Sustainable Destination Management
Strategies in the OIC Member Countries
12
Promotion: Best practices from global corridors show the use of both traditional and digital
promotional tools. While familiarization trips and participation in travel fairs remain essential
promotional tools, the introduction of digital tools has become an integral part of promoting
MDTCs. Utilizing user-generated content on MDTCs’ digital platforms has become an essential
promotional tool with the increased importance of storytelling. In comparison to best practices,
the OIC MDTCs seem to be using mainly traditional promotion methods. The OIC MDTCs have
not incorporated the use of digital media platforms, including social media in an integrated
marketing communications strategy to promote the corridors.
Table 12: Promotion - Best Practices versus OIC Examples
Best
Practices
- The St. Olav Ways invited British journalists to experience the route leading to
the publishing of blog entries and articles in various outlets.
- The Council of Europe’s cultural route participation in the “Chinese Virtual
Tourism Fair” to promote Chinese tourism in Europe.
- Council of Europe website “Crossing Routes – Blogging Europe” highlighting
the experiences of travel bloggers in certified cultural routes countries,
including user-generated multimedia content.
- The GMS TC presents website “ ” combining traditional
promotional materials from newsletters and destination information with
interactive tools such as the “Mekong Moments,” which shares user-generated
content from social media platforms on an interactive map.
OIC - Silk Road documentaries, the participation of corridor member countries in
travel fairs, and blogger competitions.
- Umayyad Route website featuring documentary videos and guidebooks for
corridor member countries, participation in travel fairs, and familiarization
trips.
- Holy Family familiarization trips for tour guides to Holy Family sites in Egypt.
Recommendations
The recommendations present a policy framework for the OIC countries to establish and
manage tourism corridors. It provides countries with an overview of the assessment required
to establish policies and an overview of policy areas as are necessary for tourism corridors. It
also offers corridor-specific recommendations based on tourism resources available to a
destination, in addition to its stage in the destination life cycle and with consideration to where
the countries are located in the Tourism Readiness Index in relation to each other. The
following scatter graph plots the tourism readiness of the OIC countries in terms of their
openness.
With the scatter graph, tourism readiness, and openness can be compared between the OIC
countries, enabling classification into four categories, namely tourism ready and open, tourism
ready and closed, not tourism ready and open, and not tourism ready and closed. For tourism
readiness, which is displayed on the horizontal axis, a high tourism readiness indicates that the
government has created an enabling environment for tourism, has infrastructure in place,
natural and cultural resources, as well as policies and enabling conditions, such as
environmental sustainability, price competitiveness, and a focus on travel and tourism.
International Openness is displayed on the vertical axis in this graph. Developing competitive
travel and an international tourism sector requires a certain degree of openness and travel
facilitation. This is especially true for MDTCs, where restrictions in one country have an impact