Stakeholders

Stakeholders are individuals, groups or organisations that have an influence in the decisions of an entity because of their interest (“stake”) explained by the fact that stakeholders can affect or are affected by the activities of the entity. Stakeholders salience (or relevance) depends on their interest, understanding, and capacity to assert their involvement in the entity’s decision-making, planning and development. Specific stakeholder attributes—power, legitimacy, and urgency— help to identify and assess the degree of salience of each type of stakeholder. Managers of DMOs, CVBs, travel agencies, hotels or other tourism entities mainly dedicate their attention to salient stakeholders, whose legitimacy is strongly related to their contribution to the achievement of managers objectives. However, given that stakeholders significantly affect an organization’s strategy and marketing performance, the stakeholders’ perspectives serve as an important basis for analysing the competitiveness of CVBs and DMOs and to assess a destination’s marketing performance.