Conscious travel and critical social theory meets destination marketing and management studies: Lessons learned from Croatia

When one dives into the questions of imag(in)ing place and reputation, destination marketing, management and branding, two key clear trajectories of the relevant literature appear to prevail. One is underpinned by critical social theory in order to deconstruct political processes of power behind the formation of place identities, while the other sits on the (post)positivist platform to discuss business issues of destination competitiveness. And the two rarely meet, existing in their respective paradigmatic and ideological bubbles, each expressed in separate vocabularies. Moreover, their scientific division extends beyond academic outlets of journals and education programs. The former hardly ever speaks to the business community for the reasons of its often abstract and/or radical criticality while the latter is rarely aware of its deep “enchantment” within the apparent “neutrality” of discursive market philosophy. In the current context of the alarming state of the world affairs that screams for change in our business practices, this paper will discuss the urgency of the need to bring these two views together. We do this by providing three forms of disclosure: (1) an overview of the two literature camps through a juxtaposition of their specific lexicon and concerns; (2) an insight into the emerging notion of transformative and conscious tourism that demands a “revolution” in our destination marketing and management thinking; and (3) a cumulative, ethnographic, and multi-authored account of authors׳ field experiences with destination marketing and management practice in Croatia.