Title: Assessment of marketing management performance audit practices of tourist destinations

Authors: Xin Xia

Addresses: Department of Tourism Management, Glorious Sun School of Business and Management, Donghua University, 303 Management Building, 1882 West Yan'an Road, Shanghai, China

Abstract: This study helps to fill the gap between the current practices of marketing management performance audit of tourist destinations and the recent advancements in the theories of program evaluation and marketing audit. The study applies perspectives from these two theories to describe five relevant activities for managing destination marketing programs: scanning, planning, implementation, assessing, and administering. The analysis proposes impact assessments to improve practices in marketing management performances audit via checklists. The proposed checklists serve as a management tool by auditors and by tourist destination administration executives to enhance the effectiveness of their marketing efforts. Using the checklists, this study takes the initial step to meta-evaluate ten marketing management audit reports, identifying good and bad practices manifested. The findings indicate that substantial improvements are possible in the practice of management performance auditing, and the proposed checklist may ensure both high quality auditing practices and effective destination marketing practices.

Keywords: auditing practices; tourist destination; meta-evaluation; checklists.

DOI: 10.1504/IJTP.2018.092492

International Journal of Tourism Policy, 2018 Vol.8 No.2, pp.147 - 171

Received: 03 Feb 2017
Accepted: 01 Mar 2018
Published online: 21 Jun 2018 *

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