitors with a comprehensive experience that contains the maximum level of “joined up thinking”. This means the destination management plans must assist tourism operators to identify and put together a wider range of holiday ideas and packages to entice more visitors in a sustainable manner.

The key phrase here is “sustainable manner” because more tourists can, potentially, lead to greater environmental impact if not properly managed.

Destination management plans, then, should pay heed to issues such as land use, business regulations and licensing, environmental laws and a host of other matters that serve to shape the development and daily operation of tourism-related activities.