A modified nine‐quadrant importance–performance analysis is employed to assess the importance which Slovenian and Serbian tourism industry stakeholders attach to 48 nominated strategic activities to promote business and destination competitiveness. An important finding is that respondents in each country allocated the bulk of activities to the ‘keep up the good work’ strategy. In both destinations, this strategy was dominated by activities related to product development and innovation. The paper concludes with a discussion of how the identified priority activities require close examination to determine their ‘enabling conditions’ and the implications of an action based on them. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.