Clusters in regional tourism An Australian case

With changing industrial patterns in regional Australia, tourism has gained increasing currency as an agent for regional economic development. This paper investigates the applicability of cluster theory in supporting the movement from comparative advantage to competitive advantage for four regional towns located on the Murray River in Australia. Thus far cluster analysis has largely been applied in the manufacturing industry. This paper reports on its potential as an analytical tool in service-based tourism and, through the cases studied, identifies vital attributes of clusters that are lacking in the least economically successful region in the study area.     

The resort lifecycle theory: Generating Processes and Estimation

One of the most discussed paradigms in the literature on destination development is the lifecycle model. Although varieties of lifecycle paths have been described, they have been drawn up without consideration of the underlying generation processes. This article examines the time path of tourist growth patterns that could give rise to such a cycle and in doing so, permits the exact demarcation of the five stages of the lifecycle. The model is tested using long run time series and the overall conclusion is that the restrictions imposed by the aggregation process limit the resort cycle paradigm, in a quantitative context, to being no more than a statistical caricature of the real world.     

Integrating tourism with rural development

Tourism can play a much more powerful role in stimulating rural development than it has in most regions. Achieving this objective will require more careful integration of visitor marketing and rural development strategies. High “quality” visitors and accommodations may not be the same in rural and urban areas. What may be good for the region as a whole may not be good for its rural periphery. In the case of Hawaii, the expansion of tourism was not planned as an integral part of the rural development process, even though most of the state's hotel rooms will eventually be located in non-metropolitan areas. Hawaii may not, therefore, serve as an ideal planning model for other island regions to follow.     

Sustainable tourism and the question of the commons

Sustainable development calls for wise management of natural, built, and sociocultural resources in destination areas. Resources created mainly for tourism are used in time by the local population as well. Many others are shared in common with local people in everyday life. More often than not, resources are overused and degraded, as is the unfortunate fate of most ‘common pool resources’. When this happens, sustainable development is severely threatened: economic wellbeing declines, environmental conditions worsen, social injustice grows, and tourist satisfaction drops. This paper analyzes the central role that common pool resources play in sustainable tourism development, outlines policy design principles for their management, and offers future research directions.     

Shared decision-making in tourism land use planning

A Canadian government commission dealing with environmental resources attempted to incorporate several innovative approaches for shared decision-making into its strategic land use planning process for central British Columbia. This paper describes a framework of design and evaluative criteria for guiding such shared decision-making processes. It uses these criteria to assess the efficacy of the process from the perspective of those tourism stakeholders who participated in this planning exercise. The article offers recommendations to government as well as tourism sector organizations concerning the management of future public land use planning strategies designed to fully incorporate stakeholders into such processes.

Résumé

Les décisions partagées au sujet de la politique foncière du tourisme. Une commission du gouvernement canadien s'occupant des ressources environnementales a essayé d'incorporer plusieurs nouvelles méthodes de décisions partagées dans la planification des stratégies d'utilisation foncière pour la Colombie britannique centrale. Cet article décrit un cadre de critères pour la conception et l'évaluation des processus de décisions partagées. L'article utilise ces critères pour mesurer l'efficacité du processus du point de vue des planificateurs. Il fait des recommandations au gouvernement et aux organisations touristiques au sujet de la planification et de la future gestion de l'utilisation de la propriété publique pour que tous les intéressés soient compris dans ces processus.     

Geographic factors affecting tourism in Zambia

This paper discusses several geographical factors critical to tourism planning and development in Zambia. The paper focuses on the size, seasonality of climate, and population distribution of the country as well as the location of tourism resources and distances between tourist attractions. Individually and collectively, these factors have a major influence on the levels of occupancy in hotels and game lodges, and air and land transportation. The infrastructural development and its utilization for tourism are evaluated, and a number of constraints to tourism development are also examined. A discussion of appropriate tourism policies highlights the delicate relationship between economic and environmental factors. This study concludes that Tourism Master Plans should be more cognizant of geographic as well as economic factors when developing destinations such as Zambia.     

