Государственный контроль над въездом

Доступность является ключевым фактором в развитии туризма. Он опирается как на транспорт, так и на отсутствие каких-либо политических барьеров для поездок. Если визы необходимы для въезда в страну, это будет препятствовать въездному туризму. В начале 1990-х годов Великобритания ввела визовые требования для граждан Турции, желающих въехать в Великобританию. Турецкая сторона ответила путем наложения виз на британских посетителей в свою страну. Однако поток туристов был почти полностью одним из способов, поэтому турецкий стал явным неудачником, а виза вынудила туристов посещать их страну.

Пример

Въезд в США

В 1988 году США отказали в выдаче виз для многих посетителей из Западной Европы (хотя и с некоторыми ограничениями, которые по-прежнему препятствовали свободному потоку туризма), в последствии чего осознав препятствия, которые это бюрократическое ограничение создало, в то время как другие факторы, такие как относительные обменные курсы, способствовали быстрому расширению туризма в Северной Америке. Однако политическая паника, последовавшая за бедствием 9/11, изменила отношение, и правительство США ужесточило требования к въезду, в том числе необходимость компьютерного сканирования паспортов. Биометрические данные (включая отпечатки пальцев и диафрагмы) были взяты при въезде и визы стали менее доступными, а потенциальным туристам приходилось путешествовать на большие расстояния, чтобы проходить интервью в посольствах США. С октября 2005 года Департамент внутренней безопасности требует от авиакомпаний и круизных судов предоставить информацию о своих пассажирах до прибытия. Необходимая информация включает полное имя каждого пассажира, дату рождения, пол, гражданство, паспортные данные, страну проживания, адрес в Соединенных Штатах, а также информацию о прибытии и отъезде. Это вызвало дискуссию относительно прав на неприкосновенность частной жизни, а также обеспокоенность по поводу защиты и безопасности предоставленных данных. Трудность в получении виз и опасения, что повышенная безопасность вызовет проблемы для прибывающих путешественников, в сочетании с другими факторами влияют на количество прибытий. Несмотря на слабый доллар, доходы в 2007 году еще не достигли уровней, существовавших до террористических атак 2001 года.

Пример

Упрощение визовых требований для поездок в страны Балтии после распада СССР привело к значительному увеличению числа туристов. Россия, напротив, продолжала настаивать на визах. Предсказуемым результатом стало снижение числа посетителей в России, в то время как уровень туризма в прибалтийских государствах значительно вырос, что было обусловлено их вступлением в Европейский Союз. Украина и Грузия также с тех пор отказались от виз для граждан ЕС, что еще больше снизило спрос на поездки в Россию. Максимизация доходов от потоков въездного туризма всегда является соблазном для правительств, однако эта практика имеет неприятные последствия, так как туристы могут просто переключиться на альтернативные направления, предлагающие похожие достопримечательности. Скорее всего, путешественники на дальние расстояния будут более охотно принимать разумно высокие расходы на визу, если они путешествуют по стране на протяжении длительного периода, но такие высокие расходы на визу чаще откладываются при краткосрочных визитах или путешествиях круизным лайнером (а Санкт-Петербург стал важным портом для круизов в Балтийском регионе). Китай ограничил доступ к туристическим поездкам для своих граждан, предоставив визы только для избранных пунктов назначения, и к концу девяностых годов только шесть стран, получили статус назначения (ADS). ADS позволяет китайским посетителям участвовать в групповых турах по причинам, связанным не только с бизнесом или образованием. Однако список стран, получающих ADS, быстро расширился, и в конце 2007 года США стали девяносто пятой страной, которая была добавлена. Почти 41 миллион китайцев, совершили поездки за границу в 2007 году, и по прогнозам до 100 миллионов ежегодно будут совершать поездки, поэтому к 2020 году страны, получающие ADS, надеются получить значительную долю в туризме на массовом рынке. Важно отметить, что, хотя ADS позволяет китайским компаниям предлагать туры в заграничную страну, туристы по-прежнему требуют виз на въезд в страну, и их не всегда легко получить.

Пример

Преимущества расширения Шенгенского соглашения Европейского союза для посетителей, не являющихся членами ЕС

В декабре 2007 года была расширена Шенгенская зона - 8 восточноевропейских стран и добавлена ​​Мальта, поэтому Соглашение теперь охватывает поездки в 24 европейских странах. Пограничный контроль облегчил перемещение между этими странами. В то время как европейские туристы и гости из США и Японии могут путешествовать без визы в зоне ЕС, другим туристам, перемещающимся по Европе, потребовалась бы отдельная виза для каждой страны, в которую они въехали. Теперь одна шенгенская виза может предоставить доступ ко всем 24 странам, экономя деньги, а также делая поездки по Европе более удобными и, таким образом, превращая Европу в более привлекательное место для некоторых иностранных туристов. Стоимость получения виз, а также сложность заявок могут побуждать путешественников выбирать поездки в страны, не требующие виз.

Налоговая политика

Правительственная политика в области налогообложения может влиять на туризм, независимо от того, применяются ли налоги непосредственно к туристам (например, налог на въезд или выезд), отрасль (например, на проживание в гостинице) или косвенно (например, НДС или налог с продаж, который может препятствовать покупкам и странам с более низким уровнем налогов). Он может даже поощрять однодневные поездки через границы, чтобы совершать покупки в районах, где налоги ниже. Тарифы на транспортировку, такие введены в 1997 году в штате Флорида, так и за его пределами, увеличивают стоимость перелета для семьи из четырех человек, отправляющихся в курорт Walt Disney World, на 70 фунтов стерлингов - значительную долю затрат от общего рейса - могут оказать значительное влияние на спрос на пункт назначения. Даже в Европейском союзе вариации налогообложения могут влиять на туристические потоки. В 1993 году Греция увеличила налог на выезд из аэропорта в три раза, до 5200 драхм (примерно 15 фунтов стерлингов), что позволило противостоять туроператорам и убедить «маргинальных» туристов переключиться на другие средиземноморские направления. Представительство британского правительства ввело налог на выезд из аэропорта в 1993 году (Air Passenger Duty, или APD) в размере 5 фунтов стерлингов в Европейском союзе и 10 фунтов стерлингов в другом месте, что широко раскритиковалось в прессе, и решение удвоить этот показатель с ноября 1997 года спровоцировало ярость в торговле. В феврале 2007 года он был дополнительно увеличен. Если доходы, полученные от такого налогообложения, были реинвестированы в туристическую отрасль, было бы меньше чувства возмущения, но когда оно вводится исключительно в качестве удобного средства повышения налогообложения, путешественники часто считают, что это несправедливость. Совсем недавно правительство предложило удалить APD, заменив его налогом на самолет (оплачивается на каждом рейсе, а не на количество пассажиров), который направлен на то, чтобы побудить авиакомпании обеспечить выполнение рейсов, близких к полной мощности. Это рассматривается как небольшой шаг к тому, чтобы сделать отрасль «более зеленой». В целом, если учесть уровень налогов, взимаемых с недорогих тарифов, предлагаемых в Европе перевозчиками, такими как easyJet, очевидно, что налоги могут регулярно составлять до 25 процентов расходов на воздушный транспорт.

