Tourism: How Effective Management Makes the Difference

Roger Doswell

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2009
• eBook ISBN: 9781136352645
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Hospitality, Travel & Tourism Industry
• Index: Business

Tourism: How effective management makes the difference builds tourism's components and impacts into a total framework showing how it should be made subject to an overall planning and management process. This is an essential guide which also explains effective management in relation to current trends in tourism. It incorporates extensive coverage of the characteristics of tourism, making it ideally suited for those studying tourism, travel and business studies. Individual managers and policy decision makers will also find that this book addresses vital management issues and provides practical help. It covers both public and private sectors and shows how they can be brought together as a cohesive whole. It examines the functions of management, from planning to the monitoring of performance and results. Coverage of the crucial aspects of tourism management also includes economics, politics and government action, the environment, cultural influences, marketing, physical planning, human resources development and public awareness. Roger Doswell, formerly a lecturer and Kobler research fellow of University of Surrey, is a leading expert on tourism and has written or co-written ten books on the subject. During a long career he has travelled the world for many international organisations as a tourism development consultant.

Part One The Background to Tourism Management

1 Tourism–definitions, concepts and policies

DOI: 10.4324/9780080519463-1

This chapter introduces the history of tourism, and analyses the underlying reasons for the sector’s rapid growth. It goes on to discuss definitions of the sector, its structure and its division into three different levels. It looks at tourism in the context of national planning, and then examines tourism statistics and internationally recognized concepts and definitions. It discusses some of tourism’s distinctive aspects: spontaneity; remembrance; the tourism patrimony; the matching of product components; product perishability; carrying capacity; product changeability; the competition for space; the fixity of operating costs; and the seasonality of demand. It then goes on to describe how to structure the tourism planning process, and concludes with an example of a typical tourism policy statement.

The history of tourism

Wide-scale temporary travel away from home is a relatively new phenomenon. In the past few people enjoyed leisure time. For ordinary people any time off was usually for religious reasons. For holy days – hence the word holidays. Early travel was often confined to pilgrimages. Later, as the spas developed, people travelled for health. With the Age of Reason, they started travelling for culture. As a result the famous Grand Tour became popular.

As the social and economic development of countries accelerated (principally in Europe and North America), so wage levels and working conditions improved. Gradually people were given more time off. At the same time forms of transport improved and it became faster and cheaper to get to places. England’s industrial revolution led to many of these changes. Railways, in the nineteenth century, opened up now famous seaside resorts such as Blackpool and Brighton.

With the railways came large and palatial hotels. In Canada, for example, the new coast-to-coast railway system prompted the building of such famous hotels as Banff Springs and Chateau Lake Louise in the Rockies.

During the first half of this century, the moneyed classes started to travel more widely. The advent of air transport opened up more of the world and stimulated tourism growth. However, the opportunities for holiday making for ordinary people were still limited in scope. For most people, in developing countries, the chances to travel are still limited.

Tourism exploded in the developed countries after the Second World War. Prosperity, more discretionary income, cheaper and better transport, and more time off, brought new marketing opportunities. Tour operators started up and responded to the demand. The ‘package’ tour developed along with charter air transport. Mass international tourism surged. The great sprawling urban developments of the Mediterranean coastline began to take shape. Other parts of the world started to follow these same patterns of development.

Holidays continue to lengthen while transportation systems develop and become cheaper in real terms. More countries become relatively prosperous, starting to generate substantial flows of outbound tourists. Domestic tourism also expands and many people now take more than one holiday.

New destinations continue to emerge and tourism has become the world’s largest industry. The World Travel and Tourism Council estimates that, in 1994, it generated US$3.4 trillion in revenues, created 204 million jobs (one in every nine), and accounted for just over 10 per cent of world gross domestic product (WTTC, 1994).

The growth of tourism

According to the World Tourism Organisation’s (WTO) forecast of trends to the year 2000 and beyond, there will be close to 650 million international tourist arrivals by the turn of the century. By comparison, the population of the world in the year 1000 was only 500 million.

International tourism rose to 500 million arrivals in 1993, despite a world economic recession. International tourism receipts rose to US$304 billion. These receipts represented 8 per cent of total merchandise exports and 30 per cent of exports of services. Tourism ranked first among world exports of goods and services, ahead of oil, motor vehicles and electronic equipment. According to WTO forecasts, world tourist arrivals will increase by 3.8 per cent a year taking the 1990s as a whole, and slightly above 3.5 per cent a year in the first decade of the 21st century (WTO, 1994).

