*2.2.2. Tourism specific models for quality awards: marks, labels, and quality certification*

Tourism quality marks are marks used for tourism products and organizations that attest the fulfillment of some quality standards. According to Foris, "Quality mark is a model of good practices for implementing and certifying the quality of tourism services, as a voluntary option of the economic operators in the field" [47]. Quality marks are awarded to those tourism establishments that apply good quality management practices and provide improved service quality standards and facilities, over the legal requirements of their specific official classification.

Awarding quality mark is usually complementary to the star ranking. The main differences between classification schemes and quality mark programs in tourism are synthesized and summarized by Foris [47]. The author underlines that quality certification in tourism can become an effective management tool, designed to develop the level of services' quality. Improving quality does not mean moving to a superior level in the star ranking system but increasing customers' satisfaction and ensuring that they receive the best services corresponding to the category of the tourism unit.

Using quality marks is an advantage for the provider of the tourism services: the quality mark and the associated label distinguish it from other similar units and may be used for promotion, marketing, and other customer targeting purposes. Awarding quality marks helps to improve the organization image and increases the customer confidence in the company's ability to consistently provide services to certain standards and adequate prices. From customer perspective, it means added value, in terms of improved facilities and service quality at their chosen establishment. As Handszuh (2004) says, "going by quality parameters and standards and subjecting tourism establishments to certification can be considered a new force driving the tourism sector into a higher level of excellence" [39].

It must be stressed that using quality marks is not a new approach in tourism. Both Forbes Travel Guide and Michelin Award have served as quality certification marks for several decades. A specific model also exists in a luxury category, "The Leading Hotels of the World" (LHW) being considered one of the most significant quality awards that meets the most exacting standards with reference to all aspects affecting guests' comfort: accommodations, cuisine and other services, facilities, and employees' behavior [58]. Other classification systems can also include quality criteria whose fulfillment is completed by quality certificates. For instance, in England, the Gold, Silver, and Breakfast Awards complement star and rosette ratings based on the AA classification scheme [59].

At present, there are wide ranges of quality marks and labels used in tourism worldwide, which have or does not have a direct link with any classification system [47, 48]. They were launched by professional associations or governmental agencies and are different in terms of reputation, criteria, and certification procedure. It is noteworthy that in the last two decades, many programs have been initiated to implement national quality brands in tourism, e.g., "Caledad Turistica" in Spain (2000), "Qualité Tourisme™" in France (2005), "Cyprus Tourism Quality" in Cyprus (2014), Quality Label for Swiss Tourism in Switzerland (1997), "Qualmark®" in New Zealand, T-QUAL Accreditation in Australia, etc. Through these actions, governments aim to achieve national competitive advantages by supporting the implementation of quality systems within tourism organizations.

The movement for simplifying and coordinating national tourism certification is most visible in the EU countries. The European Directive 2006/123/CE and the requirements of the European Parliament Report (2007) call on the European hospitality industry "to pursue its work in relation to the setting up of a European umbrella for quality management systems," "to promote labeling processes regarding tourist accommodation undertaken in the different Member States, and to promote quality models that have proven effective elsewhere (for example the 'Qualmark' in New Zealand) in order to improve visibility" [60]. In response to these directives, the European Parliament's Commission started preparatory work of the European Tourism Quality Label implementation, whose basic principles for the new label were set in 2012. There is also the possibility of extending the label to cover more than purely quality criteria, like environmental criteria, or broader criteria covering corporate social responsibility and sustainability. These actions are circumscribed to the long-term strategy launched by the European Travel Commission in February 2014, "Destination Europe 2020," which includes a set of marketing, branding, and promotion actions for Europe as a tourist destination.

