Strategy and strategic planning of tourist amd sport events

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Strategy is a form of preparation of decisions in the organization, which determines goals, development policies, and plans for achieving these goals. This pattern of behavior when making strategic decisions seeks to ensure the effectiveness of organizations in the long term to the greatest extent possible and touches the essence of its existence. It provides the optimal efficiency of available resources to achieve the set goals (Raletić, et al., 2015). The strategy contains fundamental characteristics and reflects the desired image of the organization, by which it systematically creates and manifests a recognizable individuality, in the environment in which it operates (Andrews, 1971).

The strategy also represents the process of determining the basic long-term goals of the organization by adjusting the direction of business activities, that is, by determining the concept and selection of resources necessary to achieve the set goals.

Setting the organization's strategy is possible from two key starting points, considering the final expected result of the analysis. Strategy can be viewed as an expected answer to the question of what the organization wants to achieve in the future, i.e. planning the results of the use of today's available resources in the future, or as an analysis of current activities and results regardless of the existence of previously planned activities in the respective field of work (Mašić, 2021; Ratković, 2023).

The first approach envisages strategy as a program for defining and realizing the organization's goals and implementing its tasks. Program, in the previous definition, means the active, conscious, and rational role played by managers in formulating the organization's strategy.

According to another approach, strategy is a model of the organization's response to changes and events in the environment in which it is active over time (Cvijanović, et al., 2023). It is possible to conclude that even if a company or organization does not have a formal strategic document, any pre-planned activity, as a reaction to changes in the environment, although not mandatory, will not prove to be effective in the end. This aspect of strategy includes, most often, those companies whose managers have reactive behavior, that is, those that react and adapt to the environment in accordance with needs.

Regardless of the approach to defining the term itself and its scope, the strategy helps to determine precise goals in the management of all types of organized entities and provides a coherent, integrated pattern of decision-making, which tells what should be done in the given circumstances in order to achieve the set goals.

The strategy, therefore, represents (McKiernan, 1996):

• •    how to collect resources, skills, knowledge, energy, time, people, decisions and methods and how to use them to achieve goals,

• •    a coherent, unifying and interactive basis for decision-making,

• •    an expression of the organization's intentions,

• •    clearly defined tasks for managers,

• •    the purpose of acting through long-term goals, action programs and defining priorities for the distribution of financial resources,

• •    responses to opportunities, threats, strengths and weaknesses,

• •    a collection of potentially useful programs and projects,

• •    a mechanism for investing funds to increase opportunities and improve work,

• •    an action plan that is tactically implemented to achieve goals.

Strategic planning

The process of clear and comprehensive strategy formulation in companies is called strategic planning. If, in addition to planning, the implementation and monitoring of the results of business decisions are included, the established name for that doctrine is strategic management, today an almost indispensable approach to business management, but also other forms of formal and informal organization.

Strategic planning, as well as the process of creating a company's strategy, differs from ordinary planning activities (Turčinović, 2021). There are five main pillars on which this distinction is based:

• 1.    Time horizon - The word strategy is used to describe activities that span a longer time horizon, and refers to the time required to implement these activities and observe their impact.

• 2.    Impact - The consequences of implementing a certain strategy have to be obvious, neither in the short term nor in the long term, but there is a whole series of measurable factors that show different intensity of direct and indirect impacts of a certain strategy. On the company itself and the environment.

• 3.    Concept of effort - An effective strategy usually involves a strong concentration of activity, effort, or attention on a very narrow area of action. Focusing on selected high-intensity activities implicitly reduces available resources for other activities.

• 4.    Decision-making model - Defining a strategy requires a series of certain types of decisions, during its implementation, which must be in synergy, support each other, and follow a consistent model.

• 5.    Penetration - The strategy includes the process of planning, implementation, and monitoring of a wide range of activities: from the analysis of existing capacities and available resources, through their combination, i.e. deployment, all the way to the monitoring of daily operations. A wide range of activities, at all levels, are key to the realization of the defined strategy, so that they support all levels of the company's organization, which work together to strengthen, grow, develop, and realize the company's profits.

