The Destination Management Handbook has been prepared by the World Bank Group to highlight the challenges and opportunities that destination managers face at all stages of tourism development. It has been written primarily to guide destinations that do not have broad tourism management experience. It is intended to be practical; covering the theory of destination management, but above all empowering practitioners to select tools and implement approaches that suit their circumstances.
Within most countries, there are destinations of different types and sizes, including regions and cities; urban, rural and coastal areas; plains, mountains, valleys and islands. They can be at different stages of tourism development. Some may already receive significant revenues from tourism, while others only a little. The handbook has been written to cover different levels of maturity, but particularly to guide smaller, emerging destinations with resource constraints.
