Abstract
Tourist destinations are used in coping with crises. Their exposure on several threats have reinforced them over the years and made them flexible with uncertainty. Are there any lessons that cities can take from tourist destinations? Urban tourism has increased rapidly over the years and tends to be the largest segment in total tourism activity globally. Beyond that fact, cities as multidimensional organizations would have to adopt strategies developed in the tourist destinations context in order to achieve higher level of resilience towards uncertainty. According to United Nations resilience is a system’s ability of to cope with dangers, to foreseen and get prepared and resist in disasters. It is a system’s ability to absorb consequences of disasters, to reorganize itself, in order to be able to undertake the same functions and work successfully towards its goals. Beyond that, the Butler’s diagram shows how a destination copes with phases of tourism development and how finally after a certain point and certain circumstances it rejuvenates. A destination needs continuous monitoring in order to retain and increase its competitiveness. That is more obvious when we are talking about “destinations-products” which are global champions. The term ‘World City’ can be defined in many ways. Among other features, a world class city has population of which more than one third are foreign born, it is a global financial centre, and it has excellent connectivity with the rest of the world and efficient transportation systems. A World City has to be explicitly resilient in defending its global status, focusing continuously on embedding the three Ts (Talent, Technology and Tolerance). Twenty years ago as World Cities could be defined only New York, London and in a sense Tokyo. Those cities were followed by Paris and Hong Kong. Today, a handful of cities around the globe are keen on exploiting their size and their regional predominance, in order to acquire the title of World City. Being a world city however, means that the city possesses many factors related to quality and not only scale and pace of growth. A successful global city has to attract and retain a significant sized foreign born workforce. On the other hand, mega cities which once would be characterised such as Third World Capitals are now emerging rapidly and they persistently claim international role on the highest tier. Sao Paulo, Istanbul, Shanghai, Honk Kong, Moscow, Mumbai, Singapore, Seoul compete each other so as to be established formally as the next “World City”. Most of those cities mentioned above, tend to adopt the same strategy of the creation of high end infrastructure in parallel with isolated forms of city marketing, as the organization of mega events. This paper tries to bring together the concepts of World Cities and tourist destinations. Those two separate figures of urban transformation have developed over the years common strategies in order to reassure their statuses. A tourist destination however is more oriented in order to retain year by year its appeal and be successful in gaining tourists. Furthermore, this passionate relationship of tourist destinations with marketing seem as a suitable framework for all mega cities that want to be established as global poles. Ongoing transformation of the global urban system is the footprint of the ever changing global dynamics. Research mentioned above has as its final objective, the optimization of resources’ addressing for cities which try establish themselves as global magnets.