 

 

Черкас Василий Васильевич

Заведующий кафедрой

Ученая степень: кандидат филологических наук

Ученое звание: доцент

Окончил Минский государственный педагогический институт иностранных языков (в настоящее время МГЛУ); специальность: преподаватель французского и немецкого языков.

В 1993 г. защитил кандидатскую диссертацию на тему "Функция собственно служебных слов в структуре глагольно-субстантивных соединений современного французского языка".

С 1995 г. заведующий кафедрой французского языка ГГУ им. Ф. Скорины, заместитель директора Франко-Белорусского института менеджмента, созданного на базе Гомельского университета совместно с Оверньским Университетом (г. Клермон-Ферран, Франция).

1999—2001 гг. — докторант кафедры лексикологии французского языка Минского государственного лингвистического университета. Тема докторской диссертации "Функционально-семантическое поле каузатива в современном французском языке".

2004—2005 гг. — начальник отдела международных связей Белорусского государственного университета физической культуры (БГУ ФК), директор центра межкультурных коммуникаций БГУ ФК.

2006—2009 гг. — доцент кафедры межкультурной экономической коммуникации Белорусского государственного экономического университета. Координатор совместной образовательной программы БГЭУ и Посольства Франции в РБ.

С февраля 2009 г. — доцент кафедры романских языков факультета международных отношений БГУ.

С сентября 2009 г. — заведующий кафедрой романских языков ФМО БГУ.

 

 

Повышение квалификации, стажировки, сертификаты, дипломы:

— "Университет Мартина Лютера (г. Халле, Германия) — 19-ый Международный лингвистический семинар.

— "Институт повышения квалификации при ТПП г. Клермон-Феррана (Франция) — Управление предприятием в условиях рыночной экономики.

— "Профессионализированный институт управления (Оверньский университет, Франция) — Проблемы преподавания экономических дисциплин в вузе.

 

— ТПП г. Парижа (Франция) — Французский язык делового общения. Использование новейших технических средств в процессе обучения французскому языку.

— ТПП г. Парижа (Франция) — Управление культурным центром в международном окружении. Обучение русскому деловому языку.

— Курсы по внутреннему аудиту системы менеджмента качества при Белорусском государственном экономическом университете.

Декабрь 2010 — Московский государственный институт международных отношений (Университет) МИД России (г. Москва, Россия).

Ноябрь 2011 — Министерство иностранных дел Республики Беларусь. Семинар-практикум для молодых дипломатов, специалистов со стажем работы в МИД до одного года, студентов и преподавателей профильных вузов.

14—18 мая 2012 г. — Минск, МГЛУ, факультет повышения квалификации и переподготовки кадров ИПК и ПК по образовательной программе "Лингвометодический практикум по преподаванию иностранных языков (французский язык)". Свидетельство № 14237824.

Ноябрь 2014 г. — Министерство иностранных дел Республики Беларусь.

Январь 2016 г. — Государственное учреждение образования «Республиканский институт высшей школы» по программе «Реализация стандартов высшего образования и учебных программ третьего поколения в учреждениях высшего образования». Свидетельство № 2412873.

 

22.01—02.02.2018 г. — ГУО «РИВШ» «Когнитивные практики обучения и воспитания поколения Z (диагностико-квалиметрическое сопровождение обучения поколения Z)».

 

Сфера научных интересов: каузативные связи в системе французского языка; французский специализированный язык (экономика, право, туризм, пресса и др.).

Преподаваемые курсы:

Теория и практика перевода французского языка для специальностей:

— Учебная программа для специальностей: 1-23 01 01 Международные отношения; 1-24 01 01 Международное право; 1-25 01 03 Мировая экономика; 1-26 02 02 Менеджмент (по направлениям); 1-96 01 01 Таможенное дело, (французский, испанский, португальский, итальянский языки). № УД-10053 / баз.

 

Практика устной и письменной речи (французский язык) для студентов специальностей:

Международные отношения

Государственный экзамен — Учебная программа для специальности 1-23 01 01 Международные отношения. Государственный экзамен по иностранному языку профессиональной деятельности (первому) (испанский, итальянский, португальский, французский). № УД—3420 / уч.

Международное право

— Учебная программа для специальности 1-24 01 01 Mеждународное право, МП1 (1-7 семестры). ИНОСТРАННЫЙ ЯЗЫК (ПЕРВЫЙ ФРАНЦУЗСКИЙ) (2016). 

— Учебная программа для специальности 1-24 01 01 Mеждународное право, МП2 (1-2; 5-7 семестры). ИНОСТРАННЫЙ ЯЗЫК (ВТОРОЙ ФРАНЦУЗСКИЙ) (2016).

— Учебная программа для специальности 1-24 01 01 Mеждународное право, МП2 (3-4 семестры). ИНОСТРАННЫЙ ЯЗЫК (ВТОРОЙ ФРАНЦУЗСКИЙ) (2016).

Государственный экзамен — Учебная программа для специальности 1-24 01 01 Международное право. Государственный экзамен по дисциплине "Иностранный язык (первый)" (испанский, итальянский, португальский, французский). № УД—3423 / уч.

