By Helina K. Betre
Supervisors: Ulrika Persson- Fischier Göran Lindström
Collaborative Partnerships between Public and Private Stakeholders in Sustainable Destinations
A case study of Uppsala, Sweden
Master’s Thesis 15 credits Department of Engineering Uppsala University
Spring Semester of 2019
Date of Submission: 2020-06-02
Abstract
Tourism destinations are implementing policies based on global sustainability agreements.
Countries are taking different approaches to fulfilling their sustainability goals. Collaboration was considered an important component to implementing policies and achieving targets. The city of Uppsala in Sweden has been awarded most sustainable city and recognized for its collaboration efforts. In this study I evaluated the collaboration both within public and private organisations. The research was designed as an inductive and qualitative case study. Data was collected by interviewing 12 organisations and analyzing 7 documents. To evaluate the intra- organisational relationship of the municipality, documents were analysed. Timeline of policy development and implementation was compared to Gary’s Collaboration theory (1989) and Selin’s Strategic Bridging (1995). Results indicate that Uppsala’s municipal government (MO) has successfully developed sustainability policies with strong collaboration. This is especially the case intra-organisation. However, most of these partnerships were collaborative in nature with larger organisations. Smaller businesses with more direct contact with the tourists are not having their problems effectively addressed. This was the case with marketing material and information sites. This leads us to believe that Uppsala has the common characteristics of trust, commitment and communication with the larger players in tourism; but not the smaller ones. Furthermore, this study indicates that collaboration efforts are more different in cities; factors such as resources availability and economic contribution of organisations affect the strength of the partnership.
No of Series: 19 024
Table of Content
Abstract 1
Table of Content 2
Introduction 3
Background 5
Literature Review 6
Tourism 6
Collaboration and cooperation 7
Methods 10
Results 13
Sustainability Policy and intra-governmental relationships 15
Public and Private organisation relationships within Uppsala city 17
Collaboration within Uppsala region 21
Discussion 22
Reference 24
Introduction
Sustainability efforts are growing in most industries, including tourism (Higgins-Desbiolles, 2010). However, it has been challenging for most systems to change their harmful practices to incoming rules and regulations. The most significant policy to date is ‘Transforming our world:
the 2030 agenda for sustainable development’ or Agenda 2030 by the United Nations (Agenda 2030 Report, 2015). This report details 15 goals and 169 targets to be a sustainable world by 2030. In 2015, 193 countries have agreed to adopt this by top down approach. In many nations, policies began to be drafted for different levels of government including national, regional and municipal level (Moyle et al, 2014). Also these policies acknowledge that collaboration between stakeholders are critical to progress. Yet it has been a question for legislators and governing organisation on how they can measure progress and strength of partnerships (Warren and Becken, 2017).
To encourage collaboration, World Wildlife Fund (WWF) has turned to technological innovations. They developed software to quantify resources used and output waste (Source:
Uppsala MO Site). For instance, a hotel can use this software to daily measure their wet waste and water usage. The software then consolidates all the data from participating companies. This way organisations involved can strategize their goals, visualize their progress, share and compare with other participants. This creates a sense of unity and encourages them to compete with other cities. Although this approach has limitations, it also does not evaluate partnerships between the policy makers and the private bodies, a ‘qualitative’ variable. Therefore, I chose to evaluate this critical variable at Uppsala, Sweden, winner of WWF Climate City award 2019. I defined the research questions as follows:
‘Are the partnerships seem collaborative or cooperative in nature, between the public-private sector in Uppsala city’s tourism industry?’
Uppsala was chosen as the place of study because it was recently awarded as the most climate city by WWF (Source: Uppsala MO Site). A city receiving this award should fulfill SDG goal 17 partnerships. Partnerships in sustainable development should be collaborative in nature.
Collaborative efforts are more meaningful than coordination because they allow all stakeholders to be involved and effectively meet the city’s sustainability targets (Selin, 1999).
Collaboration between the public and private stakeholders is a norm in developing a sound action in policy implementation. In today’s tourism, sustainability actions are essential for destination competitiveness (Pulido-Fernández et al, 2018). Although not all governments have the same goal their strategies to motivate the private sector vary. A study by Mei et al, 2012 found that Norway’s national policies on sustainable tourism encouraged a more passive stand.
In the case of Sweden, their approach was more direct than its private sector (Bohin et al, 2014).