These five characteristics clearly show that the organization's strategy is the central node around which the main organizational activities move.

Importance of strategic planning

Planning is a formal activity designed to achieve predefined, desired future situations and, given the combination of available resources and a range of possible specific contingencies, involves a system of integrated decisions. In companies and some other organized entities, strategic planning is a continuous and systematic process in which people make decisions about desired future outcomes, how to achieve them, how to measure the achievement of results, and how to evaluate success in achieving set goals. In addition to planning resources and defining possible risks, planning also includes procedures for making key business/development decisions and activities for their implementation, all with a focus on the future.

Most organizations, regardless of whether they are focused on making a profit or performing some other business without making a profit, today recognize the importance of strategic planning for the long-term growth and well-being of the company or e.g. non-profit organization(Ratković, et al., 2023; Mihić, et al., 2023). Managers have determined that by precisely defining and spreading the message with the mission of their organizations, they can better direct the direction of the organization's development, familiarize employees with the meaning of their daily work, and inform users of the company's services/products about what they can expect from the company in the future. The result of the company's quality preparation through strategic planning is, ultimately, an increase in the efficiency of its work, satisfied and motivated employees, and a faster and more ready response to changes in the environment (Hunger, Wheelen, 1995).

The importance of strategic planning in company management is immeasurable. It enables managers to prepare for the changing environment in which their organizations operate. Today, events are changing too quickly for managers' experience to be the only reliable guide, so they are forced to develop new strategies that respond to possible problems and opportunities in the future.

The main drawback of strategic planning is the obvious danger that it becomes an end in itself. The creation of large teams of planners and detailed analysis of a series of future activities can cause a loss of active communication and contact with the company's parent business, business environment, and consumers. Some organizations overinvested in consultants, planners, and sophisticated models, as well as business planning and monitoring programs, which ultimately led to negative effects on business results. Namely, development planners and programmers intensified activities for ideal conditions in the environment, and negatively affected the selfinitiative and power of operational managers, limiting the active influence of impulses from the market on the company's operations. Therefore, for optimal company management, it is crucial to align strategic plans and concepts with real business needs.

An additional limitation of strategic planning is the assumption of theoretically optimal development solutions, that is, in emphasizing the most rational and less risky options. The reason for this is mainly in the detailed analysis of the planning process and the avoidance of attractive opportunities that imply a high degree of uncertainty, complex to analyze and convey through strategic plans.

The main reason why strategic planning has not fully confirmed its effectiveness in practice is, first of all, its insufficient integration into the entire management process in the organization, i.e. insufficient involvement of strategic planning in certain parts of management: organizational structure, evaluation, rewards, motivation, and control systems. A common characteristic of almost all criticisms of the concept of strategic planning, in the second half of the 1970s and during the 1980s, was based on emphasizing the fact that the time of stability of the business environment, which allowed companies to develop centralized power, had passed, with extensive planning apparatuses within the organization, as well as lowering the responsibility and rights for strategic management to a lower level of operational management, which receives direct impulses from the management environment of the organization. In addition to the strategic direction of the organization, for which top management is responsible, middle management should also be enabled to, starting from monitoring the changes occurring in the environment, try to adapt the entire organization to those changes in the most suitable conditions (Weihrich, Koontz, 1998).

Contemporary management theorists believe that management strategy is a creative act by which the company adapts to each individual situation through the so-called approach to business policy.

Defining the strategic management

Strategic management, a modern managerial tool, grew during the development of the basic managerial function, and planning, and can certainly contribute to the development of the competitive ability of any company. Planning, as a thought process, is a necessary component of any work process, because it bridges the gap between what the organization is now and what it wants to be in the future.

Strategic management can be defined as the art and science of formulating, implementing and finally evaluating functionally intertwined decisions and activities, which enable an organization or other body to achieve its own goals. Strategic management is focused mainly on integrated management through marketing, finance, accounting, production, research and development, and information systems in order to achieve overall organizational success. In addition to enabling organizations to avoid financial difficulties, strategic management offers other tangible or tangible benefits, such as increased awareness of external threats, understanding of competitive strategies, increased worker productivity, reduced resistance to change, and a clearer understanding of the relationship between what has been done and what is to be done.