Мировая экономика

— Учебная программа для специальности 1-25 01 03 Mировая экономика (МЭ1). Иностранный язык — 1 (французский).

Государственный экзамен — Учебная программа для специальности 1-25 01 03 Мировая экономика. Государственный экзамен по дисциплине "Иностранный язык (1-й)" (испанский, итальянский, португальский, французский). № УД—3422 / уч.

Таможенное дело:

Государственный экзамен — Учебная программа для специальности 1-96 01 01 Таможенное дело. Государственный экзамен по иностранному языку в профессиональной деятельности (первому) (испанский, итальянский, португальский, французский). № УД—3421 / уч.

Менеджмент (по направлениям):

Государственный экзамен — Учебная программа для специальности 1-26 02 02 Менеджмент (по направлениям). Государственный экзамен по иностранному языку (первому) (испанский, итальянский, португальский, французский). № УД—3419 / уч.

 

 

Деловая и дипломатическая переписка для специальности:

Международные отношения

— Учебная программа для специальности 1-23 01 01 Международные отношения, (французский, испанский, португальский, итальянский языки). 

 

Курс подготовки к сдаче магистерского экзамена

— Учебная программа для магистрантов по специальностям 1-23 80 06 История международных отношений и внешней политики; 1-24 80 01 Юриспруденция; 1-89 81 02 Инновационный менеджмент в сфере туризма; 1-25 80 02 Мировая экономика; 1-26 80 01 Управление в социальных и экономических системах. Иностранный язык — 1 (французский).

 

Основные публикации:

1. Черкас, В. В. Функция собственно служебных слов в структуре глагольно-субстантивных соединений современного французского языка / В. В. Черкас // Вопросы романского и германского языкознания. — Минск: Минский государственный педагогический институт иностранных языков, 1988. — С. 370—379.

2. Черкас, В. В. К вопросу о константности и вариативности глагольно-субстантивных соединений современного французского языка / В. В. Черкас // Проблемы методологии исследования языка. — Минск: МГПИИЯ, 1989. — С. 98—99.

3. Черкас, В. В. Некоторые аспекты изучения глагольно-субстантивных соединений французского языка / В. В. Черкас // Функциональная семантика. Структура значения и прагматика. — Москва: Институт языкознания АН СССР, 1989. — С. 119—129.

4. Черкас, В. В. Функционально-семантическая значимость собственно служебных слов в структуре глагольно-субстантивных соединений французского языка / В. В. Черкас // Функционально-семантические исследования языковых единиц и вопросы методики преподавания иностранных языков в вузе. — Гродно: Гродненский государственный университет, 1990. — С. 162—163.

5. Черкас, В. В. Французский терминологический словарь по экономике: учебное пособие для студентов экономистов / В. В. Черкас. — Гомель: Гомельский государственный университет им. Ф. Скорины, 1997. — 35 с.

6. Черкас, В. В. Sigles et abreviations economiques: учебное пособие для студентов-экономистов / В. В. Черкас. — Гомель: ГГУ им. Ф. Скорины, 1997. — 30 с.

7. Черкас, В. В. Использование компьютера в обучении иностранным языкам / В. В. Черкас // Актуальные вопросы научно-методической работы. — Гомель: ГГУ им. Ф. Скорины, 1998. — С. 207—208.

8. Черкас, В. В. Опыт применения компонентного анализа при исследовании семантики глагольно-субстантивных соединений французского языка / В. В. Черкас // Проблемы семантического описания единиц языка и речи. — Минск.: МГЛУ, 1998. — С. 98—100.

9. Черкас, В. В. Обучение иностранным языкам в современных условиях / В. В. Черкас // Межкультурная коммуникация и профессионально-ориентированное обучение иностранным языкам: материалы IV Междунар. науч. конф., посвящ. 89-летию образования БГУ, Минск, 29 окт. 2009 г./ редкол.: В. Г. Шадурский и др. — Мн.: Изд. Центр БГУ, 2010. — С. 97—98.

10. Черкас, В. В. Толковый словарь экономической терминологии французского языка / В. В. Черкас. — Факультет международных отношений Белорусского государственного университета, 2011. [Электронный ресурс]

11. Черкас, В. В. Сборник аутентичных текстов к устным темам для студентов старших курсов ФМО / В. В. Черкас. — Факультет международных отношений Белорусского государственного университета, 2011. [Электронный ресурс]

12. Черкас, В. В. Сборник аутентичных текстов для студентов старших курсов специальности Международное право ФМО / В. В. Черкас. — Факультет международных отношений Белорусского государственного университета, 2011. [Электронный ресурс]

13. Черкас, В. В. Толковый словарь юридической терминологии французского языка для специальностей Международное право, Международные отношения / В. В. Черкас. — Факультет международных отношений Белорусского государственного университета, 2011. [Электронный ресурс]

14. Черкас, В. В. Формирование профессионально-языковой компетенции у студентов неязыкового вуза / В. В. Черкас // Межкультурная коммуникация и профессионально-ориентированное обучение иностранным языкам: материалы V Междунар. науч. конф., посвящ. 90-летию образования Белорус. гос. ун-та, Минск, 28 октября 2011 г. / редкол.: В. Г. Шадурский [и др.]. — Мн.: Изд. центр БГУ, 2011. — С. 158.

15. Черкас, В. В. Организация самостоятельной работы студентов / В. В. Черкас // Практика преподавания иностранных языков на факультете международных отношений БГУ: электронный сборник. — Выпуск 1. — Минск, 2011. — С. 98—99.

16. Черкас, В. В. Проблема мотивации самостоятельной работы студентов / В. В. Черкас // Практика преподавания иностранных языков на факультете международных отношений БГУ: электронный сборник. — Выпуск 1. — Минск, 2011. — С. 99—100.

17. Черкас, В. В. Проектная методика в процессе обучения иностранному языку в вузе / В. В. Черкас // Межкультурная коммуникация и профессионально ориентированное обучение иностранным языкам: материалы VI Междунар. науч. конф., посвящ. 91-летию образования Белорус. гос. ун-та, Минск, 30 октября 2012 г. / редкол.: В. Г. Шадурский [и др.]. — Мн.: Изд. центр БГУ, 2012. — С.152—153.

