Strategic success in winter sports destinations: a sustainable value creation perspective

According to annual reports of European and North American ski resort corporations, winter sports destinations are facing stagnating markets and at the same time challenges in the management of environmentally sensitive mountainous areas and villages. The survival and development of winter sports destinations are to a large extent centred around strategies for creating competitive advantage and at the same time meeting the criteria of sustainable tourism laid down by the WTO. In this paper, performance on these two dimensions is combined into the concept of strategic performance. Sustained value creation is suggested as a goal of strategic performance in winter sports destinations. Two new models related to the strategic analysis of winter sports destinations are developed. The first is a suggested configuration of value creation in winter sports destinations - the "value fan" - and the second is a conceptual organisational model providing a framework for analysis at strategic level of such destinations. The models have emerged from examining the central body of literature in the field of strategic management. Development of the models is part of ongoing research into what kind of organisational structure of winter sports destinations will lead to superior performance in terms of strategic success. Here the concepts of the "community model" and the "corporate model" of destination management are introduced. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.