The article from Gajdošík et al. (2017) aims to measure the changes in the organizational structure of a destination and the impacts these changes might have on the stakeholders’ actions at the destination. The researchers first of all give a list of all the different stakeholders that can be found at a destination, continuing with defining the two major organizational structures types present in the tourism field, namely the community model and the corporate model. Community model is more oriented towards cooperation between private and public stakeholders among the destination, whereas in the destinations that are built on corporate models normally just one stakeholder prevails over the others. The problem statement is then defined as the need of measuring the change in organizational structure in destinations. The focus of the article will be on the analysis of stakeholders’ influence on a destination performance, since some of them through investments and innovations can gain influential position compared to other stakeholders. Moreover, the goal is to provide evidence by examining the change in organizational structure of destinations using the quantitative characteristics of network analysis, which brings more objective point of view to the research. The gap in knowledge is absolutely valid, since many studies dealt already with the identification of this shift from the community model to the corporate model (By, 2005; Beritelli & Reinhold, 2009), but none of them measured this change in the organizational structure. Gajdošík et al. (2017) identifies then a clear research question the article aims to answer to: “How to measure the change in organizational structure and leadership in a tourism destination and what effects does it have to destination’s performance?”. To answer this question the authors decided to use a new innovative methodology in the tourism field: network analysis. This method combines qualitative and quantitative research processes, and was rarely used in tourism, but can result in being an useful tool in various circumstances (Van der Zee, E., & Vanneste, D.; 2015). The network analysis consists in an application of matrix and graph theories to represent relationships and the presence of the different subjects. I personally believe that for measuring changes in the organizational structures of destinations, a mixture of quantitative and qualitative methods is needed. My only perplexity regards the limitations of this methodology. Finding very accurate information about the different stakeholders from an outer perspective might be difficult just by analyzing the networks existing. The network analysis was conducted in two major mountain destinations in Slovakia, chosen for being as the most internationally known and the one with the longest cable cars, ski slopes and highest lift capacity (Gajdošík et al.; 2017). The changes in organizational structures in the two destinations were measured by comparing the networks existing in two different time periods. The analysis was done by comparing the networks present in 2015 and those shown in year 1995 that were retrieved through historical materials. The analysis of year 2015 was done by simply observing relationships and then asking stakeholders some more in-depth questions to detect any other relation that was not clear before. But, for year 1995 this procedure was a bit more difficult, since all the information was just obtained through various materials. However, I can see the future for this methodology if applied to destinations year-by-year. Destination management should indeed analyze the networks every year and compare the differences to better understand the development of relationships among stakeholders, the shift in destination leadership and the allocation of power. The results of the study aimed to discover the destination’s leaders using the centrality measures of network analysis, more specifically centrality degree, the closeness centrality and the betweenness centrality. The results show how both destinations are now moving to a corporate model structure and how resources are concentrated in the hands of one stakeholder. Moreover, the authors showed the decrease in the power of DMOs that are still considered leaders, but their role is being taken by the more powerful stakeholders. The article ends with an interesting reflection of the researchers on which are the advantages and disadvantages of both models. The corporate model is more driven towards bringing economic benefits to the destination. On the other hand, the community model is more orientated to the social and environmental aspects. The best solution for destinations would then to adopt an hybrid model, mixing up some features of the corporate and of the community one. The article is well-structured and the results are presented very nicely. As I already said before, my only concerns regard some limitation that this methodology could have since the data retrieved from 1995 were just collected by reading some historical materials. But overall I really think the network analysis can work in any destination, and destination managers should really consider it when they decide to implement new structure strategies to whether urban, mountain or seaside destinations.

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References

• Gajdošík, T., Gajdošíková, Z., Maráková, V. & Flagestad, A. (2017). Destination structure revisited in view of the community and corporate model. Tourism Management Perspectives, 24, pp. 54–63.

• By, R.T. (2005), Organisational Change Management: A Critical Review, Journal of Change Management, Vol. 5 No. 4, pp. 369-380

• Beritelli, P., & Reinhold, S. (2009). Explaining decisions for change in tourist destinations: The garbage can model in action. AIEST Conference (pp. 1–12).

• Van der Zee, E., & Vanneste, D. (2015). Tourism networks unravelled; a review of the literature on networks in tourism management studies. Tourism Management Perspectives, 15, 46–56. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.tmp.2015.03.006.