In 1993 almost 90 per cent of the world’s travellers did not cross an international frontier. Domestic tourism, the WTO estimates, probably represents between 80 and 90 per cent of total world tourist demand. It points out that in the USA over one billion trips are made away from home each year.

Two major factors have tended to characterize international tourism. First, most of it has been both generated and received by developed countries – the better off going to visit the better off. In 1960 over 96 per cent of world arrivals were in Europe and the Americas. In 1993 the figure was still very high at about 80 per cent.

Second, most tourism has been concentrated within the immediate regions of the developed countries. Generally the closer countries are to each other, the more movement there is between them. Intraregional tourism is still the major driving force in tourism growth.

The travel account

Earnings from international tourism represent an invisible export; they are the result of selling the country’s tourism product to tourists from abroad. Expenditures on tourism are the opposite. They represent an invisible import; one’s residents are buying a tourism product elsewhere.

What is earned and what is spent are reconciled in the country’s travel account. Countries in the north tend to have a negative balance. Countries to the south, accessible from major markets, are likely to have a positive balance.

It is not strictly fair to compare tourism earnings and expenditures in this way. If a country reports a deficit, it may appear that it is not managing its tourism well. The reverse may be true. It could be doing exceptionally well with only a few resources.

Defining tourism

In March 1993 the United Nations Statistical Commission adopted a set of recommendations on tourism statistics prepared by the World Tourism Organisation (WTO).

Tourism is defined as comprising ‘the activities of persons travelling to and staying in places outside their usual environment for not more than one consecutive year for leisure, business and other purposes’.

This definition is oriented to the demand for travel. Tourism definitions tend to favour either a supply or a demand focus. The supply-sided definitions describe the product offered to tourists – what the tourists experience. The demand-sided definitions focus on the behaviour of tourists and what they need and seek.

Tourism is not so much a sector in itself as a multi-sectoral economic activity. This is why economists find it so hard to categorize and governments so complex to coordinate. It is difficult to delimit tourism in its totality and, because of this, it is an activity difficult to both define and manage.

Tourism should be seen as the interaction between supply and demand; the development of a product to meet a need. It is this interaction which introduces economic, environmental, sociocultural and other effects.

There are many ways of looking at the tourism experience. One is to divide it into three stages:

• What happens before leaving home. Studying the publicity. Choosing the destination. Making the purchase.
• What happens on the way there and back. The journey. Departing and arriving.
• What happens once there. The quality of the whole experience. Memories and satisfactions. Dissatisfactions.

The three levels of tourism

From the supply side then, the tourism sector is made up of all those services and features which come together to comprise the experience enjoyed by a tourist. As illustrated in Figure 1.1, it can be viewed in terms of three levels.

Figure 1.1 The tourism sector's three levels

The first level includes the role of government in terms of tourism policy and planning, and the establishment of the framework within which the sector must operate. This covers the economic, environmental and social goals at all levels of government, and the corresponding system of controls. These include physical planning controls, licensing controls, labour controls, and fiscal and transportation controls. Involved in the development and management of this framework is the government tourism administration (GTA) with its principal departments such as marketing, product development, regulation and control, human resources development, public awareness and research.

The second level covers the front line organizations concerned with tourism development and operations. These include the hotels, other accommodation facilities, catering and related services, the cultural, historical and scenic attractions, and the entertainment and recreational centres and facilities. They also include the travel trade and its various services, and transportation including air, road, sea and rail services.

The third level includes the whole range of ancillary support services and organizations, which are in both the public and private sectors. They include the police, post office, customs and immigration, consumer association services, the media, the retail trade, banks, churches, universities and colleges, trade unions, and all institutes and associations with some activities which bear on tourism.

Coordinating and consultative mechanisms linking these three levels are provided by committees, councils, working groups and task forces which involve public sector bodies and agencies, or private sector organizations or associations, or a combination of the two. They try to create the necessary collaboration and consultation for the harmonious development and operation of the sector.

National planning

Any tourism sector must be placed in the context of national, social and economic development. This is shown in Figure 1.2.

Figure 1.2 Tourism and national development

Tourism can contribute significantly to economic development. It often represents an important option for countries to pursue, but has to be assessed against alternative economic opportunities. All the various areas in Figure 1.2, both economic and social, may compete for scarce resources.

Tourism statistics

The definitions in this section follo...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half-Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• Part One The Background to Tourism Management
• Part Two Tourism’s Impacts and Other Management Criteria
• Part Three Planning and Management Strategies
• Bibliography
• Index