It is possible to respond to the challenges imposed by modern tourism surroundings and to achieve a modern development of tourist destinations by adopting a marketing concept in hotel businesses. This has the purpose of increasing business success and attaining a synergic effect when cooperating with stakeholders in the tourist destination, but mostly the purpose is for hotel businesses and tourist boards to cooperate. In order to assess the level of implementation of the marketing concept in hotel businesses, as well as its effect on business success and the cooperation with stakeholders in the tourists destination, research was carried out among hotel businesses and tourist boards within the Croatian counties Primorje - Gorski Kotar and Istria. Furthermore, after the research results for tourist destinations located in the counties Primorje - Gorski Kotar and Istria were analysed based on quantitative and qualitative indicators for the development of tourist destinations, hotel and destination benchmarking for the selected counties was carried out. Numerous statistical methods were applied in order to prove the previously defined hypotheses. Particular emphasis was placed on analysing the marketing concept and its influence on the business success of hotel businesses, the intensity of cooperation with stakeholders and the effectiveness of cooperation with tourist boards when planning and implementing marketing activities in the tourist destination. The research has confirmed a need for intensifying the implementation of the marketing concept and it has identified the advantages and possibilities of applying the marketing concept in order to increase the business success and to better cooperate with stakeholders in the tourist destination, as well as to cooperate more efficiently with tourist boards. The results gained by this research are indicative for marketing managers of hotel businesses who are trying to improve their business, irrespective of the level to which the marketing concept has been implemented in their business. Moreover, the results of this research can be useful in everyday business for all stakeholders in the tourist destination, especially for tourist board managers, in order for them to be able to contribute to improving the quality of the tourist offer and thus respond to the modern demands of the tourism market.