Pietro Beritelli

This article communicates the main insights of the third Biennial Forum on Advances in Destination Management (ADM), held in Vail, Colorado (USA). The substance of scholars’ and practitioners’ discussions can be divided into five topical domains: (1) relevance of experiences to the destination concept, (2) destination strategy and resilience, (3) the future of DMOs, (4) tourism taxation and regulation, and (5) big data and visitor management. For each domain, a goal-centered research agenda is offered, built on conference participants’ collective sense-making efforts during the three-day conference, followed by a dedicated consensus session.

One of the main functions of Destination Management Organizations (DMO) in community-type of tourist destinations is to coordinate the supply network and therefore to serve as bridg-ing organization in a fragmented and complex system of organizations, institutions and stake-holder groups. Traditional research on the roles of DMOs, including the coordinating func-tion, builds on descriptive case studies and on the discussion of the cases at organizational/ destination level. We propose to change the perspective by analyzing the actor's level with the help of structural hole analysis of local elite networks. Thus, instead of describing the organi-zational role of coordination, we effectively measure the bridging value of the actors affiliated to the DMO in the network of the destination. The results of six selected destinations show that among the top four/ five bridging individuals in networks of between 13 to 42 actors, there are always not only the DMO directors but also at least one board member of the DMO. The paper concludes with further research in DMO board composition and evolution.

This paper examines network structures of Australian airlines between 2007 and 2010. First, it determines the importance and development of airport hubs and their position in the networks of Australian airlines. Second, it compares airline routes and competition. The network analysis is based on correlations which display the network structure and show the competi-tive situation of specific air routes, airlines and airports. The analysis was limited to the major Australian carriers Qantas, Jetstar Airways, Virgin Blue, V Australia, Tiger Australia and Tiger Airways. The results show that Sydney is the most important airport for the Australian air network followed by Brisbane, Melbourne and Perth. During the period between 2007 and 2010, Melbourne lost importance while Brisbane was gaining centrality. Correlations between the routes and the seat capacities of the airlines show situations of competition and coopera-tion and provide indications for the evaluation of airline strategies