A tourism destination requires two conditions for its birth: i) the existence of a “point of interest”, that is, natural, cultural or historical resources; ii) the supply of a variety of local goods complementary to hospitality; and a condition for its sustainability in the long run: tourism receipts have to be greater than a minimum threshold which is the opportunity cost of other development strategies. This paper introduces and discusses a two-stage model for the tourism destination, thus identifying the optimal degree of sophistication of the tourism product and the optimal institutional arrangement in terms of price coordination. This approach allows to introduce a simple taxonomy for the observed diversity of real-world destinations, thus overcoming the limits of the existing literature.