18. Черкас, В. В. Учебно-методический комплекс для студентов отделения "Международное право" (специальность 1-24 01 01). Иностранный язык — 1 (французский) / В. В. Черкас [и др.] — Минск, БГУ, 2012. — 38 с.

19. Черкас, В. В. Учебно-методический комплекс для студентов отделения "Международные отношения" (специальность 1-23 01 01). Иностранный язык — 1 (французский) / В. В. Черкас, В. Г. Ерашова, Д. А. Ковалёв. — Минск, БГУ,2012. — 41 с.

20. Черкас, В. В. Учебно-методический комплекс для студентов отделения "Менеджмент" (специальность 1-26 02 02). Иностранный язык — 1 (французский) / В. В. Черкас, В. Г. Ерашова, Н. С. Лавникевич. — Минск, БГУ, 2012. — 38 с.

21. Черкас, В. В. Учебно-методический комплекс для студентов отделения "Мировая экономика" (специальность 1-25 01 03). Иностранный язык — 1 (французский) / В. В. Черкас, В. Г. Ерашова, М. И. Дятчик. — Минск, БГУ, 2012. — 38 с.

22. Черкас, В. В. Учебно-методический комплекс для студентов отделения "Таможенное дело" (специальность 1-96 01 01). Иностранный язык — 1 (французский) / В. В. Черкас, В. Г. Ерашова, Л. П. Яковлева. — Минск, БГУ, 2012. — 36 с.

23. Черкас, В. В. Учебно-методический комплекс для студентов отделения "Международные отношения" (специальность 1-23 01 01). Иностранный язык — 2 (французский) / В. В. Черкас, В. Г. Ерашова, Д. А. Ковалёв. — Минск, БГУ, 2012. — 34 с.

24. Черкас, В. В. Некоторые аспекты изучения каузативных отношений в системе французского языка / В. В. Черкас // Межкультурная коммуникация и профессионально ориентированное обучение иностранным языкам: материалы VII Международной конференции, посвященной 92-летию образования Белорусского государственного университета, 30 октября 2013 г. / редкол.: В. Г. Шадурский [и др.]. — Минск: Изд. центр БГУ, 2013. — C. 122—123.

25. Черкас, В. В. Дипломатическая переписка: сб. текстов и упражнений для студентов ст. курсов фак-та междунар. отношений в 2 ч. / сост.: В. В. Черкас, В. Г. Ерашова, Д. А. Ковалëв. — Минск: БГУ, 2014. — Ч. 1: Виды и правила дипломатической переписки. — 88 с.

26. Черкас, В. В. Дипломатическая переписка: сб. текстов и упражнений для студентов ст. курсов фак-та междунар. отношений в 2 ч. / сост.: В. В. Черкас, В. Г. Ерашова, Д. А. Ковалëв. — Минск: БГУ, 2014. — Ч. 2: Правила административной переписки. — 35 с.

27. Черкас, В. В. Дипломатическая служба: сб. текстов и упражнений для студентов ст. курсов фак-та междунар. отношений / сост.: В. В. Черкас, В. Г. Ерашова, Д. А. Ковалëв, Л. А. Крель. — Минск: БГУ, 2014. — 94 с.

28. Черкас, В. В. Языковые средства выражения каузативности во французском языке / В. В. Черкас // Межкультурная коммуникация и профессионально ориентированное обучение иностранным языкам: материалы VIII Международной конференции, 30 октября 2014 г. / редкол.: В. Г. Шадурский [и др.]. — Минск: Изд. центр БГУ, 2014. — С. 123—125.

29. Черкас, В. В. Особенности обучения французскому языку на основе прессы / В. В. Черкас // Межкультурная коммуникация и профессионально ориентированное обучение иностранным языкам: материалы IX Междунар. науч. конф., посвящ. 94-летию образования Белорус. гос. ун-та, Минск, 29 окт. 2015 г. / редкол.: В. Г. Шадурский (пред.) [и др.]. — Минск: РИВШ, 2016. — С. 117—118.

30. Черкас, В. В. Неологизмы в современном французском языке / В. В. Черкас // Межкультурная коммуникация и профессионально ориентированное обучение иностранным языкам : материалы Х Междунар. науч. конф., посвящ. 95-летию образования Белорус. гос. ун-та, Минск, 27 окт. 2016 г. / редкол. : В. Г. Шадурский (пред.) [и др.]. — Минск : Изд. центр БГУ, 2016. — С. 70—71.

Как связаться: тел.: +375 17 209 57 53, факс: +375 17 209 57 42, e-mail: vvtch@mail.ru

 

 

INTRODUCTION

The previous chapters have highlighted the very fragmented nature of the business which many refer to as ‘tourism’, being a complex amalgam of businesses that cooperate and work together to supply services and products to tourists as consumers. Each of these businesses and bodies are known as ‘organizations’, which are formal entities such as businesses or corporations that exist to interact, trade and exchange goods, services and knowledge to create wealth or other outputs through the use of their staff, capabilities and know-how within a tourism context. Profit is the main driver of many businesses operating in the private sector. But there are also organizations within the public sector (see Chapter 11) and voluntary sector which interact in tourism in a regulatory or voluntary sense or as interest groups (i.e. a professional organization such as ABTA, the Association of British Travel Agents – now the Travel Association), and seek to influence and affect change and represent specific interests or viewpoints. All of these organizations impact upon tourism and its direction, nature and operation (this will be discussed more fully in Chapter 11). For businesses to exist and operate effectively some form of management and organization is needed. This chapter will examine and develop the theme of management already raised throughout the book in each chapter, with a focus on the manager as the conduit for such action.

 

MANAGING TOURISM BUSINESSES: KEY PRINCIPLES

The vast array of business interests that are interlinked together in the production and delivery of tourism products largely operate for profit. For them to achieve this profit objective, they need management to get things done. In other words, management occurs in a formal sense in organizations, and in most cases, management is about harnessing the organization’s resources (especially people, as its most valuable asset) to create services, outcomes or products in line with what the tourist requires as a consumer. In practical terms tourism management involves harnessing the power over resources (i.e. people, finance, technology and the organization) to bring some degree of order to the tasks that must be undertaken for the organization to function and achieve its objectives. This will require a manager (or teams of managers) to link with employees to undertake managerial tasks, which comprise managerial work. Most tourism businesses work towards a set of common objectives. Tourism businesses are often organized internally into specialized functions (e.g. sales, human resource management, accounts and finance). This horizontal form of organization provides a structure for employees. Companies are also organized vertically into a hierarchy, and are characterized by different levels of power, authority and status. Within tourism organizations, managers are grouped by level (see Figure 10.1 ).

