This paper suggests that property regimes determine destination structures; and compares – positioning them in an analytic framework – two destination models based on a different allocation of property rights, arguing that both may be considered unsustainable. It then proposes a third model founded on an altogether different institutional regime, intellectual property, claiming that it could be considered superior to the previous two. In Creative Tourism Districts participation in tourism development is favoured and at the same time competition among a heterogeneous network of producers of culture-based goods and services is prevented from become destructive of place and product. Though the various points of this argument are illustrated by means of real-world examples, this is a purely conceptual paper.