Tourism Destination Evolution

Patrick Brouder, Salvador Anton Clavé, Alison Gill, Dimitri Ioannides, Patrick Brouder, Salvador Anton Clavé, Alison Gill, Dimitri Ioannides

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781472453990
• eBook ISBN: 9781317009542
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Hospitality, Travel & Tourism Industry
• Index: Business

Outlining the need for fresh perspectives on change in tourism, this book offers a theoretical overview and empirical examples of the potential synergies of applying evolutionary economic geography (EEG) concepts in tourism research. EEG has proven to be a powerful explanatory paradigm in other sectors and tourism studies has a track record of embracing, adapting, and enhancing frameworks from cognate fields. EEG approaches to tourism studies complement and further develop studies of established themes such as path dependence and the Tourism Area Life Cycle. The individual chapters draw from a broad geographical framework and address distinct conceptual elements of EEG, using a diverse set of tourism case studies from Europe, North America and Australia. Developing the theoretical cohesion of tourism and EEG, this volume also gives non-specialist tourism scholars a window into the possibilities of using these concepts in their own research. Given the timing of this publication, it has great potential value to the wider tourism community in advancing theory and leading to more effective empirical research.

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Why is tourism not an evolutionary science?

Understanding the past, present and future of destination evolution

Patrick Brouder, Salvador Anton Clavé, Alison Gill and Dimitri Ioannides

Introduction

More than a century ago, Thorstein Veblen (1898) famously asked ‘Why is economics not an evolutionary science?’. At its core, Veblen’s paper of the same name questioned the dominant thinking of the day that economic systems tended towards equilibrium, arguing instead that economies evolve over time. Thus, it is not enough to merely describe the economy, but rather conceptualize it in terms of long-term change processes and development (Boulton 2010). While the study of economic systems has slowly opened up to account for Veblen’s ground-breaking thinking, there is no denying that the epistemological parameters of classical economics still dominate scholarship on economic systems well over 100 years later.

Evolutionary economics has emerged as an important part of economic studies in recent decades (Dosi and Nelson 1994), and its natural progression to economic geography was heralded as recently as 1999 in Boschma and Lambooy’s crossover paper ‘Evolutionary economics and economic geography’ (Boschma and Lambooy 1999). In the decade which followed, many geographers presented the case for a distinct sub-discipline of ‘Evolutionary Economic Geography’ (EEG), where ‘we start from the definition of economic geography as dealing with the uneven distribution of economic activity across space. An evolutionary approach specifically focusses on the historical processes that produce these patterns’ (Boschma and Frenken 2011: 286).

EEG has had a marked influence on economic geographers, prompting certain observers to ask whether this amounts to ‘yet another turn’ in the subject’s progression, following so-called turns such as the critical turn and relational turn (Grabher 2009). Empirical research has delivered results in studies of industrial clusters and regions with historical legacies in manufacturing (e.g. Klepper 2007), clearly focusing on the regional level (e.g. Neffke et al. 2011). The Handbook of Evolutionary Economic Geography was published in 2010 (Boschma and Martin 2010a) and the sub-field continues to be adopted by geographers working in various regional environments. Tourism appears to lend itself particularly well to an EEG empirical approach, especially within localities that depend heavily on this sector for their economic revival and diversification (Brouder 2014a).

Has tourism research been limited by a lack of an evolutionary perspective? Many tourism researchers have long been interested in the development of destinations over time, though they have resisted the temptation for simplistic modelling of destination development with early calls for multilineal models of tourism development (Cohen 1979). The most influential model for the evolution of tourism destinations was put forward by Butler (1980) in the Tourist Area Life Cycle (TALC) Model. The primary concern of the TALC model was understanding resource management under conditions of increasing visitor numbers, but the stages of the model from exploration (in the early stage) to consolidation (during the peak stage) and beyond certainly implied ongoing evolutionary processes at work. EEG is one approach for helping academics understand change processes at the destination level and, as such, tourism geographers have become increasingly eager to utilize an EEG lens in their empirical studies.

This volume brings together a group of scholars who have been conducting research on tourism destinations using evolutionary approaches and, in particular, EEG perspectives. This introductory chapter offers an overview of EEG and tourism research to date and presents the empirical chapters that follow.

Evolutionary economic geography

Boschma and Martin (2010b) argue that EEG is a distinct sub-discipline in economic geography and not a subset of either neoclassical or institutional approaches. EEG research pays attention to the long-term processes of change in the spatial economy, with an empirical focus on individuals and firms at the regional level. EEG theorists have been inspired by Schumpeter (1934) and emphasize novelty and innovation through human creativity as the main drivers of economic evolution. Thus, there is a focus on knowledge creation and dissemination throughout firms and within regions. While knowledge creation is inherently a dynamic process, EEG theory also deals with long-term change and the barriers to dynamic knowledge creation are just as important as the aids.

EEG has three antecedent theoretical pillars on which it has developed: path dependence, complexity theory, and Generalized Darwinism (Boschma and Martin 2010b). Path dependence is an established area of research within economic geography (Arthur 1994; David 1997). It implies that history matters and that feedback loops in, for example, a region’s economy become self-reinforcing over time. This can lead to increased product and market development for a particular sector and can result in increasing sectoral productivity and regional prosperity over time. However, path-dependent regional economic evolution also tends towards regional ‘lock-in’, whereby the processes of knowledge creation and sharing, regional institutions and political support for the dominant path tend to reinforce that path over time. Lock-in can prove successful for decades, but behind the overt success is a hidden change in the exposure of the regional economy – by placing all of the regional ‘eggs in one basket’. This classic pattern of success followed by collapse is most notable in the former industrial regions of Europe and the ‘rustbelt’ of North America. Much of the research on EEG has been inspired by the ‘industrial ruination’ (Mah 2012), which has affected formerly prosperous regions, with scholars hoping to understand ways to break away from regional path-dependence before ruination occurs. As tourism has reached maturity in many destinations, the same worries relating to the negative outcomes of path dependence have become concerns of researchers but also locals. In many mass tourism destinations, tourism’s status as a single-sector economy thus raises the spectre of future regional ruination.

