Destination Marketing Organizations and destination marketing: A narrative analysis of the literature

• The first comprehensive narrative analysis of the destination marketing literature.
• The literature is structured around the key themes DMOs are involved with, in the pursuit of destination competitiveness.
• Provides a succinct summary of research opportunities based on key relevant challenges faced by practitioners.

This article presents the first narrative analysis of the areas of research that have developed within the destination marketing field since its commencement in 1973. Given the broad extent of the field, and the absence of any previous reviews in four decades, a key challenge is in providing a focus for such a disparate body of knowledge. The review is structured around one principal question: ‘To what extent is the Destination Marketing Organisation (DMO) responsible for the competitiveness of the destination?’. In pursuit of this underlying question, we address a number of themes including nomenclature and the DMO, the evolution of the destination marketing literature, competitiveness as the DMO reason d'être, and DMO effectiveness including issues of branding and positioning, and future research themes in the field.