Strategic Management for Tourism Communities: Bridging the Gaps available in Paperback, eBook
Strategic Management for Tourism Communities: Bridging the Gaps
- ISBN-10:
- 1873150830
- ISBN-13:
- 9781873150832
- Pub. Date:
- 11/05/2004
- Publisher:
- Multilingual Matters Ltd.
- ISBN-10:
- 1873150830
- ISBN-13:
- 9781873150832
- Pub. Date:
- 11/05/2004
- Publisher:
- Multilingual Matters Ltd.
Strategic Management for Tourism Communities: Bridging the Gaps
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$24.95Overview
Tourist destinations must engage in realistic assessments of their abilities to meet the needs and expectations of tourism stakeholders and then act on these assessments so their goals and objectives can be achieved. A new model for bridging stakeholder gaps is presented as a template for how communities can understand and make the most of their tourism resources. The Bridging Tourism Gaps Model is a practical tool to help destinations focus on the important factors in developing and maintaining tourism as a beneficial and vital part of their communities.
This book builds on the success of Tourism: A Community Approach and the subsequent tourism planning experiences of both authors to advance strategic planning in tourism.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781873150832 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Multilingual Matters Ltd. |
| Publication date: | 11/05/2004 |
| Series: | Aspects of Tourism , #16 |
| Pages: | 456 |
| Product dimensions: | 6.15(w) x 9.20(h) x 0.95(d) |
About the Author
Ann Murphy, AICP, PhD Candidate, Law, University of Melbourne, has worked as a tourism planner in British Columbia and the Florida Keys. She oversaw a Keys-wide survey of residents’ attitudes towards tourism and her planning contributions were recognised by a resolution of the City of Marathon Council (2000).
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Strategic Management for Tourism Communities
Bridging the Gaps
By Peter E. Murphy, Ann E. Murphy
Multilingual Matters
Copyright © 2004 Peter E. Murphy and Ann E. MurphyAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-873150-83-2
CHAPTER 1
Definitions, Theory and Practice
Tourism Definitions and Data
Tourism as the world's largest business is a complex system of integrated parts, and each dimension receives attention at different times and locations, depending on the specific purpose and interest of the study at hand. In a recent review of tourism development in Australia, Richardson (1999: 144) states 'somewhere along the way travel and tourism (have) become the world's biggest business'. He cites a World Tourism Organisation publication as an authority on the subject:
Tourism is now the largest industry in the world by virtually any economic measure, including gross output, value added, employment, capital investment and tax contributions. (Wheatcroft, 1994)
Others have made increasing reference to the calculations and estimates emerging from the World Travel and Tourism Council (WTTC). This influential body came into existence in 1990 with membership open to chief executive officers of companies from all sectors of tourism and tourism related businesses. Its chief goal is to demonstrate the overall significance of this disparate collection of businesses to national and world economic development. Consequently it has hired consulting companies and researchers to develop estimates of the 'industry's' overall size and contribution. It estimated that 'in 2000 travel and tourism would generate, directly and indirectly, across the global economy US$4.2 trillion of economic activity and 7.8% of total employment' (World Travel and Tourism Council, 2002).
To collect the data to make estimates of tourism's impacts requires a definition of terms that have universal application. While considerable progress has been made in this direction over the past 10 years or so the situation is still clouded by inconsistencies. Reviews of these definitional problems can be encountered in good introductory texts such as French et al. (1999) and Goeldner et al. (2000). Therefore, this book focuses on the issues involved with using tourism definitions and data for the purpose of community analysis and planning. The structure suggested by Smith (1995) in his excellent survey of tourism data analysis is adapted. Namely, we need to define the principal customer (tourist), describe that person, define their trip, define the tourism businesses that serve the tourist and help to make the trips successful, and finally describe the principal components of the resulting 'tourist industry'.
The tourist
As with all sound business practice, community strategic tourism management should start with the definition of its principal customer – the tourist, but as will be discussed at a later stage another important customer is the local clientele. According to the World Tourism Organisation a tourist is a visitor who travels either internationally, by crossing an international border, or domestically by travelling within her/his own country. In both cases the visitor travels to a place other than her/his usual (home) environment, is away from home for at least one night and the purpose of the visit is not paid for by the place visited. Tourists that stay for a few hours but not overnight are called excursionists (World Tourism Organisation, 1991).
Distances travelled
Even this most recent definition of a tourist is not completely satisfactory, especially from an analytical and planning perspective. For example, there is no consistency regarding what area constitutes a usual (home) environment, because different countries and jurisdictional levels possess different scale needs. Therefore, to provide a technical-spatial description of the distance a person must travel from home before they become classified as a tourist varies from one country to another. In the United States the distance is 160 kms (100 miles), in Canada 80 kms (50 miles), and in Australia 40 kms (25 miles). Within these national classifications there is nothing to prevent state and local jurisdictions from further revising the actual cut-off distances to suit local scale conditions, so it is not uncommon to find a range of values from 30–50 kms being used to classify a traveller as a tourist. Furthermore, the remuneration clause can cause difficulties for occasions like Australia's recent and successful Olympic Games. In some cases the athletes and officials had their expenses covered by the Sydney Organising Committee of the Olympic Games, yet most would classify them as tourists to Sydney and Australia.