Tourism's regional development impacts : A comparative analysis of the Greek islands

This paper explores the conditions that determine tourism development and theorizes how these conditions lead to a variety of impacts on host communities. Thirty-eight Greek islands were statistically analyzed using secondary data and a smaller sample was studied in greater detail through a comparative case-study approach. While the quantity of tourism development was found to be subject to demand, its quality and integration with other sectors were associated with the size of the community. Tourism impacts were found to be beneficial in larger islands. In smaller islands with high tourist activity, while a reverse in declining demographic patterns has been observed, tourism was found to create unstable, short-term, and dualistic development. The paper concludes that factors such as the local institutional capacity to absorb development and the potential interaction of locals and tourists should be considered in the making of tourism policy.     

Yugoslavia's tourist trade pot of gold or pig in a poke?

Yugoslavia's international tourist trade has expanded during the postwar period to the point where the country has become one of Europe's major tourist destinations. In common with many social-scientific students of tourism, Yugoslav development planners have stressed the value to the country of the inflow of convertible foreign exchange which this has stimulated. The article sets out to balance this argument by reference to four problems associated with the growth of tourism which have not been given adequate attention: the impact of tourism upon regional development; problems of sectoral balance; the structure of the labor force in tourism, particularly the problems which this structure potentially poses for the Yugoslav system of self-management; and the risks consequent upon the particular market structure of Yugoslav tourism.     

Politics and tourism interface: The Case of Cyprus

The Cyprus tourism industry has had to be sensitive to the political problems between Turkish and Greek Cypriots. Federation is considered to be a partial solution to the problems. This paper evaluates the influence of politics and nationalism on the tourism planning and development under a possible federal constitution. The views of Turkish and Greek Cypriot participants from private and public organizations are studied through semistructured interviews. The findings suggest that any future planning and development is likely to be a complex undertaking, as the two societies tend to have different sets of objectives and expectations.     

Traditions of sustainability in tourism studies

As sustainability has become an important policy issue in tourism, it is arousing growing discussion and criticism, and an increasing need to understand the nature of the limits of growth. This paper analyzes how these limits are approached and evaluated in discussions on a local scale. The purpose is to recognize that behind the different understandings of them lie distinct traditions that are different in their focuses. These are referred to as resource-, activity-, and community-based traditions of sustainability. Further, the relationship between sustainable tourism and sustainable development is critically discussed.     

Destination place planning and design

Destination place management requires that land use and development issues be addressed. Despite considerable advancement in the methodological processes, there is still no clear conceptual destination model to address these issues. Existing models have largely been developed through a fragmented case-study approach and have not yet achieved a sufficiently integrated conceptual basis for a comprehensive understanding of the spatial characteristics of destination regions. This paper attempts to sharpen the conceptualization of the core elements of destination regions by building upon existing models and concepts. The model presented here is a systemic construct and provides for a common platform from which investigations can proceed into the normative and functional aspects of spatial destination design.     

Inbound tourism policies in Japan from 1859 to 2003

This paper aims to clarify the development process of the inbound tourism policies of Japan from 1859 to 2003. Evolving through five periods and ten phases, policies have been variously promoted to obtain foreign currencies and break the country’s isolation at the earliest stage, to make it a peaceful and cultured nation via international exchanges and friendship after the Pacific War, and, more recently, to contribute to its economic revitalization in recession. The relationships between inbound and national land policies, as well as nonstructural aspects such as promotion, advertising, and services, are also examined.     

Devaluation and US tourism expenditure in Mexico

Studies that investigate the factors affecting US tourism expenditures in Mexico generally regard relative prices in these countries as sensitive determinants. The findings of inelasticity of expenditures of American tourists with respect to prices in the Mexican interior and border in several studies published in the 1980s are debatable. This study evaluates the impact of recent peso devaluations by adjusting 1970–1982 US tourism expenditures by an index that combines the Consumer Price Index in dollars, the CPI in pesos, and the exchange rate. The results here clearly indicate that US expenditures in the interior and on the border are price sensitive and have a strong positive trend reaction to devaluation in both nominal and real terms. Border expenditures clearly exceed interior expenditures and are more sensitive to exchange rate changes than expenditures in interior Mexico.     

