Domů

The National Tourism Organizations (NTOs) are key actors of destination management at national level. The complexity and professionalism of their involvement in tourism management has been growing in recent years, both in the field of the destination marketing and in terms of tourism promotion forms, support for statistics and tourism research. An important impetus and new opportunities for the development of NTO’s activities represent new technologies, especially HDR photo and video, panoramic photos, virtual reality and mobile technologies, including extended reality. These technologies change the NTO marketing (Lange-Faria & Elliot, 2012). New technologies are also part of the social media, the most dynamic element of the current NTO marketing and, more generally, the destination marketing at all geographical levels (Kiráľová & Pavlíčeka, 2015).

Retail stock-out refers to a situation where a demanded product is not available to the customer in the expected location or is not in a saleable condition (ECR Europe, 2003). Many studies conducted in the last fifty years have shown that the average stock-out rate (percentage of the unavailable products at the time of the audit or purchase) is generally constant and varies between 7% and 8% (Aastrup & Kotzab, 2010). Although extensively studied for decades (e.g. Corsten & Gruen, 2003; Fernie & Grant, 2008; Zinn & Liu, 2001), the phenomenon of stock-outs remains one of the major problems for retailers and manufacturers (Aastrup & Kotzab, 2010).

In today’s business world, the only constant is a change, so that the ability to learn, change and innovate plays an important role in business. Enterprises should actively create rules of the game and own future rather than passively react to changes (Mikoláš & Wozniaková, 2009; Merrill, 2015). Proactive behavior, seeking own way (Zelený, 2012) and creating innovator’s DNA is important (Dyer et al., 2011). Innovation and own recipe (Pearl, 2011) for its implementation is a necessary prerequisite for successful business in the highly competitive business environment. For companies’ future existence and development, innovations importance was recognized by a number of business owners and managers, who introduce changes and contribute to the creation of new trends in the business environment.

The Mediterranean is one of the main destinations for international tourism in Spain. According to the Spanish Statistics Institute (INE, 2016), more than half of international tourists staying at hotels chose the Mediterranean coastal provinces as a destination in 2015. Spain has about 3,500 km of Mediterranean coastline (INE, 2016). As shown in Fig. 1, these kilometers are distributed between the peninsular coast (2,058 km) and the archipelago of the Balearic Islands (1,428 Km). Tourism is an important economic sector on the Spanish Mediterranean coasts and it has become one of the most important sources of employment. For example, in Balearic Islands the tourism sector contributed 44.8% to the gross domestic product (GDP) and created 150,346 jobs (32.0% of total), in 2014.

Business environment is An important determinant of national competitiveness and sustainable long-term economic growth. Business environment quality determines the risk as well as returns from investment and therefore affects investment decisions. The business environment is largely, if not totally, beyond the control of the firms and their management. It results from existing political, legal and regulatory framework; macroeconomic policies; institutional infrastructure; social and cultural context within which transactions take place, the quality of physical and social infrastructure and many other factors. Empirical research has shown that corruption represents a serious obstacle to entrepreneurship and business (Kaufmann & Wei, 2000; Meon & Sekkat, 2005). Hellman et al. (2000) consider corruption, in addition to governance quality and state capture, a factor that significantly shapes business environment in transition countries.