Managers can also be classified according to functional roles and include:

· functional managers , who manage specialized functions such as accounting, research, sales and personnel in large organizations;

· business unit, divisional or area managers , who exercise management responsibilities at a general level lower down in an organization; their responsibilities may cover a group of products or diverse geographical area and combine a range of management responsibilities;

· project managers , who manage specific projects (a project is typically a short-term undertaking) and may require a team of staff to complete it.

 

 

 THE PURPOSE OF MANAGEMENT IN TOURISM

ORGANIZATIONS

 The goals of managers within organizations are usually seen as profit-driven, but are often more diverse including:

· profitability , which can be achieved through higher output, better service, attracting new customers and cost minimization (for example, in 2005 –2006, British Airways reduced its middle and senior management by 351 posts to save £50 million in order to reduce costs to try and remain profitable)

· in the public sector, other goals (e.g. coordination, liaison, raising public awareness and undertaking activities for the wider public good) that dominate the agenda in organizations

· efficiency, to reduce expenditure and inputs to a minimum to achieve more cost-effective outputs; in 2008, United Airlines entered into a strategic alliance with continental Airlines (just short of a merger) to allow each company cross to sell seats on their respective airlines, and establish joint ventures to cooperate rather than compete due to the crisis in the US aviation sector

· effectiveness (achieving the desired outcome); this is not necessarily a profit-driven motive.

 Yet in practical terms, the main tasks of managers are based on the management process, which is how to achieve these goals. Whilst management theorists differ in the emphasis they place on different aspects of the management process, there are four commonly agreed sets of tasks: organizing, planning, leading and controlling (see Chapter 1).

 The process of management is an ongoing, ever-changing one in which the wide range of managers make decisions which affect the organization and nature of the business. Chief executive officers make decisions which have major impacts on the organization (e.g. the decision to downsize due to a drop in demand or to expand and grow the business) while more junior managers deal with more routine day-to-day decision-making. In managerial decision-making, two prevailing elements have to be balanced: technical skills and human skills. These are vital when interacting and managing people within the organization as well as those outside it such as clients and suppliers. This balancing of skills is often underpinned by an ability to communicate effectively and confidently with others, as well as an ability to lead and motivate people; it also highlights one other skill set that managers need to possess: cognitive and conceptual skills. Cognitive skills are those which enable managers to formulate solutions to problems and conceptual skills are those which allow them to take a broader view and consider the links with other areas of the business. These skills are apparent from studies of managers and their work. A study by Carroll (1988) identified clusters of management tasks, which characterized managers as:

1 representatives of the organization

2 investigators , who research issues and problems

3 negotiators , who communicate with one or more people over a transaction to reach a desired outcome, such as a contract

4 coordinators , who ensure that the organization’s resources are deployed to good effect to ensure flow in work tasks

5 evaluators , who observe, examine and control aspects of the organization’s activities

6 staffers , who control human resource functions

7 supervisors , who direct the everyday work of junior staff.

 These clusters inherently cause competing roles for managers, requiring them to have a wide range of competencies to be successful.

 According to Inkson and Kolb (1995: 32) a competency is an underlying trait of an individual – for example a motive pattern, a skill, a characteristic behavior, a value, or a set of knowledge – which enables that person to perform successfully in his or her job.

 The main motivation for organizational interest in competencies is their desire to improve management through education and training, and competencies can be divided into three groups:

 1 understanding what needs to be done

 2 getting the job done

 3 taking people with you. 

 Quinn et al. (1990) examined the skills, competencies and role of managers and concluded that the skill set of a manager often revolved around the following activities: mentoring, innovation, brokerage, as a provider, as a director, coordination, monitoring and facilitation.

The concern with competencies questions the simple notion of management as planning, organizing, leading and control; it emphasizes skills as the basis for management. However, relying upon only competencies may overlook the need for cognitive skills, which are related to personality and individual style, while conceptual skills are based on the natural abilities of individuals.

Above all, managers need to be adaptable and flexible to accommodate and lead change, particularly in fast-moving areas such as tourism. Among the common skills which a range of ecotourism businesses in Australia identified as critical to business performance were:

· business planning, financial planning, business plan skills, research

· general marketing skills, strategic marketing skills, an understanding of price, product, place and promotion

· operational skills, especially in terms of customers and business operations

· personal attributes, especially in dealing with people.

This list highlights the diversity of skills and knowledge that busi-

ness managers need.

 

Most significantly, change is a key feature for tourism businesses, and they need to be cognizant of a wide range of factors –sociocultural and economic issues (especially the nature of the economy), demographic changes, the role of legal and political changes, technological change (especially information technology), what the competition is doing, the global environment and role of change and uncertainty in markets. Internal resistance to change may be a problem for managers when seeking to move the business in new directions, and various techniques can be used to adapt to change including:

● education and communication

● participation and involvement

● facilitation and support

● negotiation and agreement

● manipulation and co-optation

● explicit and implicit coercion.

 The ability to learn to manage in new situations where there are no guidelines or models to follow is, according to Handy (1989), how people grow, especially in a managerial role. In fact managerial behavior has been studied through the twentieth century, from the early work of Fayol, Mintzberg and others who observed and studied what managers did and why. In terms of how managers react to new challenges and tasks, research has illustrated that much managerial work is mundane, based on establishing ongoing reciprocal working relationships within and between businesses (i.e. networking). A number of stages in managerial responses to work are:

● taking hold of the job, normally three to six months in

duration

● immersion, lasting four to eleven months

● reshaping, after a period of intense change, normally three to

six months

● consolidation, running for three to nine months

● refinement.

 Mintzberg argued that managers often work on a stimulus –response pattern, responding to problems, challenges and issues, and the nature of much of their work is fragmented and discontinuous, often being interrupted.