Over the previous years, Uppsala city has spearheaded a public-private partnership called Klimate Protokol. Literatures related to collaboration theories have proposed that the inter-organisation relations managed by these agreements have to be continuously evaluated (Selin and Chavez, 1995; Park and Kohler, 2019). This includes whether they are more collaborative or cooperative in nature. The importance of such distinction is discussed further in the literature section.
Due to time constraint and length of this study, I will focus on the leisure tourism sector.
Using interviews and official reports, I will be identifying some strengths and weaknesses of each organisation’s relationship with each other and the governing bodies. It also is important to evaluate the municipal strategies for sustainability themselves in order to check their feasibility with the actions by the industry players. By analysing my resulting data, I hope to find the themes that discern the nature of effective collaboration. Furthermore, this study will contribute to collaboration studies and the characteristics of partnerships in sustainable destination management.
Background
Uppsala is the fourth largest city in Sweden. Located within the province of Upplands, it is home to various historical and cultural sites and organisations for Sweden. Most of the attractions are located at the centre of the city except for Gamla Uppsala, which is located about 7 km outside of the city (Source: Uppsala Visitors Site). At the centre of its attractions stands Domkyrka or Uppsala Cathedral, the tallest cathedral in Scandinavia. Its construction dates back in 1272, although, due to fire and Protestant reform, it had experienced alterations and restoration. For the tourist traffic, the cathedral is very visible as the one of the tallest attractions.
Surrounding the cathedral are other 10 mapped major attractions including Uppsala Slott (Uppsala Castle), Uppsala University, Gustavialum, Carolina Rediviva, Botanical garden, Linnaeus Museum and garden, Museum of evolution, museum of Upplands, Bror Hjorth’s house, Uppsala Concert and Congress hall (UKK), Biotopia, City garden and Pelle No Trail Playground. Most attractions have free entrance.
Uppsala’s tourism has two sectors - Leisure and MICE (meetings, conferences and exhibitions). Leisure tourism alone has recorded a turnover of 1.7 billion SEK. The local DMO has declared to double this by 2020 (Source: Uppsala Visitors Site). This is on par with Visit Sweden (national DMO) target for 2020. Uppsala tourism has a high disparity between seasons.
The peak seasons are fall and spring, and lowest in winter and summer. This is due to conferences that are hosted by its two large universities, Uppsala University and Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU).
The city of Uppsala has been engaged in meeting the UN's Sustainable Development Goals for 2030 (Source: Uppsala MO Site). According to their strategies for sustainable development, the municipality is planning to be fossil fuel free by 2030 and emission-free by 2050. There have been many initiatives and collaborations between the public and private sector to monitor reducing emission and waste. These efforts have led to several awards on its tourism
including ‘Most Sustainable Destination’ and WWF’s Global Climate City Award 2019.
Although their policies and targets seem commendable, there is no data or evaluation on how well these organisations are working with the government and whether their collaboration is
‘harmonious’ and inclusive. This is why this study is developed to answer this variable in case of Uppsala city.
Literature Review
i. Tourism
Tourism is the largest industry in the world (WTO Report 2019). According to the World Tourism Organisation (WTO), tourism alone generated 4 trillion USD last year and is projected to rise in the future. Its breadth of influence extends to not just tourism related organisations, but other industries and networks that cooperate with them. With its significance to the world’s economy, society and the environment, tourism is one of the focus areas in 2015 UN’s sustainable development goals agenda 2030 (SDG). According to WTO’s tourism for SDG site, tourism affects all SDGs, in particular goals related to economic empowerment, responsible production of goods and environmental conservation. 1
Similar to the global scale, Sweden’s tourism is emerging and evolving. Tourism in Sweden has been growing steadily since 2000 (Bolin et al, 2014). In 2012, Sweden’s tourism turnover reached 275 million SEK. It is expected to increase by 4-6% per annum. Policies related to collaboration and cooperation in the economy, including tourism, were being addressed since 1996; when proposition 2004/05 was introduced to the parliament on expanding tourism in
1 Goal 8 Decent work and economic growth; Goal 12 Responsible production of goods and Goal 14 Life below water (Source WTO Tourism For SDG Accessed 19/03/2019)
Sweden. It highlighted the potential benefits of expanding tourism including growing the local economy, building conservation as well as growing Sweden’s competitiveness as an international destination. To do this, it proposed a cooperation between the state, who owns the potential tourist site (forest, museums etc), and local business and community. Organisations involved in leisure and sports such as Föreningen Turism i Sverige (a network of forest parks) were encouraged to further this cooperation. After passing this legislation, the government has been striving to create similar strategies to strengthen tourism development in different levels, including municipalities, regions and counties.