Martin and Sunley (2015:10) argue that ‘local and regional economies are complex, multilayered systems, both connected to and in part also constitutive of their (competitive) environments, and that to understand fully their evolutionary development over time requires analysis of their multi-scalar and interdependent character’.

Entrepreneurs and labour operate in complex, multiple environments (e.g. social, cultural, technological, institutional, industrial), and these environments are interdependent and marked by reciprocal causality (Martin and Sunley 2015). Neither is any one sector self-contained and there is interaction between sectors as well as within sectors. While this point is obvious, it is important to remember since most empirical studies, and this is certainly the case in tourism studies, tend to be reduced to single-sector examinations. An evolutionary perspective opens up for broader conceptualizations, which may be incorporated into empirical studies. For example, the concept of co-evolution is utilized in EEG studies and shows that new paths may emerge endogenously and grow independently of the dominant path (or paths) while still interacting with those paths due to the complex environment at the regional level. Co-evolution within the region or between sectors thus negotiates the tension between the interdependent environments and the individual agencies.

The terminology of generalized Darwinism is the most obvious marker of EEG studies. Generalized Darwinism includes the concepts of novelty and continuity, variety, selection and retention. It is promulgated as a universal, multi-level approach to studies in social and economic evolution (Hodgson and Knudsen 2010). In EEG it is the widely used terminology for understanding how knowledge is constantly produced and reproduced in a given region. Some scholars argue that institutions are an important part of a generalized Darwinian framework of economic evolution (Essletzbichler 2009; Hodgson and Knudsen 2010), while others argue that the evolutionary project in economic geography cannot supplant institutional geography (MacKinnon et al. 2009). An important distinction in EEG (in comparison with other regional development frameworks, e.g. innovation systems and agglomeration economies) is that regions are not seen as units of selection, but rather as selection environments upon which evolutionary processes operate (Boschma and Martin 2010b). An important focus in generalized Darwinism is the desire for variety, in contrast to diversification per se, as a driver of regional innovation and growth. The distinction between variety and diversification centres on the idea that it is related variety, which is similar enough to other things going on in the region that it is complementary without being in direct competition. This would lead to a situation which is optimal for regional development. This idea is readily applicable at the destination level since tourism is a sector made up of a number of related industries.

Destination evolution

Since the emergence of interest in studying tourism as an activity that creates and develops productive spaces, a range of significant studies on destination evolution has appeared (Saarinen 2004; see also Table 1.1). Pioneer approaches such as those of Gilbert (1939) were followed by further endeavours through the 1950s, which combined empirical and theoretical considerations within the frame of different regional academic traditions of tourism geography (especially the French, German and Anglo-American approaches). These analyses mainly focused on the role of tourism demand as the main driver of economic and spatial change (Wolfe 1952; Christaller 1964). Several models (e.g. Plog 1973; Doxey 1975; Miossec 1977; Stansfield 1978; Cohen 1979) revealed that the impacts of tourism are linked to specific stages of destination development. These frameworks also provided the ability to build in acceptance that destinations can experience processes of rejuvenation if they are able to adapt themselves to the changing habits and preferences of the visitors (see Pearce 1989). Parallel to this is a long tradition of empirical research, mainly focused on the analysis of the specific history of each destination. Usually these studies portray destination evolution as a process mainly caused by the growth in the number of tourists and by changes in the provision of services, facilities and infrastructure for tourists (see Brey et al. 2007 for a complete review).

Inspired by the aforementioned literature and, especially, the concept of the Product Life Cycle (Vernon 1966; Cox 1967), Butler’s TALC model (Butler 1980) appeared as a fundamental framework for analysing the evolution of destinations. The TALC model has been used to study a myriad of destination cases and has also been a source of inspiration for further conceptual work on destination development. For instance, Haywood (2006) has called for an adjustment of approach to how tourism scholars utilize the TALC, by arguing for the necessity to move away from the notion of changed stages or states and instead to focus on the actual pr...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of illustrations
• Notes on contributors
• Foreword
• 1 Why is tourism not an evolutionary science? Understanding the past, present and future of destination evolution
• 2 Destination dynamics, path dependency and resilience: regaining momentum in Danish coastal tourism destinations?
• 3 Contested pathways towards tourism-destination sustainability in Whistler, British Columbia: an evolutionary governance model
• 4 Tourism area research and economic geography theories: investigating the notions of co-evolution and regional innovation systems
• 5 Moments as catalysts for change in the evolutionary paths of tourism destinations
• 6 Path dependence in remote area tourism development: why institutional legacies matter
• 7 Knowledge transfer in the hotel industry and the ‘de-locking’ of Central and Eastern Europe
• 8 Co-evolution and sustainable tourism development: from old institutional inertia to new institutional imperatives in Niagara
• 9 Regional development and leisure in Fryslân: a complex adaptive systems perspective through evolutionary economic geography
• 10 Tourism and economic geography redux: evolutionary economic geography’s role in scholarship bridge construction
• Index