Tourism Planning

Basics, Concepts, Cases

Turgut Var, Clare Gunn

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• eBook ISBN: 9781000143478
• Topic: Architecture
• Subtopic: Architecture General

As one of the fastest growing sectors of the economy since the 1950s, tourism has proved to be a complicated phenomenon, unlike any other economic producer. Over the last few decades, tourism has exerted increasing pressure on the land and negative social, environmental and economic impacts have surfaced as major issues. Positive guidelines for better planning are in demand by developers and designers who need new understandings of the breadth of tourism's complexity for their own success. Long considered the seminal work on tourism development, Tourism Planning provides a comprehensive, integrated overview of all aspects of tourism and the planning functions that accompany it, emphasizing concepts and principles for better planning.

Part I The Basics

Before one can understand and engage in tourism planning, at any scale, certain basic fundamentals need clarification. The purpose of this part of the book is to summarize some of the more important foundations. Because public and private designers, planners, and developers vary in their experience and understanding, these chapters may refresh their present knowledge or offer new insight into better design and planning.

Chapter 1, “The Purpose of Tourism Planning,” is intended to establish the necessity of planning and also dispel past fears and misunderstandings of planning. If tourism is to reach toward better economic impact, it must be planned as well toward goals of enhanced visitor satisfaction, community integration, and above all, greater resource protection. Planning today has a new look, worthy of attention by all sectors involved in development.

Chapter 2, “Tourism as a System,” endorses the need for all developers, planners and managers to understand the dynamic interrelation among all functioning parts of tourism as a system. Essential is new understanding of the need for balancing development with demand even though market interests are constantly changing. Only by all sectors planning toward better integration of all parts will tourism avoid difficulties and meet desired objectives.

Chapter 3, “Growth, Sustainability, Ecotourism” calls attention to today’s need for greater environmental awareness and planning sensitivity in all tourism development. Instead of limiting opportunities, when properly planned, tourism can even foster both positive objectives and strengthened conservation of resources. New market demand for travel to destinations and attractions of natural and cultural resource significance is giving rise to greater environmental sensitivity.

Chapter 4, “Policy” addresses the important role of policy making and implementation. Included are private development policies as well as those by public agencies. And, all scales, from regional to local, are involved in preparing and taking action on tourism policies.

These four chapters lay the base for the second part—concepts and examples of planning tourism at three scales (regional, destination, site) and concepts and principles valuable to future tourism development.

Chapter 1 The Purpose of Tourism Planning

INTRODUCTION

As millions more people travel and seek personal rewards from their experiences, massive development of resources is the consequence. This pervasive tourism growth is a significant part of the global expression of the new services economy. With the weakening of many other aspects of the economy, nations and communities see tourism as a quick and easy solution.

Closer examination of this trend shows mixed results. At the same time that improved technologies of automobile and air transportation have given more people the opportunity to travel, destinations often have been glutted with congestion and overburdened facilities. As scenery and other natural resources are touted in promotion, the visitor often experiences more ugly commercialization than scenery. As coastal areas are promoted for clear water and pristine beaches, the visitor often discovers a concrete jungle of hotels and sometimes waterfront sewage pollution. As communities seek the economic benefits of foreign visitors, these often come at the cost of cultural conflict and unfulfilled promises. Many scholars and observers have well documented the negative as well as the positive impacts of tourism development.

The truth is that tourism development is being done by those who focus primarily on individual parts rather than tourism as a whole. Tourism can enrich people’s lives, can expand an economy, can be sensitive and protective of environments, and can be integrated into a community with minimum impact. But a new mind set is called for, that demands more and better planning and design of all tourism development, especially how the many parts fit together.

The purpose of any planning is to create plans of action for a foreseeable future and implement these actions. For example, an owner wishing a new home cannot expect the structure to be completed without a building plan and a contractor to build it. Such a plan is the result of a designer visualizing the completed building and supervising its construction. It must be acceptable to the goals and objectives of the owner—meet functional needs, suit aesthetic desires, and meet financial limitations. Application of this metaphor to planning of tourism development demonstrates the fundamental fact that tourism in its full breadth is much more complicated and for many reasons.

First of all, tourism itself is an abstraction. It doesn’t exist, at least not in the same sense as a residence. Tourism is not even a discipline, such as chemistry or geography. Tourism is a field made up of many physical, program, and action parts. It is only the pieces of tourism and their aggregation that can be planned.

Tourism is not under the control of one owner, it has no CEO. It is controlled by a multitude of owners, and mostly within three categories—government, nonprofit organizations, and private commercial enterprise. In many nations even these divisions become blurred, such as quasi-governmental corporations. Furthermore, tourism is influenced by a great many other factors that can make or break the planning process and its implementation, such as local residents, financial institutions, and market demand.