Masberg (1998) has explored the definition of a tourist from an interesting perspective – that of a user. She notes how the various official definitions of a tourist vary around the world and from publication to publication, so she asked managers of convention and visitors bureaux how they defined their customers. Most selected to do it by distance, a distance that 'fluctuates between 20 and 150 miles', but a considerable proportion also used 'purpose of trip', 'residence of the traveller' and 'length of stay' (Masberg, 1998: 68).
The trip
Having defined the tourist, it is also important to define the trip, which is the essence of the tourist experience. A trip can be considered to occur each time an individual or group leave their place of residence, travel a specified distance, and return home. It can involve one or more destinations, or be a circuit with no single destination. As such a trip is so intertwined with the tourist that the British Tourist Authority has long preferred to use tourist trips rather than tourist numbers as its guide to industry size and growth.
The tourism business
If there are still some difficulties associated with the definition of a tourist there is even more difficulty in defining the range of industries that serve and supply the tourist. Since the tourism business has grown into such a broad range of activities and penetrated every corner of the globe everyone is agreed that defining the business is a major and complex undertaking. Leiper (1979: 400) considers' (t) he tourist industry consists of all those firms, organizations, and facilities which are intended to serve the specific needs and wants of tourists'. Goeldner et al. (2000: 26) have developed an integrated systems model to capture the essential elements of what they call 'the tourism phenomenon'. In addition to the regular industry sectors of tourism, such as transport and accommodation, they included government and quasi-government agencies, the built environment, the natural environment and its resources, as well as activities such as research and stewardship.
As Smith (1995: 34–9) has indicated, such definitions of tourism businesses have two common features. They are supply-side oriented in that they focus on the production or supply of commodities for the tourist and not the demand for such products. These definitions also have a common weakness in terms of defining the tourism industry, in that they are so comprehensive they include ubiquitous businesses that serve local residents as well as tourists. This latter point is a major challenge to the World Travel and Tourism Council (WTTC) and any others who wish to differentiate the tourism component of businesses such as bakeries, petrol stations and restaurants that are used by both tourists and locals.
Tourism tiers of business
To solve the problem of over-counting tourism's share from such businesses and to indicate some businesses are core to the tourism industry while others are peripheral requires a more accurate and systematic description of the tourism industry and its component parts. A solution proffered to tackle this problem by the (Canadian) National Task Force on Tourism Data (1985) divides the tourist industry into two tiers of businesses, as detailed below.
• Tier 1 tourism businesses are those that cannot exist if there were no tourism activity. Examples of these include airlines, travel agents and hotels.
• Tier 2 tourism businesses are those that exist even in the absence of tourism, though at a lower capacity. Examples of such businesses include restaurants, taxis, and most shops. The actual division will be influenced by local conditions, with some shops and taxi businesses in small resort destinations being more reliant on the tourist trade than local customers, and hence in danger of closing if the tourist business disappeared.
To operate such a division of tourist businesses requires a classification system, so the (Canadian) National Task Force on Tourism Data based their division on the percentage of revenue expected to be generated from tourism. Utilising past empirical evidence they determined that businesses earning 91–100% of their revenue from tourists should be considered as Tier 1 tourism businesses. Those earning 10–90% of their revenue from tourists would be classed as Tier 2 tourism businesses. Like all classification systems of social activity there can be some discussion over the true breakpoints, but the task force attempted to act in a conservative manner to avoid any suggestion of inflating the industry's significance.
Smith (1995) considers that this system offers several important advantages. First, it is consistent with other industry definitions, in that it emphasises the commodities they produce. Second, it permits relatively easy measurement of the magnitude of the tourism activity, based on established Standard Industrial Classification (SIC) codes from industrial census studies and empirical surveys of individual firms. Third, the description recognises the WTO's distinction between tourists and excursionists. Tourists travelling long distance and staying overnight are served by Tier 1 businesses almost exclusively, while Tier 2 businesses serve both the tourists and excursionists. However, some would say there is a need for a still more elaborate classification system in order to reflect the total impact of this large and diverse industry.
