Tourism Development in the Campania Region: The Methodological Pathway of the ABACO Project

Increasingly considered as crucial for the development of tourism areas, Destination Management provides an approach for the strategic management of the resources and actors constituting the tourism economy of a given territory. The adoption of the Destination Management approach can significantly contribute to the development of tourism in regions like Campania which, despite their extraordinary wealth of resources, have failed to develop systematically following an efficient programming. Meant to implement the logic and benefits of Destination Management Systems (DMS) in the region, the ABACO Project has been developed with the aim to promote and support innovation in the local tourism sector through the development of an e-business platform for the integration and exploitation of tourism, cultural heritage and agri-food resources. This paper is concerned with the complex organisational activity that is required for the creation of a DMS rather than on the technological issues of the project. More in detail, it describes the methodological pathway defined to identify and analyse all the economic, organisational and management issues characterizing the territory and its actors so as to build up and implement the ABACO e-business platform.