Editorial [introduction: Sustainable Place Marketing]

This special issue of the International Journal of Tourism Policy examines different stakeholders’ perspectives of a place as a tourist destination, thereby advancing existing theoretical knowledge on sustainable place marketing and offering practical insights for destination marketers and planners. Destination image refers to the sum of beliefs, ideas and impressions that a person has of a destination (Kotler, Haider and Rein, 1993). Sustainable place marketing depends to a large extent on effective stakeholder management and inclusive processes with the collaboration and agreement of a range of stakeholders such as the tourists, local residents, business operators, and local government officials (Hall, 2008). Yet, so far the vast majority of destination image studies in the tourism literature have focused on the tourists’ perspective (Chew and Jahari, 2014; Stylidis, Bellhasen and Shani, 2015a) as this group commonly stimulates economic activities for the host communities (Goeldner and Ritchie, 2009).

Special Issue on: Sustainable Place Marketing
Guest Editors: Dr. Dimitrios Stylidis and Dr. Matina Terzidou