Assessment & Strategic Planning

Where You Are and Where You Want To Be

The first step toward developing a sustainable tourism destination is a targeted assessment of existing and potential tourism products. Solimar utilizes its expert knowledge of the tourism industry and market in combination with local partners’ intimate knowledge of a specific place to assess the assets, capacity and potential of a tourism destination.

Solimar’s team of skilled individuals utilizes its mixture of industry and academic experience combined with partners’ local knowledge to assess a destination’s tourism assets, capacity and potential. This is achieved through a mixture of participatory assessment and market analysis. Inputs often include:

•    Supply side inventory and analysis
•    Demand side profiles (existing and potential)
•    Internal and external influences
•    Resident attitudes and profiles
•    Destination needs, issues, opportunities, and challenges

In order to maximize the potential for a successful tourism industry, Solimar helps destinations plan strategically for new development.  We believe that the key to success is a strategic plan that is owned by those who are implementing it. Therefore, we focus our efforts on participatory planning.  We facilitate local partners in the conceptualization of their vision, help them to define their goals, and outline the actions that will achieve these goals. Through assessment and strategic planning, Solimar helps local stakeholders review their tourism assets and plan for their optimal--and sustainable--use.

Olivier Messmer conducts an assessment workshop with local residents to discuss the infrastructure necessary for developing a new communitytourism product in the Dominican Republic.   Participatory planning is an essential step to assessing potential sustainable tourism development opportunities.