 

WHAT DO TOURISM MANAGERS MANAGE?

 Tourism is widely attributed as a service sector activity that has a high level of customer contact. Despite the wide range of tasks managers undertake, there are three principal management functions which tourism businesses need to be involved in when dealing with people as customers: marketing, operational issues and human resource management. Although other functions are important, these three are crucial where the service output is intangible. In a tourism context, marketing differs from other products because tourism is a service industry, the intangible elements, quality of delivery and evaluation of experiences being difficult to visualize. The heterogeneity (i.e. diversity), perishability (i.e. a tour cannot be stored and sold at a different time) and intangibility of tourism services make marketing a challenge when combined with two other key problems:

1 the customer must travel to the product/resource base to consume it

 2 the operator has little influence over the tourism activity

(holiday).

The marketing focus belies the fact that tourism consumption is based upon the provision of a service and so marketing as a process acts to link the customer with the supplier (see the example of the holiday brochure illustrated in Chapter 8). Marketing is also vital to establishing the market research, market needs, specification and nature of service provision in consumer industries (see the example of establishing a tour programme in Chapter 8).

 

 MARKETING TOURISM AS A MANAGEMENT FUNCTION

 

 Marketing is widely acknowledged as a vital prerequisite to communicating the product or service offering of businesses or suppliers to the market (as observed in Chapter 9). According to Kotlerand Armstrong (1991) , marketing is a process whereby individuals and groups obtain the type of products or goods they value. These goods are created and exchanged through a process, which requires a detailed understanding of consumers and their wants and desires so that the product or service is effectively and efficiently delivered to the client or purchaser.

 In particular, businesses need to understand, using market research, what markets they wish to serve and the service attributes they wish to offer; to establish the prices to be charged and to tailor the service to meet the clients ’ needs as closely as possible. They must then develop a communication program to inform them about the service (e.g. create a brochure, advertisement or other method of communication, such as the internet).

 To meet customer needs, a company analyses its own products or services in terms of its own business expertise and how competitors’ products and services may affect them. This is frequently undertaken as a SWOT analysis, which considers the Strengths and Weaknesses of, Opportunities for and Threats to its products

and services in the business environment.

 For those tourism operators who may wish to grow and expand, a number of options exist. Horner and Swarbrooke (1996: 325) indicate these can involve:

● marketing consortia , where a group of operators cooperate to create and develop a product

● strategic alliances , where different businesses agree to cooperate in various ways (this varies by sector in the tourism industry, and includes such things as marketing agreements or technical cooperation)

● acquisition , which is the purchase of equity in other operations

● joint ventures , where operators seek to create new businesses

● franchising , where major operators use their market presence and brand image to further extend their influence by licensing franchisees to operate businesses using their corporate logo and codes.

 However, the actual implementation of marketing for tourism ultimately depends on the ‘marketing mix ’ a company chooses.

The marketing mix

 The marketing mix is ‘the mixture of controllable marketing variables that the firm [or company] uses to pursue the sought level of sales in the target market ’ (Kotler, cited in Holloway and Plant 1988: 48). This means that in any tourism organization there are four main marketing variables that need to be harnessed:

1 Product formulation , which is the ability of a company to adapt to the needs of its customers in terms of the services it provides. Products are constantly being adapted to changes in consumer markets.

2 Price , which is the economic concept used to adjust the supply of a service to meet the demand, taking account of sales targets and turnover.

3 Promotion , which is the manner in which a company seeks to improve customers ’ knowledge of the services it sells so that those people who are made aware may be turned into actual purchasers. To achieve promotional aims, advertising, public relations, sales and brochure production functions are undertaken within the remit as promotion.

4  Place , which is the location at which prospective customers may be induced to purchase a service – the point of sale (e.g. a travel agent or another point of distribution such as the worldwide web).

 These ‘four Ps ’ are incorporated into the marketing process in relation to the known competition and the impact of market conditions. Thus, the marketing process involves the continuous evaluation of how a business operates internally and externally to meet customer requirements.

 

MANAGING OPERATIONAL ISSUES IN TOURISM BUSINESSES

 Operational issues have traditionally dominated the focus of most service organizations centred on tourism, particularly where labour-intensive operations exist (e.g. at an airport). Business operations in tourism assume a major role: the highly seasonal nature of tourism requires seasonal staff at resorts, airports, in hotels and for transport operators. Demand is largely concentrated in six months of the year and this is a key management challenge for many businesses. Seasonality shapes tourism demand from consumers due to a wide range of factors including the climate and environment of the origin area and the attraction of the destination. Pricing is also used by tourism businesses to capitalize upon peak demand in popular summer months. In less popular seasons (e.g. autumn and winter), businesses may seek to leverage support from public sector bodies to host large-scale events (e.g. the Harbin ice festival in China) and attract visitors out of season. Events in the winter, such as Hogmanay in Scotland and new year celebrations in London (which attracts around 250 000 people) are a way of providing a stimulus to reduce seasonality effects.

 Some destinations experience one-peak seasonality (e.g. coastal resorts in the summer season) or two-peak seasonality (a summer and winter season) while many urban destinations experience nonpeak seasonality, where the climate and environment do not cause peaks as different international markets ’ holidaytaking habits shape the pattern of seasonal demand. Seasonality means that individual businesses have to be able to manage the peaks and troughs of demand and supply. For example, in January 2006, British Airways made 1.5 million promotional air fares available for travel up to December 2006 to stimulate demand and fill airline seats so that its scheduled departures met their revenue targets for each flight, in spite of good loadings of around 74 per cent for the last three months of 2005. The timing of travel by different markets is vividly illustrated by patterns of tourism to Iceland. Most of the visitor arrivals from continental Europe are concentrated in the months June to August, and occupancy rates for hotels in the capital exceed 75 per cent in these months. At the same time, the island has been able to accommodate a growth in seasonal visitor arrivals from 70 000in 1982 to 300 000 in 2003 to 356 000 in 2005 which required additional hotel capacity if demand was to be met.