One possibility is to emulate the economists' distinctions in their economic multiplier. For the direct expenditure, we could offer the task force's Tier 1 classification of tourist related facilities. For the indirect expenditure, we could offer the Tier 2 industries, but with a more conservative revenue generation classification of 25–90%. For the induced expenditure, we could include those professional firms which have become more involved in the operation of tourism businesses, yet have generally not been associated with tourism in past assessments. These include the growing number of service providers, such as lawyers, accountants, consultants and financial institutions. For such firms 10–24% would probably be a sufficient magnitude score, but some sectors, such as the consultants, can often exceed such levels of tourism-related business. One of the key areas where this type of classification is becoming important is with satellite accounting.
Satellite accounts
In several countries governments have developed tourism satellite accounts to obtain a clearer picture of tourism's size and contribution to the economy. As Campbell and Lapierre (1991: 7) state 'because tourism does not fit into the traditional industry structure established in most countries to measure economic activity, it has not enjoyed an acceptable level of "credibility" amongst other economic measures'. Consequently, Canada and other OECD countries have created statistics on the industry by 'mining' existing data sources and encouraging more standardised categorisation and survey definitions. An important part of this process has been to determine those industries that can be declared tourism industries or support activities, and to provide more rigour to the current tourist definition that includes the phrase 'away from the home environment'. Such accounting practices have helped to rationalise tourism definitions and data collection, but the cynics amongst us also realise they contributed to the development of the Goods and Service Tax (GST) and the Value Added Tax (VAT) taxes on the industry.
Meis (2001: 18–19) in a summary of Canada's experience with tourism satellite accounts (TSA) and a comparison with four other national TSA systems (Mexico, New Zealand, Norway and USA) finds the results 'from five very different and diverse countries indicate that tourism translates into significant and amazingly consistent levels of output, value added and employment'. For example, in terms of tourism's total output as a portion of the national Gross Domestic Product (GDP) for a year, Mexico's tourism was 6.5%, Canada 5%, Norway 4.3%, New Zealand 3.4% and the USA 2%. The slight difference between these figures is explained by the relative strength and diversity of the various national economies.
Community Definitions
The ability of community members to pull together and improve their quality of life is an oft-repeated story in religion, philosophy, history and everyday events. The following quote from Matthew Fox, a theologian cited by Anita Roddick, sums up some of the grandeur and promise of communities:
Community comes from the word communion, to share a common task together. And it's in the sharing of that task that people do bigger things than they knew they were capable of. Then there is really something to celebrate. (Roddick, 2000: 55)
Two of the most remarkable aspects of communities can be their strength and their ability to get things done. The following paragraphs try to bring some structure and clarity as to what is meant by the term 'community'.
Paraphrasing Barkham's (1973: 218) description of carrying capacity the term 'community' is 'delightful in its simplicity, complex in its meaning, and difficult to define'. The simplicity of community lies in a word that has common usage, so everyone has a general idea as to what it refers. But its complexity starts to emerge when one turns to a dictionary, and finds a multiple definition. A good example of this is found in the Macquarie Dictionary (Delbridge & Bernard, 1988: 185) which defines community as 'a social group of any size whose members reside in a specific locality, share government and have a cultural and historical heritage'. Such multiple function definitions lead to a discussion of which aspects are more important, a question that is generally settled by the focus and intent of the inquirer.
A more recent discussion of community in terms of tourism supports many of these earlier notions and adds some new considerations. Joppe (1996: 475) claims that community is a self-defining term 'based on a sense of shared purpose and common goals'. Community can grow from mutual interests, such as caring for the environment. A community can also reflect geographic features and spatial relationships, such as natural boundaries that define a tourist region. However, a review of its definitions and uses would indicate that community has three general dimensions: social functions, spatial area and external recognition.
Social functions
The social function of people working together to create a place of their own, such as a neighbourhood, is a continuous feature of community research and planning. These social functions can be described as follows:
Interest in community is based on the practical grounds that people increasingly are coming together to identify their needs and through cooperative action improve their social and physical environment. (Dalton & Dalton, 1975: Introduction)
This 'coming together' is viewed as a process of community building, whereby previously independent individuals or household units find they have common interests and choose to take some responsibility for what is happening to their lives. This social cohesion can take on a community development approach 'which encourages citizen participation, with or without government assistance, in efforts to improve the economic, social and cultural conditions of the locality, with emphasis on self-help' (Dalton & Dalton, 1975: 1).
Gill (1997) feels one sociological definition of community is particularly relevant to community tourism. She focuses on Warren's definition of 'community' as:
... an aggregation of people competing for space. The shape of the community, as well as its activities are characterized by differential use of space and by various processes according to which one type of people and/or type of social function succeeds another in the ebb and flow of structural change in a competitive situation. (Warren, 1977: 208)
The relevance of this definition to community tourism is derived from its being based on 'ecological principles that conceptualise change as an outcome of competition' (Gill, 1997: 56).
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Strategic Management for Tourism Communities by Peter E. Murphy, Ann E. Murphy. Copyright © 2004 Peter E. Murphy and Ann E. Murphy. Excerpted by permission of Multilingual Matters.
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