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Threats in the external environment and changes in the industry’s markets and structures have challenged destination marketing organizations to change in fundamental ways. The strategic responses to these developments are essentially decisions to proactively shape, adapt to, or passively struggle through a crisis. Envisioning the future of tourism and examining possible ways of reaching various future scenarios are essential exercises in this process of deciding which strategic approach to adopt. In response to the increasing need for new visions of the future of tourism and particularly destination marketing, leading destination marketers from the midwestern United States were invited to participate in a large focus group to discuss the specific challenges encountered by their organizations. This article summarizes the issues raised and their implications for destination marketing organizations as well as tourism research.

This study seeks to classify visiting friends and relatives (VFR) travel and to explore the linkage between VFR travel types and commercial tourism in an empirical study. The VFR phenomenon is multifaceted, making it hard to integrate research findings. This article proposes an initial typology of VFR travel and positions the major existing studies within this typology. Using data from Queensland, Australia, an examination is made of the relationships between the proposed variables and VFR travel and behavior patterns. The data set gave the researchers the ability to identify VFR as either a prime trip motive or one of a set of activities or regional attractions. The study provides an activities-based segmentation of this type of VFR traveler and attempts to connect different segments to both travel patterns and the variables in the proposed typology.

Using data from the 1999 Survey of Taiwanese Outbound Travellers, this research quantitatively examined tourists’ shopping preferences and behaviours in relation to their socio-demographic characteristics and trip attributes. Results indicated that travel purpose, travel style, age and gender were significant factors influencing the amount of money travellers spent on shopping and the items that they preferred to buy. Such understanding affords destinations and retail businesses practical knowledge useful for destination marketing, product development, retail merchandising and customer service. Basic questions can be addressed more confidently, such as what the most popular items for a well-defined demographic group are, and what factors can be used to predict the spending level of tourist shoppers.