International Journal of Business and Management; Vol. 14, No. 5; 2019 ISSN 1833-3850 E-ISSN 1833-8119 Published by Canadian Center of Science and Education 52 Destination Strategies to Enhance Secondary and Niche Tourism Products: Literature Review and Case Study Marco Remondino 1 1 Department of Economics (DIEC), University of Genova, Italy Correspondence: Marco Remondino, Department of Economics (DIEC), University of Genova, Italy. E-mail: marco.remondino@economia.unige.it Received: January 31, 2019 Accepted: March 10, 2019 Online Published: April 18, 2019 doi:10.5539/ijbm.v14n5p52 URL: https://doi.org/10.5539/ijbm.v14n5p52 Abstract The topic of this article is enhancing destination competitiveness, with particular interest to entrepreneurial strategies able to valorise secondary and niche attractions. A literature review reveals that, by means of cooperation, local stakeholders could increase success of mass destinations, while promoting the discovery of niche attractions, with a positive impact on the whole territory. Also, the role of DMOs is important, facilitating cooperation among between private and public stakeholders and among private companies. Destination branding strategies could be set, to define the competitive advantages of a territory, leveraging on synergies among primary and secondary attractions. The specific case study of Liguria is proposed and analysed by means of a questionnaire, spread among potential tourists, so to investigate their perceptions about both the capacity of the territory to offer secondary tourism products and the existence and effectiveness of collaborative strategies among local stakeholders. This Italian region has a tourism concentrated during summertime (bathing season), but possesses other specific features, that could differentiate the offer and potentially attract tourists also in other periods. The questionnaire, in fact, reveals that many tourists also like to explore the inland, which should therefore be further promoted. It also emerges than about 9% of tourists didn’t take advantage of secondary tourism products, not being aware of them, while about 46% believe that secondary attractions could be interesting for tourism, but are not adequately exploited, due to the lack of both strategic cooperation among local businesses and direct promotion. Keywords: destination competitiveness, enhancement strategies, niche tourism, secondary products, Liguria 1. Introduction The theme of the present study is to enhance destination competitiveness (e.g.: Crouch and Ritchie, 1999; Crouch and Ritchie, 2000; Ritchie and Crouch, 2003; Enright and Newton, 2004) and to promote destination branding (e.g. Blain et al., 2005). To be successful, destinations must ensure that the experiences they provide to visitors and their overall attractiveness are on par or better compared to other, alternative, destinations. The attraction of destinations, for tourism, usually depends on the destinations' physical (landscape), environmental (climatic conditions, ecology) and socio-cultural (art, history, religion, food) characteristics or attributes (Jafari, 1982). At the same time, local and regional cooperation and collaboration is often required, sometimes in the form of coopetition (e.g. Edgell and Haenisch, 1995; Wang and Krakover, 2008; Kylänen, M., and Rusko, 2011), to ensure a quality tourism product that can compete effectively and globally. In particular, these and other researchers highlight the growing links between tourism and cultural activities (e.g.: Van der Ark and Richards, 2006), economic development (e.g.: Kim and Chen, 2006) and joint efforts to bring out lesser-known or niche destinations (e.g. Robinson and Novelli, 2005). The role of Destination Management Organizations (DMOs) can also be very important, along with the definition and implementation of destination branding strategies (e.g. Blain et al., 2005) able to build up a complex and multifaceted image of a touristic region. Destination management means the set of actions undertaken to amalgamate all the factors of attractiveness and the elements of offer to attract tourist flows, combining in the long run the need to maximize results with the obligation to adopt sustainable behaviour (Presenza, 2008).