#### **2.3. Quality approach in tourist destinations**

and summarized by Foris [47]. The author underlines that quality certification in tourism can become an effective management tool, designed to develop the level of services' quality. Improving quality does not mean moving to a superior level in the star ranking system but increasing customers' satisfaction and ensuring that they receive the best services corre-

Using quality marks is an advantage for the provider of the tourism services: the quality mark and the associated label distinguish it from other similar units and may be used for promotion, marketing, and other customer targeting purposes. Awarding quality marks helps to improve the organization image and increases the customer confidence in the company's ability to consistently provide services to certain standards and adequate prices. From customer perspective, it means added value, in terms of improved facilities and service quality at their chosen establishment. As Handszuh (2004) says, "going by quality parameters and standards and subjecting tourism establishments to certification can be considered a new force driving

It must be stressed that using quality marks is not a new approach in tourism. Both Forbes Travel Guide and Michelin Award have served as quality certification marks for several decades. A specific model also exists in a luxury category, "The Leading Hotels of the World" (LHW) being considered one of the most significant quality awards that meets the most exacting standards with reference to all aspects affecting guests' comfort: accommodations, cuisine and other services, facilities, and employees' behavior [58]. Other classification systems can also include quality criteria whose fulfillment is completed by quality certificates. For instance, in England, the Gold, Silver, and Breakfast Awards complement star and rosette rat-

At present, there are wide ranges of quality marks and labels used in tourism worldwide, which have or does not have a direct link with any classification system [47, 48]. They were launched by professional associations or governmental agencies and are different in terms of reputation, criteria, and certification procedure. It is noteworthy that in the last two decades, many programs have been initiated to implement national quality brands in tourism, e.g., "Caledad Turistica" in Spain (2000), "Qualité Tourisme™" in France (2005), "Cyprus Tourism Quality" in Cyprus (2014), Quality Label for Swiss Tourism in Switzerland (1997), "Qualmark®" in New Zealand, T-QUAL Accreditation in Australia, etc. Through these actions, governments aim to achieve national competitive advantages by supporting the implementation of quality

The movement for simplifying and coordinating national tourism certification is most visible in the EU countries. The European Directive 2006/123/CE and the requirements of the European Parliament Report (2007) call on the European hospitality industry "to pursue its work in relation to the setting up of a European umbrella for quality management systems," "to promote labeling processes regarding tourist accommodation undertaken in the different Member States, and to promote quality models that have proven effective elsewhere (for example the 'Qualmark' in New Zealand) in order to improve visibility" [60]. In response to these directives, the European Parliament's Commission started preparatory work of the European Tourism Quality Label implementation, whose basic principles for the new label

sponding to the category of the tourism unit.

168 Mobilities, Tourism and Travel Behavior - Contexts and Boundaries

the tourism sector into a higher level of excellence" [39].

ings based on the AA classification scheme [59].

systems within tourism organizations.

ISO 9001 and other general and specific models for quality assessment and management have been adopted in many manufacturing and service organizations, at the company level. But in tourism, this managing quality manner is not sufficient, the alternative being the extensive approach of quality at tourist destination level. This situation is explained by the fact that the quality of tourism services not only relies on internal resources and services offered by tourism providers but also depends on the features of external environment in which tourism organizations operate. In this regard, Kachniewska says that, "In the short term, the existing quality systems of individual tourism companies may increase their competitiveness. However, in the long term, lack of the ability to satisfy the needs of their customers may result in a gradual decrease in the sales of tourism products offered by these companies" [39]. Additional factors, such as quality of destination facilities and infrastructure, public transport, hospitality, security, sanitary conditions, etc., also influence the satisfaction of tourists. To be simultaneously successful in all these different areas, a global approach at the tourist destinations level is necessary.

Focusing on tourist destinations is one of the current trends within the evolution of quality management in tourism. UNWTO, through its Technical Committee on Tourism and Competitiveness (CTC), has drafted a technical/operational definition of the quality of a tourist destination: "The result of a process which implies the satisfaction of all tourism products and services needs, requirements, and expectations of the consumer at an acceptable price, in conformity with mutually accepted contractual conditions and the implicit underlying factors such as safety and security, hygiene, accessibility, communication, infrastructure, and public amenities and services. It also involves aspects of ethics, transparency and respect toward the human, natural, and cultural environment" [61]. As one can see from this definition, the quality of the tourist destination is more than customer-centered, it envisages all stakeholders: tourists, organizations that provide tourism services, the local community, and also, natural, cultural, and social environment.