Strategic management increases the organization's ability to act preventively because it promotes interaction between manager’s at all vertical, horizontal, and functional levels, and creates a basis for identifying and rationalizing the need for change for all managers and employees in the organization. That is, it helps them to recognize and accept changes in the organization and environment as an opportunity and not as a threat.

Basically, all modern companies and organizations have a strategy, regardless of whether it is clearly defined, informal, unstructured sporadic, or just a guiding idea in the minds of entrepreneurs. In other words, all organizations are moving towards something, but, unfortunately, some do not know where. Given the old saying that if you don't know where you are going, every road leads you there, there is a clear need to use the concept of strategic management and its techniques in identifying a successful path to achieve a previously recognized and assessed goal (Heracleous, (2003).

Strategic management, on the way from theory to daily applicable skills, has also become a business function in the company. This change occurred as a consequence, because in the second half of the 20th century, with the growth of globalization, the opening of international markets, and the growth of international companies, which operated in an increasingly large market, more and more were involved in the decision-making process. The action of numerous, different external factors could no longer be ignored in business. The environment in which companies are located has become more complex, dynamic, and uncertain, so its impact on the survival and competitive ability of companies has been increasingly important. Organizations tried to act proactively, to strive for influence, anticipation, and initiative, and not just to respond to the change that had already occurred, which was largely made possible by strategic management. There have been obvious changes in the decision-making approach of a logical, systematic, and objective process for determining the future of any organization. Successful strategists think carefully about their business, where they are with it, and what they want to be as an organization, and then design programs, projects, and actions to get them from where they are to where they want to be, within a predetermined time frame (Porter, M. (1980).

There are interpretations that strategy is the link between a company/or any type of organization/and its/external environment. The external environment of the organization includes a whole range of economic, social, political, and technological factors that influence decisions within the organization and its results. The most important factors from the environment are mostly those that are in the closest environment of the organization's activities and directly affect it. If it is a business, these factors are related to relationships with customers, suppliers, and competitors.

The basic task of the strategy is to determine the optimal use of the resources of the organization and agents, in the narrower and wider environment, in order to achieve long-term goals, mainly those of growth and development.

Process of strategic management

External environmental variables form the context in which a company exists and can be general forces and trends in the overall social environment or specific factors operating in the organization's specific task environment – often referred to as its industry. Internal environmental variables form the context in which a company's work takes place and include organizational structure, culture, and resources that a company can use to achieve competitive advantage.

The second step in the strategic management process is setting the organizational direction or determining the direction of the organization, which consists of the company's vision, mission, and goals. The vision answers the question of what the company wants to achieve in the future and is therefore the driver of the energy of the employees in a certain direction. It helps the management to see the position of the company in the future and to start preparing for that future now. The mission includes the company's philosophy on how to do business and treat employees. It defines a core, unique purpose that positions a business in relation to other similar businesses and identifies the scope of its business in terms of the products (including services) offered and the markets it serves.

By achieving goals, the company achieves its mission. They are the final results of the planned activities and show what the company should achieve, to what extent, and when it should achieve it. Some of the areas in which a company can establish its goals are profitability (net profit), efficiency (low costs, etc.), and growth (growth of total assets, sales, etc.).

Strategy formulation is the process of developing long-term plans for effectively managing opportunities and threats from the environment, taking into account the company's strengths and weaknesses. It includes developing adequate strategies and setting policy guidelines for the implementation of the chosen strategy. It forms a comprehensive master plan designed to realize its vision, mission, and goals. A company typically considers three types of strategy—corporate, business, and functional. Corporate strategy describes the company's overall direction in terms of its general attitude toward growth and management of its various businesses and product lines. Three main categories of corporate strategy are usually distinguished -stable, growing, and digressive.

Business strategy typically focuses on the business unit or product level and considers improving the competitive position of a company's product or service in a particular industry or market segment served by the business unit. Business strategies can appear in the form of two categories - competitive strategies or cooperative strategies.