ii. Collaboration and cooperation
With respect to this study, we will focus on Goal 17, partnership for the goals. ‘A successful sustainable development agenda requires partnerships between governments, the private sector and civil society. These inclusive partnerships built upon principles and values, a shared vision and shared goals that place people and the planet at the centre, are needed at the global, regional, national and local level’ (UN SDG official site). As this quote demonstrates, collaboration is considered crucial to progress in SDGs. The hurdles in SDGs are considered to be ‘wicked’, in other words they are inherently complex and that there is no one solution found. Even if we manage to find a solution, we in turn create unforeseeable problems (Liburd and Edwards, 2018).
Cooperation involves sharing information and resources between each other to implement a goal. It can range from small scale partnerships between two individuals, to large scale, such as networks of associations (Fadeeva, 2005). Coordination is similar to cooperation, in that groups can work independently of each other while communication is used for result reports.
Collaboration is different. According to Liburd (2018), collaboration is a more powerful tool of action. Actors take initiatives to find solutions and open sharing ideas. In contrast, cooperation and coordination has the weakness of causing competition and animosity (Vangen and Huxham, 2012). Collaboration tends to avoid this by imploring individual behaviour within the alliance to
unite by their common benefit - to win together. In a collaboration study by Garci (2013), destinations that follow a holistic approach to collaboration have better success in the long term.
While examining the case of Gili Trawangan Indonesia, she discovered that they found less problems in the implementation stage because all stakeholder’s input was considered through the initial stages. She also identified elements of Gary’s collaboration theory (1996) and Selin-Chavez model (1995). These theories will be discussed further below.
Liburd (2013) identifies five types of collaborations including within an institution, state, industry, across nations and over time. Also, collaborations can come in the form of cross sectional or multi-layered (Hardy et al, 2003; Bryson et al, 2006). In this research, the forms of collaboration in Uppsala city will be classified based on these categories.
Over the last decade, there has been a growing research on the impact of collaboration on sustainability related policies (Fadeeva, 2005). Policy makers need to understand the key actors of a sector they target to ensure collaboration between all parties. This endeavor becomes challenging in complex and multilayered industries like tourism. For example, it gets difficult to include what everyone feels is important without one’s interest becoming another stakeholder’s problem. Yet they cannot achieve their sustainability agenda without each other. As a result, it becomes a ‘wicked’ problem that cannot be solved.
There are theories that model how to make an effective collaboration. The most recognised theories are Gary’s Collaboration Theory (1989 and 1996), Strategic Bridging and Selin and Chavez’s Model of Tourism Partnership Evolution (1995). Collaboration Theory and Tourism Partnership Evolution states that there are three stages of collaboration: the first is formulation, which entails identifying a common goal, crisis or even a moderator who brings the relevant stakeholders together; the second is the implementation. This is where the organisations begin to prepare policies and relevant resources to execute actions. Most importantly, the views and interests of all parties involved are recognised (Selin and Chavez, 1995). The third stage is outcome, which is about evaluating the results and how well they achieved their targets.
Strategic bridging is related to connecting the two or more organisations of diverse backgrounds together for mutual gain (Westley and Vrendenburg, 1991; Park and Kohler, 2019).
In this case, strategic bridging is facilitated by a third-party organisation or BO (bridging organisation) who nurtures the alliances amongst the stakeholders. From past studies effective collaboration has four requirements. There must be trust, commitment, regular congregation and joint ownership of decisions. Selin (1999) further emphasizes that partnerships have to evolve with the change with demand and innovative solutions.
Despite the complex nature of realities, these theories attempt to show that collaboration has common steps and properties. In this study, I intend to discover if Uppsala tourism stakeholders have a collaboration or coordination partnership. It is also important to know the history of the partnership and how they reached their current state. Therefore I discuss the transitions of policy making and the implementation based on Gary’s Collaboration Theory and Strategic Bridging.
