STAKEHOLDER COLABORATION IN TOURISM DESTINATION PLANNING – THE CASE OF MONTENEGRO

Abstract

The importance of involving diverse stakeholders
in tourism planning is receiving growing
recognition. Effective tourism destination
planning is a complex process, due to the existence
of a wide variety of stakeholders with
a wide range of opinions, multiple problem
visions and different interests. Despite the
complexity of the planning process one feature
acknowledged for successful destination management
planning is a high level of stakeholder
engagement and cooperation. The implementation
and success of a tourism plan often relies
on the support of destination stakeholders.
The paper deals with the issue of effective tourism
destination planning from the perspective of
harmonizing stakeholders’ interests. It explores
tourism destination planning in the Montenegrin
tourist destinations, the level of stakeholder cooperation
and correlation between destination plans
implementation and stakeholder cooperation. An
empirical research was carried on the population
of 19 local tourist organizations in Montenegro.
Findings and implications of the research
are given in the paper. The results revealed the
problem of insufficient implementation of tourism
development plans and low level of stakeholder
cooperation. Also, there are implications based raon
recently conducted research reported in this
paper, that there is a strong positive correlation
between the level of stakeholder cooperation and
implementation of a tourism destination plans.