Tourism Value Chain Management as a Tool for Effective Tourism Destination Development The Case of Pécs ECoC 2010

Pécs, a European Capital of Culture for 2010, and generating a series of cultural events, had a unique opportunity to place itself on the map of Europe and to re-align its development strategy. To follow the ECoC project year, a specific research exercise is planned by the writer with a Tourism Value Chain Analysis [VCA] of Pécs. This study is a prologue to further research planned and which aims to describe the meaning of ‘value chain’ in the tourism sector and how multi-stakeholder participation can best be coordinated. For this, the author defines the characteristics of the tourism product for the purpose of successful marketing, synthesizing the role of tourism management organizations in general, and their process of establishment in Hungary, on the basis of an earlier own research (2007). The importance of tourism DMOs is highlighted by the special event relating to Pécs in 2010, prior to which a preparatory phase had helped to formulate a local tourism management organization. This local DMO contributed greatly to the success achieved by the ECoC project - which helped to transform the city image from that of an earlier mining-industry town into a cultural tourism destination, although other by-products of the year were less successful.