Coastal tourism destination development in Zeeland: a practice theory approach

Summary

The province of Zeeland is known for its coastal recreation and tourism; these are an important contributor to the regional economy. Traditional approaches, methods and models do not provide sufficient insight into the complexity of tourism destinations and their development and therefore do not help us gain an in-depth understanding. The aim of this thesis is to gain a better understanding of the development processes of coastal tourism destinations by critically examining the relationships between practices.

Based on the research, it is concluded that a practice theory approach can provide insights into coastal tourism destination development in three different ways. A combination of the proposed approaches can provide a fairly comprehensive and detailed understanding of destination development. The use of this step-by-step approach, which is also recommended to policymakers and spatial planners, could facilitate destination development or policy-making in practice.