Sustainable Destination Product Development Process

Having discussed the framework for sustainable tourism product development， we can now move on to discussing the sustainable destination product development process. And as you can see from the diagram, it basically has three components. The first part, deals with the sustainable tourism product development analysis that is about a destination asset competitiveness assessment. It’s about identifying sustainable tourism product development criteria which we mentioned in the framework. It’s about the market and product research and of course market product matching analysis. It’s also about identifying and evaluating competitive products, theme options, and product development recommendations. So, those would go together into a report. A product development report is a draft, which would go through a stakeholder consultation process.

In the second phase of the product development process and in that particular phase. The task is to basically confirm and agree strategic directions and roles in relation to the product development process, because in the destination both public and private sector will play a key role in the product development cycle. The other important task of the stakeholder consultations is to make sure that all those who are engaged in the delivery of a product on board and factor that into the operations if it’s a business. So, into the plans and development structures of a municipality, for example, or a province. Once the stakeholders have confirm the product development strategic directions, the approach and the roles.

We can then move to the production of a sustainable product, development strategy and action plan. Here, we would define the product development goals and the impacts, define the competitive product themes, defined key support strategies covering infrastructure facility role of public and private sector capacity building for guides marketing and promotions and sustainability. Define the detailed action plan, the time lines under budget and define the results. And of course, this plan would then be taken back to the stakeholders for a final review to make sure that all the issues that were raised in the second phase of the product development cycle process are in fact picked up . So, that is the process in a nutshell.

There is more in the slides To get to product development you would need to adopt a number of, a new number of and apply a number of product development tools. One of them frequently uses a rapid assessment technique which identifies describes and maps and evaluates the tourism assets of a particular destination. In a way that is very quick fairly thorough and quite informative, in terms of the development of the strategic approaches to product development in a destination. The second often used tool is content analysis, which is a way of examining trends marketing interests in relation to product using identified media sources and coding categories .

So, that’s another technique that can be used to inform what are the trends, for example, in product development interest and how that might be able to be applied to a specific destination. Another two important tool in product development is competitive bench marking. The idea here is to be able to compare the destinations product and experiences in relation to a benchmark destination that is regarded as particularly good in certain types of product presentations. And of course, survey sampling focus group discussions and workshops and key respond in depth interviews very much. A part of the product development process and in particularly in support of for examplecontent analysis forecasting and so forth. And of course product market matching mapping is a crucial exercise.

I have some examples that illustrate, for example, in the case of the Bohol in the Philippines where we undertook a tourism development area plan . Here’s a sample of the product market matching approach applied to a province at a national level. And you can see here the types of products that would be supported by the different market segments on the left side of the other diagram. An example of destination product competitive benchmark and mapping to this shows. For example, the relationship or the performance of a country like India against the Asia Pacific region.

In terms of key criteria such as safety and security business environment ground and poor infrastructure, airport infrastructure price competitiveness prioritize Asian of travel and tourism and so forth.

And then finally I’ve provided some readings on the topic which will allow you to get more detail on the product development framework, the process and the tools. Thank you very much, that it’s the end of this session.