Cities around the world increasingly leverage tourism as a means to promoting economic prosperity，social progress and place branding. The role of tourism intersecting policy，business and society is recognized by cities for its complex and complementary nature of governance which calls for engaging multiple stakeholders to form strong and effective partnerships for building a sustainable tourism destination and maintaining competitive advantage. Cities must keep a balance in building prosperous and socially harmonious environments for their residents while providing tourists with authentic and unique experience. They also need to adapt to the changing global tourism markets，technological innovations and human capital development to generate enduring growth.

However，in the race to become a world tourism city，most cities have been investing in massive projects，e.g.，international airports，and convention and exhibition facilities，to improve tourism infrastructure，accessibility and capacity for appealing to differentiated market. Most cities have been also actively developing new tourism products that encapsulate the diverse attributes of the city embodied in cultural，natural assets as well as sport and special events. It is understandable that city tourism competes on the qualities of tourism infrastructure，tourism products and excellence of service provided by tourism professionals. One other dimension of city tourism as a competitive advantage also deserves more attention and discourse by cities in the world-the effective governance of tourism at the city level. It is believed that cities adopting innovative and effective governance for tourism development and management can gain advantages on competitions. These essays thus attempts to provide a framework for defining a governance model for city tourism development and generate a dialogue among cities to search for effective governance in sustainability and competitiveness of city tourism.

Due to multiple dimensions and the complexity of city functions and rich contextual variables，the challenges for city tourism development is to create a unique and unforgettable identity and experience by integrating various characteristics of the city. This complexity of city tourism therefore has to be approached and managed by the interaction of multiple stakeholders with direct and indirect interests in the city. In addition，city tourism is also characterized as complementarity since no single agency or service provider can handle the entire visit of tourists to the city. Each service provider is only one part of the city tourism value chain and contributes its share to the total experience of the tourists to the city. City tourism governance is thus about relationship management of multiple stakeholders and the effective ways they interact with and complement one another. Effective governance will clearly define who the stakeholders are，what functions and responsibilities they have，what rules are used for the interactions of the multiple stakeholders，and how the rules are implemented and evaluated（Baggio，Scott and Cooper，2010）. Therefore，different approaches in city tourism governance will affect the effectiveness in leadership and strategy for facilitating multiple stakeholder interactions and，as a result，affect the competitiveness and sustainability of city tourism（Beaumont and Dredge，2010）.

Therefore the core objectives of city tourism governance boil down to managing its sustainable growth and maintaining competitive advantage-increases in both demand and supply. This means managing the expansion of tourism where growth is sought，managing the quality of tourism where that is a priority，and managing the location of new tourism project where it strongly impacts the local population’s quality of life. This is a complicated but necessary task that has to be performed jointly by public and private sector stakeholders as well as local communities in a clearly defined governance framework.

Governance for the city as tourism destination is therefore vitally important for the success of tourism development as the institutional set-up for tourism governance varies markedly from city to city due to the differences in political and economic systems in the world，such as governance by government playing the leading role in some cities while a consensus-building approach by multiple stakeholders in others. In most cities，the basic functions of tourism management institutions，including planning，regulation，investment，marketing，training，statistics and coordination，are shared among the government，the industry associations and a number of specialized agencies.

Such coordination and interaction between different government agencies（within the same jurisdiction or across jurisdictions）and between the government and the industry are important element of city tourism governance. Effective governance at the city