01 / 2013 / Volume 2

Visitor management is often too narrowly connected with mass/individual tourism in protected areas. Generally, visitor management can be used in any destination for mass and individual tourism also in connection with optimization of visitor flows, visitor concentration, and optimization of visitor impacts in a very broad sense. This paper focuses on the introduction of the theoretical concept of visitor management; it discusses different visitor management approaches and their principles, compares these approaches, and shortly describes typical visitor management tools. The discussion focuses on the appropriate use of chosen selected tools, mainly carrying capacity approaches, zoning and optimization of tourism infrastructure and monitoring, including tourism sustainability indicators. The computer simulation and prediction of qualitative and quantitative characteristics of the phenomena in destination is also shortly described. The typical application of visitor management in protected areas is described as a case study and a set of recommendations for visitor management are declared.

Destination management is considered as an advanced form of cooperation among tourism stakeholders who are associated in a destination management organization (DMO). In developed tourist destinations such as the Alpine regions, these institutions were formed spontaneously after a few years dealing with the socio-economic changes in demand to prove their competitiveness. This process strengthened their cooperation. In the Czech and Slovak Republic destination management does not have a long tradition. Although numerous tourism organizations have been established, their identification as DMOs is questionable especially considering the length of  cooperation development in the Alpine regions. Therefore the article examines on an example of the Slovak Republic.

The paper deals with the idea of destination competitiveness and its relations with competitiveness of spatial tourism products and competitiveness of entities catering tourism in the region. The case study method is used in the paper and the example of Industrial Monuments Route of the Silesian Province is analysed. The Route is a tourist product which presents the major and most interesting industrial facilities in the Silesian Region in terms of tourist, historic and architectonic values. The creation of the new spatial product – the Route by the regional authority – enhanced competitiveness of the Province as the image was improved, as well as a competitive advantage of
operators of attractions within the Route was built. Some difficulties and challenges of such a way of enhancing destination competitiveness are discussed in the text.