Most importantly, I discuss the relationship between the policy makers and the actors in Uppsala’s tourism sector. I intend to access the nature of their partnership and compare them with four common requirements. However this study is important to show if there are other requirements as well. I also explore the characteristics that hinder collaboration and if there are limitations to collaboration theories.
Methods
This research study involves field work in Uppsala city Sweden. The design of this study is inductive and qualitative case study. Qualitative research chosen for social studies because it is about collecting non-numerical data and seeks to find meaning in this data to help understand complex social phenomenons (Xin et al, 2013). I choose an inductive instead of deductive approach because I explore patterns in new data to show new concepts. My data is qualitative because my topic is subjective and about the nature of relationships. According to Mehmetoglu (2004) qualitative researches seem unstructured but they provide insights in tourism studies.
Research in relationships favor open ended interviews rather than questionnaires in order to gain in-depth data and relaxed setting for interviewees. Both primary and secondary sources of data are used to see policy transition and connect incidents to people’s response. The primary sources of data involve combinations of in-person and phone interviews including 6 in- depth interviews and 5 brief interviews. To locate the appropriate persons related to my topic, I completed pilot interviews with government employees connected to tourism. Interviewees included representatives of government organisations
● Municipality Organisation (MO)
● Region Government Organisation (RGO)
● Destination Marketing Organisation (DMO)
Private organisations interviewed included accommodation, operators and/ or managers in attractions.
● Church Attraction
● Museum 1
● Library Organisation
● Stadium Organisation
● Museum 2
● University
● University Library
● Museum 3
● Museum 4
● Accommodation Organisation
Lastly, I also spoke to tour guide companies and hosts to info points for tourists including City Transportation, Tour Company 1 and Tour Company 2. Prior to each interview, all participants are provided consent form stating the purpose of the study as well as the confidential agreements and permission to audio record. Participants were asked if they want their organisation to be anonymous in the study. For some participants who were only able to do a brief interview (less than 20 minutes) I initially sent them a list of questions for them to fill out and then completed a follow up phone call. To ensure reliability, I followed up with all interviewees to ask the same questions in different ways. The interviews were layout in a semi structured fashion for time efficiency and precision.
For secondary data, I scrutinized strategy documents, policy documents and tourist market surveys conducted by DMO.
● MO Strategy Fossil Free 2030
● Mo Strategy Zero Emission 2050
● DMO Strategy 2019 2015
● DMO Report 2018
● Uppsala Klimate Protocol 2018 report
● Targets for Uppsala Sustainable City 2020
● RGO Strategy Report 2013-2020
● Uppsala Market Survey Report 2018
● Strategy for Sustainable economy by Sweden’s Ministry of Economics 2019
● Visit Sweden Annual Report 2018
Document analysis is used in this study as per Bowen (2009) because it is effective in stakeholder collaboration studies. In this study, it allows me to connect policies in different levels of government and their steps leading to the implementation. These are records of legislation that passed and become relevant to discuss in interviewee in the government. It will also reveal the challenges the public bodies faced when agreeing on targets.
With each report, I compared how the strategies are formed and the collaborating parties.
Furthermore, I’ll mention these goals to the respective persons interviewed to gain some challenges or outcomes they have noticed.
For the interview section, the data will be analyzed using thematic analysis to identify the characteristics of their relationships. Based on previous studies, I identify key terms used to describe the relationship in all the interviews. In the end, I explain emerging patterns and identify the characteristics. Then I compare these terms to four characteristics mentioned in previous literature. I will then discuss the strengths and limitations this study reveals on how we understand partnerships in tourism.
Results
After analyzing reports and interviewing tourism actors, there are key themes and issues identified. To discuss the results, I first classified the types of partnerships. Partnerships include intra governmental, inter stakeholder, and between government and private stakeholders. To determine the condition of intra government relationships, I compared the goals of different levels of government and interviewee responses. Furthermore I mapped their policy development using the collaboration models. The relationships between stakeholders were analyzed by interviewee response. Government and private stakeholder collaboration was assessed through document analysis and interviewee response. It is important to note that if government owned attractions are independently managed from MO then they are separate entities from the MO. For the purpose of this study, they will be classified as separate organisations that are collaborating with the MO, similar to Accommodation and tour guide companies.
