Tourism SMES, service quality and destination competitiveness

This chapter presents a hierarchical model of a destination comprising three entities (destination, tourism business, and employee) to act as a framework for understanding the impact service quality has on destination competitiveness and the implications of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) for public-sector interventions designed to promote destination development. The chapter examines: the challenges for managing service quality and destination competitiveness; the nature of tourism employment; the special characteristics of tourism SMEs; and the range of employee-, tourism SME- and destination-oriented strategies that can be used to enhance destination competitiveness. The chapter concludes by emphasizing the importance of recognizing the heterogeneity of tourism SME motivations and business approaches and the need for a new heterodoxy appropriate to business management in tourism SMEs.