Tourism has no solitary goal or objective but many. A popular governmental goal of tourism is economic improvement. Sometimes this is defined with specific annual objectives, such as an estimated number of visitors and a dollar amount of their expenditures. Some governmental agencies that impinge on tourism but have their own policies direct their management to other goals. For example, park and recreation departments generally base their existence on social goals, not economic.

Even though the overall goal of the private commercial sector of tourism is profitmaking, this varies with businesses. Not all hotels or restaurants expect the same profits because their products and services as well as costs of operation vary. The magnitude of debt service and other overhead can influence objectives of pricing. And, the costs of physical plant updating vary greatly across tourist service businesses.

The concept of tourism planning is almost an oxymoron. The bulk of tourism is rooted in voluntary travel (except for business, often linked with personal). Planning tourism, therefore, seems contrary to such an unplanned phenomenon. This presents a major complication for tourism planning. Travel preference remains elusive in spite of much market research on demographics, psychographics, life styles, opportunity, experience, and a great many other factors that influence what travelers like for their travels. Tourism developers can foster but not force these important reactions.

Even the physical foundation for tourism is dynamic. Generally, the mountains, rivers, lakes, plains, deserts, seas, and forests are where they were centuries ago. But from both natural and man-made causes, these are constantly changing—damming rivers has degraded the geology and biology of free-flowing waters, deforesting has caused desertification, agricultural practices have polluted rivers and ground waters, wildlife growth plagues suburbia and yet some species are facing extinction, and settlement and irrigation have increased humidity on previously arid lands. Certainly not all negative impacts are caused by tourism, but its share is substantial and growing. Planning must cope with these mounting changes.

A further complication of trying to plan tourism is paradoxically its very strength—creativity. The ingenuity of creative people regularly makes dramatic changes in tourism but is difficult to predict. Many of the names of tourist activities have remained the same over time—resorting, fishing, hunting, camping, boating, cruising, attending events. But how these are expressed is very different in this century from how they were in the past. The magnificent hotels suited to the rich and famous carriage and train travelers of the 1800s hardly suit the similar market category of modern air and automobile travelers. The ingenuity and creativity of scientists, designers, and technicians regularly introduce innovations that upset past formulas for planning tourism. Modern technology, such as computers and the Internet, has added to the opportunities and also the complexity of visualizing tourism’s future. New plans for theme parks, public parks, aquariums, zoos, interpretive visitor centers, hotels, resorts, and other features regularly introduce changes.

An increasing complication, especially with worldwide proliferation of ecotourism, is acculturation, the dramatic evolutionary changes in many aboriginal societies. Native populations, based on a non-industrial foundation, face the dilemma of introducing tourists to their special cultural uniqueness and yet moving themselves into newer areas of industrial societies. It is difficult for them to plan for tourism development that might give them new economic advantages without encountering great internal stress for protection of their cultural heritage. Acculturation, sparked by tourism, may require many years of planning and adaptation.

In spite of these complications, those who are involved in tourism in its diverse dimensions are active in planning, if only from their own narrow perspective or on broad economic and social scales. Planning futures is not a new concept around the world.

THE CONCEPT OF PLANNING

Physical planning, as a concept and practice, has taken place for centuries. As Branch (1985, 12) points out, cities in India as early as 3000 B.C. were divided into square blocks, oriented to the cardinal points, and laid out to allow circulation between them. Medieval cities frequently were planned with encircling walls for fortification. Even building codes and zoning date back to ancient times. But such order in city planning resulted from strong centralized authoritative control. Elsewhere, unregulated development had little order. Even in more recent times, socialistic and planned-economy nations exacted strong land use controls from a central authority.

Town planning has been practiced in the United Kingdom for two centuries (Cherry 1984, 187) and physical layout planning reaches back to early Greek and Roman times. For England, interest in planning was stimulated by the physical and social ills resulting from industrialization. Visionaries and philanthropists dreamed of utopian cities. The bias for many years was toward physical planning—the visual appearance of architecture and patterns of land use. This concept was followed by trends toward comprehensive planning set into law. In recent decades two dimensions have been added to planning—social and economic.

Planning is a multidimensional activity and seeks to be integrative. It embraces social, economic, political, psychological, anthropological, and technological factors. It is concerned with the past, present and future. (Rose 1984, 45)

Although such lofty goals are at the heart of the planning concept, carrying them out has not been simple or easy. For many reasons, including the complexity of thousands of decisions made by individuals, corporations, a...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• Foreword
• Preface
• Introduction
• PART I: THE BASICS
• PART II: CONCEPTS AND EXAMPLES OF TOURISM PLANNING
• EPILOGUE
• Index