A functional strategy is an approach that takes the area of function to achieve the goals of companies and business units as well as to achieve their strategies by maximizing the productivity of resources. It refers to the development and nurturing of distinctive competencies in order to ensure the competitive advantage of the company and business unit.

Strategy implementation is the process by which strategies and policies are put into action through the development of programs, budgets, procedures, and rules. By implementing the strategy, the management must have a clear idea about certain different issues such as:

• •    what changes are necessary for the organization when the new strategy is implemented

• •    how best to master the organizational culture to ensure that the strategy is smoothly implemented indirectly

• •    how strategy implementation and different types of organizational structure are related

• •    what different implementation approaches managers can follow

• •    what are the manager's skills necessary to help him in the successful implementation of the strategy

Strategic control and evaluation represent a special type of organizational control aimed at monitoring and evaluating the strategic management process to ensure its full functionality and further improvement. This is achieved by monitoring current performance and comparing it with established standards to determine possible deviations and their causes and take measures to eliminate these deviations. Although control and evaluation are the final phases of strategic management, they can accurately determine weaknesses in the previous phases and thus influence their elimination in the new cycle of strategic management.

Feedback is an informative input for each previous stage in the strategic management process that shows whether the activities of the next stage are taking place as planned. The information obtained in this way serves to evaluate the process and take corrective measures. Feedback plays a key role in strategic management, and the knowledge gained through it should not be neglected.

Strategy as an instrument of tourism and sports event development

Considering the high average annual growth rates, it can be said that modern tourism represents an economic branch that achieves constant growth and increasing economic importance. Modern tourist demand is directly influenced by all the changes that are taking place in the tourist market today. Competition in the tourist market has recently become increasingly fierce, not only among the countries of one region but also among regions on a global level. An increasing number of existing and new destinations are fighting for tourists.

Tourism represents a complex system that establishes numerous connections with the overall economic and social environment. Tourism is an area that is difficult to manage without a specially developed development strategy, that's why all countries adopt special tourism development strategies. This strategically determines the position of tourism as a special system or sector within the national economy. The plan is realized by taking appropriate actions. The choice of actions depends on the concept of tourism development and the behavior of the actors. In this interdependence of action and reaction, there is also the answer to the question of whether the intended actions or development strategy can achieve the goal and at what cost. The choice of actions that are likely to achieve the goals is an important issue of any development strategy.

By strategic management of a tourist destination, we mean the choice of the appropriate path by which the tourist destination should secure a competitive position in the tourist market in the long term, as well as a plan of action based on anticipated conditions in the environment, all to adapt to market conditions and achieve defined business goals (Dulčić, 2001).

The tourism development strategy valorizes (Hall, 2008):

• •    National and international environment, i.e. development impulses that influence the development of tourism,

• •    Ways to achieve efficient use of the resource base for tourism development,

• •    instruments that are suitable for managing the tourism system, achieving the set goals, and adapting the system to the challenges it is exposed to in the process of functioning, and

• •    Possibilities of tourism to contribute to the achievement of national development goals.

The tourism development strategy can be defined as a program, that is, a set of different activities aimed at adapting tourism to the conditions in the environment and criteria for the efficient use of development resources, with the aim that the

development of tourism makes an optimal contribution to the achievement of national development goals.

The tourism development strategy is realized by undertaking appropriate actions. The choice of actions depends on the concept of tourism development and the behavior of actors, that is, on the way the economy functions. In this interdependence of action and reaction, lies the secret of whether the intended actions or development strategy can achieve the goal and at what cost. The choice of actions likely to achieve the goals is an important issue of any development strategy.

The tourism development strategy, like any other strategy, starts from certain assumptions about the behavior of actors and the functioning of the system that is intended to be managed. Therefore, the strategy should be seen as a unity of assumptions and a program of actions. Scientific knowledge allows us to shape strategies that can be realized in specific conditions. Therefore, scientific analyses are primarily focused on checking the reality and truthfulness of the assumptions on which the strategy or program of actions is built, as well as the reality of the goals and ways to achieve them. Strategies can be defined for the realization of development goals, but also for changing a certain concept of development. These are strategies with two completely different ultimate goals. Applied to tourism, in the first case it is about the strategy of tourism development for given, concrete conditions, and in the second case about the strategy of encouraging changes in the very conditions of development, that is, the concept of tourism development. In practice, these approaches are often intertwined (Čerović, 2002).

