Abstract
Strategic planning for destination development is one of the core tasks of destination managers, alongside destination management, destination marketing and destination governance (Beritelli et al., 2007; Fyall & Garrod, 2020; Haugland et al., 2011). It is, therefore, all the more surprising that the topic of destination development has so far received little attention in the context of tourism studies (Stoffelen & Vanneste, 2018; Volgger et al., 2021). Although destinations in general have been a key theme in the tourism literature for years, most of the literature has focused on analysing and understanding internal and external impacts on destinations, not on destination development as a process (Koens et al., 2021; Sedarati et al., 2019). For example, in Gössling et al.’s(2018) destination management study, only growth-oriented indicators in a competitive context, such as arrival and expenditure data, were used to evaluate destination develop-ment. To evaluate what positive or negative destination development should look like, tourism scholars first need to discuss critically which development routes destination scan take, or must take, to build resilient economic sectors, reduce environmental impacts and avoid negative consequences for the host societies. It is also essential for scholars to establish: (i) what role the destination management organisations can, or must, take in the development process to achieve the desired outcomes; and (ii) what factors influence the destination development process from a consumer behaviour perspective.