The results section will be divided in three sections. First, I will discuss the results from document analysis. These will help identify the different stages of collaboration and the steps taken. Strategy documents include MO’s Strategy Fossil free 2030, MO’s Strategy Zero Emission 2050, Klimate Protocol, RGO Strategy 2020 and Strategy for Sustainable economy by Sweden’s Ministry of Economics 2019. Then I will compare the objectives of organisations in similar functions and different levels. This will allow us to see how policies developed and what steps were taken to involve the Uppsala’s stakeholders.
In the next section, I will evaluate the inter-organisation relationships such as between public and private bodies. To do this, I examine the documents from DMO strategy 2020 and describe the stakeholders’ experience with this collaboration. DMO strategy has many organisations uniting to achieve them so I will connect them to what the interviewees responded about this collaboration and their current challenges. Moreover I will discuss in-depth major challenges that were mentioned by the interviewees.
Figure 1: Stakeholder map of Uppsala’s visitor sector based on document analysis and interviews. Arrows indicate partnership between organisations. One way arrows represent relationships without mutual benefit. In the case of DMO and the library organisation, the latter hosts marketing brochures for the DMO.
The last section is about collaboration efforts between the city and the region. This is based on the responses from RGO, Museum 4 and DMO. The idea is to learn more about their relationships, its impact over the years and the future of collaboration in the region.
I. Sustainability Policy and intra-governmental relationships
Uppsala tourism sector has some key organisations that support its development and management. For the purpose of this discussion the organizations are categorized not just by who manages them, but by their primary functions as well. The first are marketing organisations which include DMO and Visit Sweden. The second are the governmental and legislative bodies, which include MO, RGO, Ministry of Enterprise and Innovation, and the National Property Board of Sweden (SFV). The third are the tourism services that include the hotels, universities, congress halls and tourism attractions.
Uppsala MO is a critical center of collaboration in Uppsala. It owns the destination marketing companies DMO and Uppsala Convention Bureau. They are both tasked to liaison communication between MO and tourism stakeholders. Uppsala Convention Bureau is responsible for marketing the MICE tourism. Both interviewee from DMO and MO stated that the MO had developed sustainability goals based on targets by RGO and the Ministry of Enterprise and Innovation (see Figure 1). Their involvement has been the drivers for sustainable city strategies including agenda Fossil Free 2030 and Zero Emission by 2050. Both strategies were conceptualized to upkeep targets of Sweden’s National Strategy for Sustainable Regional Growth 2015-2020. There are ten action plans highlighting reducing emission in sectors of agriculture, energy and infrastructure.
To engage Uppsala’s community, the MO spearheaded a project involving the private and public sector called Uppsala Klimate Protocol. This project began in 2010 with 33 members, including companies, universities and public companies. Overall, all members had reduced their emission by at least twice the target (Source: Uppsala Climate City Report 2018). One of the tools used is a software called CDP developed by ICLEI, a global network for sustainable urban development. During email correspondence, Stadium Organisation mentions that they follow the Nordic Swan certification program (including reducing consumption and waste), which they then
use to report to MO via CDP. Furthermore, Accommodation organisations are utilising ‘Klimat Smart Mat’, which is a similar software that communicates their emission results to MO (discussed further in the next section of results). Stadium organisation is directly owned and managed by the MO and Uppsala Convention Bureau. Representatives from both the MO and Stadium organisation stated that this system of communication was effective and produced results.
Although this innovative project sounds progressive, the question remains why there are no members of smaller businesses, such as tour guides. I asked this question to the participants from a smaller business background. One of my interviewees who owns a small touring company explained that the MO has specifically targeted larger organizations that have the resources to use the application.
‘We the smaller business owners were not so involved in ‘Klimate protokol’ since we are a smaller part of the tourism industry. But they had panel meetings where we can get
information and talk about our concerns.’ (Quote from local tour guide)
One of the most successful programs in Klimate Protokol was transportation. The representative of DMO mentions that the transport sector of the MO is on track to achieve the targets of Agenda Fossil Free 2030 and Zero Emission 2050. As previously discussed Uppsala is located only 38 minutes by train from Stockholm and 18 minutes from Arlanda. Both have reasonable frequencies of at least twice every hour (Source: UL website). Furthermore, there is bike parking at central places such as the central station. Also DMO supported the transport sector by posting a Bike map of the city and links to the bus schedule; although it is only in Swedish. Moreover, public transport is reasonably frequent. There are two types of buses, one of them travel within city limits and outside. Most stops downtown have a real-time bus arrival displayed on screen. Buses are fueled by Uppsala’s own biogas. According to a representative of DMO, the accessibility of public transportation around Uppsala city and availability of bike
parking has reduced the car traffic and in turn, emissions. The transport sector had inspired many organisations in the coalition and taken the local community’s feedback into consideration.