 Operational issues assume a dominant day-to-day role for many businesses, especially in places where large volumes of tourists are being managed, such as attractions or airports. To ensure the smooth flow and organization of these activities managers must delegate a great deal of responsibility in managing the interactions with visitors to front-line staff. The area is often termed ‘operations management ’ and it focuses on five interrelated areas:

1 capacity , which is understanding the ability of the organization to produce something (such as service)

2 standards , which are those prevailing within the tourism sector (such as waiting times at an airport check-in or hotel reception)

 3 scheduling , which is the planning of work and use of the organization’s physical and human resources

4 inventory , which is understanding the organization’s ability to meet supply and demand

5 control, which ensures the operations are managed in an efficient and systematic manner and brings the planning, preparation and readiness inherent in the four functions above into action.  

Much of this is dependent upon having competent staff to undertake these tasks.

 

MANAGING SERVICE PROVISION: HUMAN RESOURCE ISSUES AND SERVICE DELIVERY According to Baum (1993: 4) tourism can be conceptualized as a client purchasing ‘the skills, service and commitment of a range of human contributors to the experience that they are about to embark upon ’ highlighting the importance of human resource management (HRM) issues and the challenge this poses for tourism managers (see Table 10.1 ). Many of these issues are embedded in some specific problems which the tourism sector faces including: ● demographic issues related to the shrinking pool of potential employees and labour shortages (as discussed in Chapter 7)

● the tourism industry’s image as an employer

● cultural and traditional perceptions of the tourism industry

● rewards and compensation for working in the sector

● education and training

● skill shortages at the senior and technical levels linking human resource concerns with service and product quality

● poor manpower planning

● a remedial rather than proactive approach to human resource issues.

In line with management, HRM is concerned with planning, monitoring and control of the human resource as a management process. More complex analyses of HRM identify the concern that the individual human resource system within any organization is able to realize the strategic objectives of the organization (i.e. the delivery of excellent customer service to tourism consumers) as will become evident later in the discussion of the Disney model. For the medium- or large-sized tourism enterprise, human resource issues and the factors affecting their performance are usually linked to the staff and workforce; therefore, recognizing the role of recruitment and ongoing development of the staff resource to achieve strategic goals becomes essential. The scale of the human resource function will often reflect the size of the organization and specific functions (e.g. training and development) may be allocated to specific individuals whereas in smaller organizations the commitment to core functions (recruitment and retention) may be all that is possible, due to work pressures and constraints on staff time. The major challenges for the tourism industry in the new millennium are aptly summarized by Cooper et al . (1998: 458) : the challenges facing the tourism industry will only be met successfully by a well-educated, well-trained, bright, energetic, multi-lingual and entrepreneurial workforce who understand the nature of tourism and have a professional training. A high quality of professional human resources in tourism will allow enterprises to gain a competitive edge and deliver added value with their service. People do make a difference in what is undoubtedly a people business. More sophisticated human resource policies need to be developed and implemented in the following areas for the tourism sector to be responsive to add value to its staff and change the sectors’ image as an employer:

 ● induction of staff

● appraisal and staff performance evaluation

● effective staff communication

● rewarding initiative and excellence

● empowering staff

● improved industry – education collaboration. Source

 Therefore, the quality, commitment and effectiveness of human resources can be critical in businesses ’ competitiveness. Understanding how HRM issues interact and, more importantly, what types of service staff need to provide, are significant elements for managing tourism businesses.

 

SERVICE PROVISION IN TOURISM: A PERENNIAL MANAGEMENT CHALLENGE? Service provision can be conceptualized as a system in which elements of the product are created and assembled and delivered to the customer. Whilst parts of the service are visible to the consumer, the manner of delivery is what will entail exposure to the tourist and will impact upon the company’s reputation as a service provider. The tourist’s satisfaction with the service delivered in tourism will focus upon two critical elements: the technical and the functional quality of the service. The technical quality relates to the measurable elements, such as whether an airline seat of a certain quality was provided and delivered. In contrast, the functional element relates to the impression one wants a client to receive: an overall impression that is more holistic and gauges satisfaction with what was consumed. Whilst the analysis of functional quality is more intangible, as Chapter 8 illustrated in terms of human behaviour in travel agencies, certain factors – such as posture, the use of a smile, voice, attitude, empathy and responsiveness – will have a major bearing. For tourism managers, seeking to achieve consistent levels of service in tourism will be measured by tourist satisfaction. This is a complex phenomenon since satisfaction is linked to a consumer’s emotions and level of expectation of the service being consumed. This is partly dependent upon three interrelated factors: the level of equity in the service provided, whether expectations were met, and perception of the actual performance. This requires managers to understand in more detail the technical aspects of service provision in tourism, especially:

● what the final product is

● how it is produced

● the form and shape the service will take

● who ultimately delivers the service.

 

Therefore, recognizing that customer service is central to the satisfaction levels of tourism services is significant because consumers are often buying something they have high expectations of, based on the marketing mix (the price, product, place and promotion), which is shaped by people, physical attributes (i.e. was the weather good?) and processes of delivery. In a customer contact business, managers need to be aware of the most commonly measured elements that determine service quality. These elements are known among researchers as SERVQUAL determinants:

● tangible elements

● reliability

● responsiveness

● communication

● credibility

● security

● competence

● courtesy

● understanding/knowing the consumer

● access/ease of approach and contact.

 

These are central in managing the service encounter with tourists and at an operational level will determine how customer expectations/needs are met. One area which is vital in meeting tourists ’ expectations is communication. This is important not only in marketing a company but also for the way in which individual companies locate and nurture their customer base. In some sectors of the tourism industry defined standards of service and provision may exist to meet visitor expectations. Three key elements are associated with the staffing of tourism enterprises, based on the SERVQUAL model:

1 the responsiveness of staff – their willingness to help promptly (rather than ignore customers and leave them waiting, as many call centres now do with direct sales and the telephone waiting systems)

2 the assurance of staff – their ability to evoke images of trust and confidence associated with the company’s offerings (as opposed to those staff who bemoan the problems of service delivery and weak elements in the system that have contributed to service failure)

 3 staff empathy – their ability to provide tourists with individual attention and a commitment to the service they are providing (as opposed to more disaffected staff who do not have a stake in the business they are working for which may reflect poor levels of pay and motivation along with the use of casual staff).

