Abstract
Tourism is known as a stable growth sector. If the revenues are distributed to the relevant stakeholders including the community justly and the efforts on tourism are based on a sustainable future target, this growth can be translated to development. With regard to tourism strategies, urban areas should be evaluated together with their rural areas, natural, historical and archaeological sites as well as their neighbouring cities. This means more relations between different levels of administrative structures, local governments as well as more stakeholders to take part in a proposed sustainable tourism governance strategy. In this study, detailed dynamics and interactions of different actors in tourism are analyzed in order to find out the appropriate governance model in sustainable tourism development by investigating Frig Valley, which lies in the borders of Kütahya, Afyon, Eskişehir provinces in Turkey and having a great tourism potential, as a case study. Questionnaires are prepared for the actors that have legal responsibility in terms of tourism development and the ones are assumed to be closely related with tourism development in the area to understand their planning and collaboration abilities, awareness, expectations and suggestions. This is expected to bring about the importance of urban networks and institutional partnerships in sustainable tourism development and to introduce a framework by proposing a governance model includes all stakeholders in all administrative levels and to expose the responsibilities and relations of all the actors.
