Stories of Practice: Tourism Policy and Planning

Dianne Dredge, John Jenkins, Dianne Dredge, John Jenkins

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Topic: Business
• eBook ISBN:
  9781317049807
• Subtopic: Hospitality, Travel & Tourism Industry
• Index: Business

Analyses of contemporary tourism planning and policymaking practice at local to global scales is lacking and there is an urgent need for research that informs theory and practice. Illustrated with a set of cohesive, theoretically-informed, international case studies constructed through storytelling, this volume expands readers' knowledge about how tourism planning and policymaking takes place. Challenging traditional notions of tourism planning and policy processes, this book also provides critical insights into how theoretical concepts and frameworks are applied in tourism planning and policy making practice at different spatial scales. The book engages readers in the intellectual, political, moral and ethical issues that often surround tourism policymaking and planning, highlighting the great value of reflective learning grounded in the social sciences and revealing the complexity of tourism planning and policy.

Chapter 1
New Spaces of Tourism Planning and Policy

Dianne Dredge and John Jenkins

Introduction

Was I to believe him in earnest in his intention to penetrate to the centre of this massive globe? Had I been listening to the mad speculations of a lunatic, or to the scientific conclusions of a lofty genius? Where did truth stop? Where did error begin? I was all adrift amongst a thousand contradictory hypotheses, but I could not lay hold of one (Axel, Journey to the Center of the Earth, Jules Verne, originally published 1864).

This book is about not one, but many journeys of exploration into tourism policy and planning. The journey commenced with the editors, who were interested in the power of storytelling to help explain tourism planning and policy making processes. However, upon realising the depth and scope of the project, and the value of other people’s stories, lenses and world views, the editors enlisted the help of a number of other researchers. Equipped with a range of conceptual tools, methodologies, frameworks and pre-existing understandings, each author who participated in the project looked for new spaces of tourism planning and policy and new ways of understanding the complex social world in which issues are identified, options are evaluated, decisions are made and actions are taken.

Our inspiration was, in part, drawn from authors such as Jules Verne, a master storyteller who, at the height of modern scientific rationalism, wove scientific theories and fiction together to create plausible and imaginative explanations of a journey to the centre of the earth. In doing so Verne introduced to a popular audience ideas that, until that point, had remained locked in scientific dialogues. In much the same way that his character Professor Otto Leidenbrock applied the lens of science to explain and guide his extraordinary journey, a range of understandings generated in a variety of social science disciplines helps us to explain and better understand tourism planning and policy.

In this volume, we seek to apply storytelling to enhance understandings of the complex world in which tourism planning and policy takes place. Each story seeks to interpret events, develop practical understandings and sharpen critical insights into tourism planning and policy theory and practice. They also expose complicated webs of relationships, ambiguous goals and objectives, the myriad of policy spaces in which tourism policy making and planning takes place, and the skills and practices of individuals and agencies. In engaging with and reflecting upon these stories, and in triangulating the insights with personal experience, it is hoped that readers find new ways of understanding the messy world of tourism planning and policy.

Planning and policy research is a relatively new line of research within tourism, but it has developed significantly since the turn of the century. Key influences on the way the field has developed can be attributed to many factors. First, the growing influence of critical, social constructionist research approaches has focused attention on explanations of how and why tourism planning and policy making happens (e.g. Dredge and Jenkins 2007a, Stevenson, Airey and Miller 2008). Second, the increasing uptake of post-disciplinary perspectives has broken down barriers to understanding planning and policy making processes, enabling researchers to draw from a broader range of theoretical concepts, including those in other disciplines, in order to assemble the complex elements of planning and policy systems (e.g. Coles, Hall and Duval 2006, Tribe 2004). For instance, in this book, the influence of economics, geography, politics and sociology are particularly evident. Third, the knowledge gained from reflective practice and attention to ethics and values has stimulated critical, interpretive theoretical development (e.g. Jamal 2004, Tribe 2002).

These influences reinforce the notion that tourism planning and policy is a result of the thoughts, ideas, actions, collusions and collaborations of diverse actors, agencies and institutions. Exploring these social spaces of tourism planning and policy making and learning from stories of practice are the focus of this book. Such explorations are fundamental to the development of reflective practice, cumulative knowledge building and theoretical development.

Tourism planning and policy making is as much a social process as it is a critical and analytical process, and may be greatly affected by personal and/or group values, interests and ideology (e.g. Dredge and Jenkins 2007b, Stevenson et al. 2008). It may be that one individual’s personal goals and passion, leadership and preferences drive an issue onto the agenda, or it may be that robust planning techniques and rational processes successfully mediate these and ensure planning agendas and decisions are the results of collaborative exercises. Whatever the origins or drivers of the issue, the social and relational characteristics of government, business and community have a profound influence on tourism planning and policy development. Put simply, issues are identified, information is collected and exchanged, alternatives are discussed and even discarded and actions are all taken in a social world. Theoretical and analytical tools, ideologies and principles might guide the process, but the knowledge generated must percolate through layers of communication, information sharing, collaboration and even political intrigue before outputs emerge and actions are taken. These exchanges take place in a variety of formal and informal settings, inside and outside official government processes and they transcend public-private sector divides. Government, business and community actors involved in the activities associated with tourism planning and policy will all respond differently to these settings, communications and relationships.