‘The sound collaboration within the MO itself was essential to their success...the sustainability team and the transport sector were open to suggestions and involved anyone who
could help them.’ (Quote from DMO official)
II. Public and Private organisation relationships within Uppsala city
Generally, there were positive responses from most organisations towards the MO and DMO. Organisations such as the Accommodation Organisation, felt that the Uppsala convention bureau and DMO were helpful in their corporate social responsibility programs, especially through the Klimate Protokol. Due to lack of responses, I could not determine if tourism companies outside this coalition share the same opinion.
Despite these optimistic outcomes, there have been complaints from a few private organisations about marketing communications with the DMO. In the leisure tourism section, DMO is the medium organisation between MO and private stakeholders (especially the attractions and private guides). Mostly they are the first point of contact to tourists and source of information. As Figure 1 shows all stakeholders except few exceptions have a relationship with them. To the companies with direct contact to tourists, the DMO supplies information online, marketing material (e.g. maps and brochures) and manages the new info point system. The info point is a strategic brochure booth around the city with tourist support material. This replaced the tourist office which closed down in 2017. The official reason is due to too little visitors (less 40,000 in 2017). This decision was done prior to communication with all the tourism stakeholders. According to one of the tour guide companies, there were panels to discuss this decision after it was closed.
‘The DMO and MO organizes about 30 meetings a year for tourism organisations. The smaller businesses like us and some of the university’s attractions were there and we were all outraged. We have been receiving so many complaints from tourists about the lack of clear information...We had incidents of whole tours getting lost...The info points were not a good strategy and the tourist office was better…but we knew it was because of budget problems.’
(Quote from one of the attractions manager)
This is especially the case with less technology friendly individuals who prefer to speak to actual persons.. The information points had materials mostly in Swedish, some English and rarely German. A Museum 1 speaker mentioned that they monitor their brochures and maintain a good order with their brochures. However that is not the case with places such as the library, which is hidden in a corner and has little to no updated material (see Figure 2). A representative from the library stated that they receive little to no communication with DMO or other attractions. Their job was to simply keep the stand there and assist the tourists to locate it. They said they had numerous complaints from foreign tourists being lost.
Figure 2: Map displayed at the central train station. Info point is not updated with most recent locations. ® Helina Betre
Furthermore, tour guides have stated that the difference days and opening times has affected the quality of their tours as well as the overall tourist experience. During the interviewees I visited each info point stations and key visitor information areas and noted the available brochures and recorded what the host felt. One of the info point locations has changed from the library to the downtown train station. Almost all info points did not have the updated maps and still had the address of the old tourist office. Representatives from Stadium organisation and Museum 2 had front staff that experienced frustrated visitors. As front desk employees, they are not allowed to answer ‘I don’t know’ to a guest. This has created major distractions from their jobs.
Figure 3: Info points at (from the left) museum 1, library and stadium organisation. ® Helina Betre
Although the DMO stated they cannot change the info point availability, they decided to create a more ‘efficient’ information tool in form of an app. This includes a trip planner and special artificial intelligence (AI) feature that will recommend the visitor places depending on their interests. For tourists who wish to speak to tourist officers, this would be difficult. This is due to limited hours of mobile info point personnel and DMO phone line . Mobile point is only available on weekdays at central station, church organisation and Stora Torget; DMO is not available on Sundays. One of the tour guides explains that leisure tourists visit on weekends and the lack of personnel is frustrating.
Although most attractions are maintaining a free entrance for most visitors, their biggest challenge is how to grow visitor numbers. To do this, they relied on the DMO website to post their upcoming events. One of the major attractions is the church organisation and they especially relied on this site. However a representative from there had expressed that the DMO will no longer allow this.