Visitor cycles : Outlook for tourism in Lancaster County

Various writers have suggested that tourist areas undergo a cycle of evolution ending eventually in decline. This article suggests a five-stage evolutionary sequence appropriate to Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, one of the leading tourist destinations in the United States. Elements of the County's physical and psychological carrying capacity are considered in ascertaining whether Lancaster County will undergo a significant permanent decline in tourist activity. The magnitude of possible future decline is influenced by relative location, diversity of the tourist base, and effectiveness of planning. Diversity and relative location clearly favor Lancaster County in comparison with competing tourist areas and will help to prevent significant long-term decline in number of visitors.     

Government involvement in tourism in developing countries

The article examines the case for involvement of government in the tourism sector in developing countries and makes definitional distinctions between passive and active involvement. It is argued that in most developing countries government involvement in tourism is required not only to attain long-term objectives but to compensate for the absence of a strong and tourism-experienced private sector. Five areas of concern for government involvement are discussed, and conclusions relate to the need for government-private sector cooperation for development purposes.     

Integrated rural tourism:: Concepts and Practice

A model of integrated rural tourism, which took account of the various resources (cultural, social, environmental, economic), their use, and the role of pertinent stakeholders, was developed to explore effective methods of promoting tourism as part of a rural development strategy. “Strategic fit” was used to assess the effectiveness of the model in adding value locally in the context of an established tourism area in western Ireland. The model reveals considerable robustness in identifying features that promote the adding of value in a holistic way and in identifying the pertinent stakeholders and issues that require attention to meet objectives more effectively.     

A facilitated access model and ottoman empire tourism

This paper proposes a “facilitated access” model to describe how local people make and have made use of tourism. Although Western travel accounts of the Arab Middle East have been studied by various disciplines, the Ottoman Empire has not been treated from a tourism studies approach. Travel narratives from 1835 to 1870 are used to reconstruct how, and tentatively why, Ottoman subjects adapted existing tourism services and expertise to the new Western tourists of the era. It is argued that Western tourism in the empire flourished in the foundational period before Cook Company tours began in 1869 because some Ottoman subjects could thus increase their own autonomy.     

Domestic tourism in FRG : Trends and problems

Participation on tourism of the population of the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) has enormously increased. Domestic tourism, however, stagnates. The German tourist regions have to expect a significant decrease in visitors, since an increasing segment of the German holiday-makers (now two thirds) travels abroad. The German domestic tourism providers and vacation travel organizers have not yet fully realized the new trends in the travel behavior. The unfavorable trend can only be met through a continually increasing supply with vacation homes and apartments. Moreover, the various resort towns need to join regional tourism associations which are able to achieve a more effective regional marketing for smaller tourist regions. Preparations for the establishment of regional tourism associations and programs for a subsidization of regional marketing plans are imminent.     

Tourism in Tropical Africa A review of literature in English and research agenda

Literature on tourism in tropical Africa is reviewed to indicate the current and future roles of tourism in tropical African countries. Attention is then directed to research issues whose investigation may lead to the development of guidelines for the extension, regulation, and management of tourism. These issues are arranged under the following headings: inventory, demand, types of tourism, economic impacts, socio-cultural impacts, environmental impacts, infrastructure, regional patterns, international cooperation, and tourism futures.     

Towards an ethics platform for tourism

Ethical distinctions inform all human actions and decisions. On inspection, however, dominant paradigms in tourism scholarship are imbued with the myth of objectivity and thus ignore the ethical dimension. Since the four platforms of scholarship were first published in 1990, a representation of one of the most value-based concepts of this time, sustainable development, has been embraced; a fifth platform has emerged to dominate the rhetoric of tourism praxis. However, this paper argues that a sixth platform, an ethics platform, is needed to interrogate the morality of the positions taken in policy, planning, development, and management. These platforms are proposed against a background of environmental ethics and global political economy.