For many researchers and practitioners, active involvement in tourism planning and policy processes will contribute very nuanced insights into the social worlds in which tourism planning and policy happens. Such experiences are usually highly contextualised and the knowledge generated is often particular to the problems at hand. Over time, one can draw from these multiple experiences, testing, critically analysing and triangulating with other cases and previous experience to build deep understandings of tourism planning and policy. Encounters with interesting people and confronting vexed problems enable one to move beyond rule-bound, process-based knowledge to become better, if not fluid and expert, performers in their field:

Common to all experts … is that they operate on the basis of intimate knowledge of several thousand concrete cases in their area of expertise. Context dependent knowledge and experience are at the very heart of the expert activity. Such knowledge and expertise also lie at the center of the case study as a research and teaching method (Flyvbjerg 2006: 222).

Ideological Influences on Tourism Planning and Policy Making

In western developed economies, approaches to tourism planning and policy are very tightly linked to profound changes in ideological and socio-political landscapes. Sustained commitment by western governments and political parties to neoliberal economic management and globalisation in the latter part of the twentieth century has focused on boosting growth and yield to improve economic well being (Giddens 1998, King and Kendall 2004). During the 1980s, governments around the world restructured their tourism departments, reduced their emphasis on tourism research that focused public interest in favour of market research, outsourced their marketing operations, and offset their responsibilities through the creation of statutory corporations or commercial agreements with external providers. In the process, further and very direct means for business to influence public policy making were opened up (Dredge and Jenkins 2007b). Corporate interests with financial power and expertise began to influence the direction and content of policy; boundaries delimiting corporate interests and the state began to blur; relationships between government and business became ever closer; and government representatives and bureaucrats became important conduits for corporate influence (Klijn and Skelcher 2007, Ladeur 2004).

The notion of sustainability well and truly infiltrated tourism studies and practice in the late 1980s (although we recognise the concept has been around for much longer). From its earliest conception it provided a unifying discourse for tourism planning and policy – that is, it was hard to argue against the logic of balancing economic, social and environmental goals. However, although tourism agencies and stakeholders grappled with what sustainable tourism actually was, and how it could be operationalised and with what effects, it has remained a slippery and highly contested concept (e.g. Sharpley 2009). The phrase ‘sustainable tourism development’ is never far from any discussion of tourism planning and policy, but our own view is that it is used more often as a rhetorical device rather than a set of clearly defined guiding principles and actions. Moreover, rarely is it associated with any clear measurable criteria that indicate how economic, physical, social and other goals can be married.

From the late 1990s onwards sustained criticisms of neoliberalism, including concerns over increasing disparities in power and wealth and associated risks such as social and economic marginalisation, poverty and terrorist activity, stimulated the reassertion of local issues, values and agendas (e.g. Beck 1992, Giddens 1998, King and Kendall 2004). These concerns are captured in a set of theories loosely referred to under the umbrella term ‘political modernisation’ which seeks to explain changes in how governments govern, particularly in terms of the diffusion of power away from the central state and new forms of coordination amongst a wide range of actors such as politicians and their political parties, bureaucrats and the bureaucracy, diverse corporate interests and civil society (Arts, Leroy and van Tatenhove 2006).

Approaches to public administration have also changed dramatically. The ‘new public management’ has placed emphasis on facilitating and enabling tourism development by mobilising the resources of others rather than direct government action and physical planning. With respect to tourism, there is no shortage of dialogue about the macro-shifts that have influenced the way that governments support or intervene in tourism (e.g. Dredge and Jenkins 2007a, Dredge and Pforr 2008, Milne and Ateljevic 2001). Without limiting the contributions of this literature, a breaking down of barriers to travel, closer working relationships between government and industry and an emphasis on policies that stimulate demand (e.g. marketing and promotion) have been identified as the key responses to tourism by many western governments since the 1980s (Dredge and Jenkins 2007b). However, McCraken (2003) and others above observed, questions are now appearing about neoliberal public management and the almost blind faith that governments have in the capacity of markets to address the economic, social and environmental problems that emerge from the pursuit of growth.

There is evidence that this neoliberal project and the processes of political modernisation that have fed new socio-political organisational structures, have turned upon themselves (e.g. Arts et al. 2006, Klijn and Skelcher 2007, McCracken 2003). Industry bodies and corporate interests have become integrated into policy making processes so seamlessly in some cases that industry interests have been responsible for substantially writing and informing policy (Dredge and Jenkins 2009). Governments justify this increased alignment with the commercial world in terms of increased efficiency and effectiveness of policy. At a practical level, it reduces political tensions and improves the chances of policy being supported by industry and criticised less. Issues of public interest, social justice, equity, transparency and accountability, while certainly drawing increased critical interest in academic circles, remain outside the focus (or interest) of planning and policy practice in many cases. Put bluntly, under processes of political modernisation, which have included collaborative governance, third way politics and networks and partnerships, the corporate capture of tourism planning and policy making has strengthened, and broader community interests and common pool problems appear to be increasingly sidelined (e.g. Dredge 2010, Dredge and Pforr 2008).