‘It creates quite a distrust between us and DMO because they are not helping us like they should. It was so important for us to have a central website for attractions to reach our target
audience’. (Quote from church tour official)
University library had a similar story. One of the representatives explained that they have been closed due to renovation for over a year. Although they advertised this on their website, the majority of their visitors visit the DMO website. ‘We asked before to have an update on the DMO website, but there is no one to take initiative. Our most popular exhibition was ‘the Silver bible’ and many tourists did not know we were closed. They were very disappointed.’ The DMO maintains that they will hire more personnel to market the destination. The result of this promise remains to be seen.
III. Collaboration within Uppsala region
Tourism around Uppsala county has created some tourist sharing via Museum 4 and natural trails. However, there is even more opportunity to extend tourism through more partnerships. During one of the interviews, a RGO representative said the hardest task in collaboration is to increase tourist traffic in the rural areas.
‘There is a lot of potential to expand tourism outside Uppsala city. At the moment there are unique attractions, other than the (museum 4). At the moment we do not have the resources
nor a way to attract investors...it would be good if we get more collaboration with the city.’
(Official from RGO)
Despite these circumstances, the MO and DMO are more inclined to collaborate with other regions of similar attraction. Although this is not public knowledge, one of the projects initiated include partnership with Småland and Linneaus university. Carl Linneaus, a prominent Swedish Botanist, was born in Småland and attended one of the universities in Uppsala. Hence,
this project intends to create a special tour on Linneaus and register both regions as UNESCO heritage site.
Discussion
This project impresses the multi-layered nature of stakeholder relationships in destinations. What the case of Uppsala shows us is how more complex and interchangeable are sustainability issues. To monitor the sustainability of a large city could mean more unaccounted variables. For example, the software that monitors energy and waste does not consider other factors such as human error and measurements limitations (Warren and Becken, 2017). Also, Uppsala seems less of a close system than places such as islands.
Relating back to Gary’s Collaboration theory, projects such as Uppsala Klimate Protocol have successfully been planned and implemented. There is a clear evolution and adaptation happening with regular congregations taking feedback and resolving actor’s complaints.
However, the issue with the visitor sector is the collaborative relationship management. With thematic analysis, the major themes from the interviews with attractions were communication, trust and commitment. As discussed previously, most organisations felt that MO and DMO are doing well in the following: regular congregation, monitoring results, addressing concerns and fair decisions. However for those groups that felt left out and unheard, decisions from certain groups were not valued more than others. This contradicts Selin (1999) findings that all relevant decision makers must have equal weighing in decisions. Despite this argument, the MO may be facing funding issues, although not confirmed. Therefore there needs to be a more assertive bridging organization that can directly address the needs of tour guides and improve the marketing material.
Selin (1999) recommends that destinations need to evolve their organizational operation to accommodate new innovations and solutions. IA app is also contradicting the market segment Visit Sweden and DMO is targeting abroad, such as Double-Income-No-Kids (DINKs) and
Wealthy-healthy-old-people (WHOPs) from the UK and Germany (Visit Sweden Strategy Report 2019; DMO Strategy 2018). For the WHOPs, they may prefer less technology and more personal contact. Although DMO insists that they need to keep up with the trends of digital information, they should accommodate those customers they mean to attract.
One of the sustainable development goals (number 17) is collaboration within the different industries to drive sustainable change (Liburd and Edwards, 2018). Uppsala’s tourism stakeholders have more cooperation than collaboration. Considering the case of tourist information, most of the actors are more focused on their local operations since there is less physical meeting with tourists. In case of tour guides, they have more physical contact with the tourists and much more affected by the tourist information digital transition. However, their insistence for more support in the visitor sector was less heard. This relates back to the multi-stakeholder concept that some actors have more power and say than others (Park and Kohler, 2019; Liburd and Edwards, 2018). Large businesses such as hotels have more economical value to the MICE sector, which contributes more revenue than leisure tourism.
Therefore, the MO and DMO is focusing its marketing resources on these larger players.
In conclusion, collaboration and communications are difficult to achieve in sustainable destination development. Not all feedback was considered and not all stakeholders are willing to speak their minds. Therefore, my research and findings was limited to what Uppsala’s tourism organisations can provide as data, allowing me to identify common challenges. The leisure industry needs a stronger presence and can be supported by the resource provided by the MICE sector. However, the state of collaboration all depends on the subjective matters of human behavior and driving leadership. Moreover, the theories on collaboration have limitations in themselves that collaboration is possible if all the players are equally addressed. However the reality of Uppsala city is those with economic significance have trust, commitment and communication than the others left behind.
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