The choice of tourism development strategy means the choice of goals actions and instruments that will achieve the strategic goals. In the real development process, the strategic goals of tourism development can be achieved with different actions. Therefore, the problem of tourism development is considered a problem of choice, first of all, the goals, and then the actions that will be taken to achieve those goals and the instruments of action on the behavior of actors. The tourism development strategy is a guiding document, both for economic entities and for development policy. It refers to areas in which development policy should develop instruments and actions that will direct behavior and development by strategic goals (Hodgson, 1987).

Sports tourism is a very important component of modern tourism. As a form of travel, sports tourism includes two categories (Page, Hall, (2003) :

• •    travel to participate in sports and

• •    traveling to watch sports.

Sports tourism can be defined as travel for non-commercial reasons, to participate in sports activities, or to observe sports events outside the residence. An important dimension of sports tourism is the development of sports infrastructure and the use of sports events to promote the tourist destination.

Two types of tourists who travel to participate in sports activities can be identified. The first are active participants who pursue sports as a form of free time in which they develop and express their abilities and knowledge and thus enrich themselves. Others are hobbyists, very competitive, and can be described as gamers. Players are amateurs whose participation in sports activities is continuous and systematic and whose goal is to acquire and maintain knowledge and skills, enabling the individual to experience unusual rewards from effort and effort.

However, the number of people who travel to participate in sports activities, although very significant for some smaller tourist destinations, is much smaller than those who travel to watch sports events. Spot plays an important role in motivating and attracting tourists.

The economic importance of sports events for the tourism industry is enormous. Sporting events, from the Olympics to minor league games, can have a major impact on the regional economy and the prestige and image of a destination.

Short-term attractions or significant tourist events, designated as mega-events, are large festivals, exhibitions, and cultural and sports events held regularly or occasionally. Significant events have a key role in the international, national, or regional tourism marketing strategy, their primary function is to provide an opportunity for the community to ensure presence and stand out in the tourism market at least for a short, defined time.

Significant events differ in their appeal from the attractions usually promoted by the tourism industry in that they are not continuous or seasonal occurrences. Indeed, in many cases, major events are a strategic response to the problems that seasonal variations create for the tourism industry. The ability of an event to achieve this goal depends on its uniqueness, the status of the event, and the extent to which it can be marketed within the tourism region. Events can help create a positive image and influence people's awareness of a destination through media presence.

Sport Tourism also has non-economic impacts in terms of the locality, community and the national economy in various ways. Events-based Sports Tourism may also enhance social inclusion in the wider, non-sporting community due to the legacy impact of major events on all citizens and, in particular, on the young. Measuring the size of the Sports Tourism market and its economic value is subjective due to the difficulties in accurately measuring the impact of Sports Tourism. Tourism statistics are not sufficiently disaggregated to provide for an accurate measurement of the economic benefit of Sports Tourism to the economy since they generally do not distinguish between sport, general tourism and recreation more generally (Dašić, Gavrilović, 2023).

Conclusion

Most organizations today recognize the importance of strategic planning for longterm organizational growth. The importance of strategic planning in management is immeasurable. It enables managers to prepare for the changing environment in which their organizations operate. Today, events change too quickly for managers' experience to be the only reliable guide, so they are forced to develop new strategies that respond to possible problems and opportunities in the future.

Strategic management increases the organization's ability to act preventively because it encourages interaction between managers at all vertical, horizontal, and functional levels and creates the basis for identifying and rationalizing the need for changes for all managers and employees in the organization. That is, it helps them to recognize and accept changes in the organization and environment as an opportunity and not as a threat.

Sport Tourism has become a tourism industry with very significant developments around the world. The multi-multiplier impact of implementing sports tourism is in the form of economic improvement, infrastructure improvement, promotion of tourist destinations, and development of potential tourist attractions.