In accordance with this perspective, in 2003, the European Commission launched a specific model for quality management in tourist destinations, namely integrated quality management (IQM), in order to support sustainability and quality-oriented approach in an integrated manner. Integration, in this case, has two dimensions. First of all, different from the traditional approach of integrated management systems (see Section 2.4), IQM is not organization focused: this model refers to various tourism organizations from a tourist destination and other tourism-related aspects, such as infrastructure, environmental protection, cultural heritage protection. Second, IQM aims to satisfy the needs of all interested parties: tourists/visitors, tourism service providers, local population, and community. According to Vajčnerová, IQM of tourist destination is a demarche which takes into account improving visitors' satisfaction, and it does so while seeking to improve the performances of tourism service providers, the quality of the local population life, as well the environment quality [62].

IQM implementation is a complex issue that requires developing mechanisms, structures, processes, and instruments for quality systematic management at the tourist destination level. In this regard, the determinant role lies within the management structures of the tourist destinations, known as Destination Management Organizations (DMOs). The whole demarche within IQM system is based on the logic of continuous improvement principle and supposes planning, realizing, monitoring, and improving quality as a cyclical ongoing process.

The effective functioning of IQM is not possible without a set of planning and controlling tools of the quality, including relevant indicators. For this purpose, some evaluation tools were created by the European Commission, namely QUALITEST and ETIS, aiming to help European tourist destinations become more competitive [63]. The main goals of these models are setting targets at destination level; measuring their progress over time, and by comparison with best practices (benchmarking); and assisting the public investment decisions on tourism development and management.

QUALITEST was launched in 2003 and includes an indicators system which is associated to four key objectives that IQM aims to satisfy: high level of tourism satisfaction; high level of the local tourism industry performance; higher quality of local people's lives; higher environmental quality. Applying QUALITEST is based on surveys, all criteria being represented within a specific questionnaire addressed to each group of interest, tourism companies, and tourists [64]. Applications based on QUALITEST are not numerous [62, 65, 66] and highlight the difficulties in implementing this model. For this reason, probably, another model has been developed.

ETIS (acronym from "European Tourism Indicator System for Sustainable tourist destinations") is the second European toolkit especially designed to help DMOs in the process of managing and monitoring the sustainable development of tourist destinations. It is a complete management system of a destination based on a set of sustainability indicators [67]. ETIS was launched by the European Commission in 2013 and revised in 2015–2016. In each of these phases, ETIS implementation was based on a great number of pilot studies (over 100 destinations) in order to demonstrate that ETIS implementation is feasible, both logistically and financially. Some information on these applications is published on the EC website (http://ec.europa.eu).

In the context of the ETIS implementation, a core issue is designing a decision support system (DSS) for tourist destinations management, based on Business Intelligence tools. This is a task of the DMOs, together with the selection of an appropriate set of indicators, "able to provide the most solid foundation for the decision making" [63]. According to Iunius et al., a small number of studies treat this subject, some of them being theoretical articles and fewer practical approaches [68]. The article's authors state that most of the DSS-based projects implemented in European tourist destinations are not functional. They also suggest that an innovative DSS can be developed based on "Qualité Tourisme" certification/labeling system adopted at European level. The study refers to DIMAST Project (Destination Intelligent Management for Sustainable Tourism), aiming the development of an innovative process to implement the European Tourism Indicators System for Sustainable Destinations (ETIS). Its final goal is to create an innovative information system to support decision-making of GDSS type (functional model) that should directly and actively support the participatory management of sustainable tourism development and is capable of achieving long-term competitiveness within the destination Braşov county.

In addition to the European toolkits presented above, there is a new global tool called global sustainable tourism review (GSTR), managed by a non-profit organization named "Green Destinations." GSTR was introduced in 2014 by a number of sustainable destination networks [69] in order to measure, monitor, and improve the sustainability profile of tourist destinations. GSTR is based on UNWTO destination criteria (GSTC-D, see Section 2.4.2) that is fully integrated with ETIS but is more complex. There is also an evaluation support tool, the Green Destinations platform, a database developed for contains data of more than 1000 destinations.