As a result of these changes and increasing recognition that tourism planning and policy no longer takes place only within the institutions of government, rational planning and policy making has given way to an emerging emphasis on understanding and managing the social world in which government interventions – direct or indirect – take place. Developing these understandings and the capacity to become reflexive practitioners requires a new social consciousness on the part of the actors involved in tourism, and an appreciation of historical drivers and contemporary ideologies influencing public administration, planning and policy making. Such a project also requires new forms of socio-political organisations to address increasing demands for access to and involvement in planning and policy making (Gibson-Graham 2006, Giddens 1998). Public-private partnerships, networks and governance have emerged in response to this call for new forms of socio-political organisations.

New Spaces of Tourism Policy and Planning

These ideological and public management shifts have stimulated the emergence of ‘new spaces’ in which tourism planning and policy development take place. The term ‘new spaces’ is used in a metaphoric sense to denote a range of non-traditional, and sometimes not very explicit, spaces in which discussion takes place, information is exchanged and decisions are made. These new spaces exist between public and private sectors; between levels of government; and in government corporations and statutory corporations created by government but held at arms length from public scrutiny. Increasingly too, policy decisions and actions are taken in policy spaces other than tourism, such as urban planning.

New liminal spaces of understanding are also emerging, driven predominantly by post-disciplinary approaches to how tourism planning and policy are studied (see Chapter 2). This post-disciplinary research activity and the reflective approaches and methods of practicing planners and policy makers in the field have led individuals to conceptual gateways or portals through which new or previously constrained ways of thinking about tourism problems and issues emerge. Over time, we move beyond the ‘stuck places’ of our old ways of knowing and, as we do, barriers to new alternative understandings in our own disciplines or fields of study fall away (Meyer and Land 2005). In essence then, liminality is variously achieved at the level of the individual and the field via iterative processes of reflection, theorisation and the socialisation of this new knowledge. In this context, stories provide a useful approach to synthesising, communicating and explaining policy making and planning practice and contribute to the social construction of tourism knowledge (e.g. Sandercock 2003, Schon and Rein 1994, van Hulst 2008).

Sense Making and Stories

Stories are case studies that adopt a range of methods from thick description, narrative, historical accounts and hermeneutics to explore and explain the unfolding of events and actions and how individuals have interpreted and given meaning to concepts within their daily lives. As a form of case study, stories investigate the particular; they often approach complexities and conundrums, ethical issues and dilemmas, and they can also use a wide range of social theories and concepts to interrogate events, decisions and actions. In doing so, authors are often engaged in giving meaningful form to the complex experiences they have become part of, witness to and/or perhaps even embroiled within. In doing so, the story is given meaning: ‘each story selects and names different features and relations which become the “things” of the story – what the story is about’ (Schon and Rein 1994: 26). Readers will find their own pathway through the story, exploring it, and testing it against their own practical knowledge, theoretical dispositions and world views. As a learning device then, stories can make a valuable contribution.

But there is also a range of criticisms of stories, just as there are criticisms with regard to the case study approach (e.g. see Flyvbjerg 2006, Gerring 2007, Ruddin 2006,...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• Notes on Contributors
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• 1 New Spaces of Tourism Planning and Policy
• 2 Tourism Planning and Policy: Historical Development and Contemporary Challenges
• 3 Stories of Practice
• 4 Tourism, Trams and Local Government Policy Making in Christchurch: A Longitudinal Perspective
• 5 Tourism Planning, Community Engagement and Policy Innovation in Ucluelet, British Columbia
• 6 Development on Kangaroo Island: The Controversy Over Southern Ocean Lodge
• 7 Neoliberal Urban Entrepreneurial Agendas, Dunedin Stadium and the Rugby World Cup: Or ‘If You Don’t Have a Stadium, You Don’t Have a Future’
• 8 Local Government Entrepreneurship in Tourism Development: The Case of the Hurunui District, New Zealand
• 9 ‘Huelva, the Light’: Enlightening the Process of Branding and Place Identity Development
• 10 The Mekong Tourism Dilemma: Converging Forces, Contesting Values
• 11 A Participatory Approach to Planning Using Geographic Information Systems (GIS): A Case Study from Northeast Iceland
• 12 Factors Affecting Collaboration in Destination Marketing: The Development of www.purenz.com
• 13 An Integrated Approach to Tourism Planning in a Developing Nation: A Case Study from Beloi (Timor-Leste)
• 14 How the Use of Power Impacts on the Relationship between Protected Area Managers and Tour Operators
• 15 The Introduction of Tourism Destination Management Organisations in Hungary: Top-Down Meets Bottom-Up
• 16 Why Cluster? Text and Sub-text in the Engagement of Tourism Development Policies with the Cluster Concept
• 17 Conclusions
• Index