When things go wrong, as they sometimes do when dealing with human behaviour that is not predictable and needs and attitudes to tourism services that are not homogenous, staff and businesses can follow a number of simple principles in handling complaints:

● act professionally , remaining calm and confident whilst listening to the nature of the problem raised by the tourist

● apologize for the problem and agree to try and resolve it, summarizing what you will do, the time scales involved and the proposed solution

● ensure the tourist leaves satisfied with the outcome, but avoid committing to any specific solution or outcome until all the facts and information have been collected and analysed to provide an informed opinion

● refer the matter to a manager where necessary, working within the level of responsibility you are empowered to deal with.

Yet there are some businesses such as the Disney Corporation which go far beyond that approach to service provision: their customer service is widely seen as an example of international best practice; a good example whose principles other businesses can emulate to be successful and to improve their performance (see Box 10.1).

DEVELOPING AND MANAGING TOURISM VENTURES IN THE SMALL BUSINESS SECTOR There is a tendency to assume that tourism has great potential to stimulate economic development if it is managed well. The basic argument is that the fledgling new business of today could develop and grow into the large international corporation of the future. This may occur in a few cases, such as the rise of the Virgin transport conglomerate which evolved from the Virgin Atlantic airline venture. Many governments have avidly supported small business development in tourism owing to its future employment-generating potential, although they were not overtly concerned until the 1980s with ensuring managers and owners had the skill set needed to manage such enterprises. The small business sector (also known as small- and medium-sized enterprises or SMEs; very small ventures are ‘micro enterprises ’) does play a major role in most countries, not least for its employment role but also because it is a key element of the industry. According to Morrison (1996: 400) Developing and managing tourism ventures in the small business sector 395 a small tourism business is financed by one individual or small group and is directly managed by its owner(s), in a personalised manner and not through the medium of a formalised management structure … it is perceived as small, in terms of physical facilities, production/service capacity, market share and number of employees. Morrison goes on to argue that traditionally the tourism industry has been dominated by the small business and this still remains true in the 1990s. Currently in Ireland … firms with less than fifteen employees account for around 79 per cent of all Irish tourism businesses. (1996: 401) Indeed, it is notable that the success often attributed to Ireland as a booming tourism destination can be directly related to activity across the tourism sectors, in which SMEs play a role. However, in terms of small tourism firms, entrepreneurship seems weakly developed because tourism is perceived as having low entry barriers (i.e. you do not need large amounts of capital and investment to start a venture like a bed-and-breakfast establishment). The main management issues affecting tourism SMEs is highlighted by Carter (1996: 4504) who suggested that irrespective of the relative size of each country’s small business sector, the main management characteristics of small firms remain similar regardless of nationality. Researchers have consistently noted that small firms play an important role in new product and process innovation and are characterised by their product specialisation … [and] … that these firms are undercapitalised, product-led, family-owned concerns in which the management function is confined to one person or a few key individuals. The short-term planning horizon of many tourism SMEs, their limited knowledge of the business environment and their ownermanaged structure influences the way tasks are managed. SME managers rely upon attitudes, personal qualities (i.e. leadership skills) and experience. The differences between small and large firm management is that the preparation of ongoing business plans and the marketing function in SMEs is seen as peripheral to the management task of running the business. Many of these characteristics are borne out in the studies by Shaw and Williams (2002) , where few businesses had formal marketing strategies, skills and knowledge of the tourism business. Many localities promote tourism business development because it has the potential to form linkages with businesses that supply it (‘backward linkages ’) and with those it supplies ( ‘forward linkages’) and so has the potential to generate economic development. An example of a backward linkage is a new hotel sourcing local food supplies. These types of supply chain, using local networks, have attracted a great of attention from public and private sector organizations seeking to promote local collaboration, where collaborations can also become the basis for expanding regional tourism products and events. This can help to create a distinctive local and regional product offering and when these networks evolve into producer groups they can also add value to the tourist experience. Research focused on the accommodation sector has shown that many new entrants to this sector have little experience of the business and have a wide range of motives for entering the market. What is interesting in the tourism sector is that the sources of venture capital for new businesses are varied, with a proportion often coming from families and contacts in small business ventures. However, tourism entrepreneurs need to harness managerial skills if their business idea is to work. In Cornwall, research by Williams and Shaw (2002) found that more than 50 per cent of capital came from these sources, especially for older entrepreneurs.

 

 

The grounds given by over 80 per cent of these entrepreneurs for establishing their businesses included lifestyle reasons (i.e. a better way of life), as they were new migrants to the region. There is also evidence that where these businesses are operated by family members, there are social benefits that are additional to the lifestyle reasons for operation. Similar reasons are also evident in a new form of business venture now appearing in the UK – homeworking travel agents. Home-working travel agents have started to become established as a new form of business venture to offset the decline in the conventional high street travel agent in the face of massive competition from the online agencies discussed in Chapter 8. A number of travel agent companies have set up home-working as a selfemployed model of a franchised travel agency where the employee is based at home and works the hours to suit their clients and their lifestyle. Travel Counsellors, Hays Travel and Instant Holidays are three examples of home-working business brands. They support the home-workers with state-of-the-art ICTs, a head office function, advertising and the provision of leads to generate business. This provides many travel agents with the flexibility of working from home as well as the opportunity to operate when clients want to contact them (i.e. out of normal office hours), competing with the way consumers use the internet and plan/book travel. Clients are provided with a dedicated person for each booking and inquiry. In 2005, Travel Counsellors had recruited 560 travel consultants and has recently been licensed to offer dynamic packaging; the company expects to expand its current £150 million turnover in 2006 and plans to recruit further consultants as organizations such as the high street chain Going Places closed 110 locations which were no longer profitable. By 2008 it had 900 consultants supported by 200 staff at its Bolton head office. The scale of travel agency provision and market share of travel business in the UK in 2006 was still dominated by the four main chains. TUI operated 700 high street travel agencies under the Thomson brand, controlling 16 per cent of the market. Thomas Cook operated 600 shops, 7 travel warehouses and 120 Bureau de Changes (foreign currency exchanges), plus 3 call centres and 40 home-workers, controlling 10 per cent of the market. MyTravel has downsized with the rationalization of its Going Places chain from 624 to 514 shops, which may be further reduced to 500 by late 2006, but it still retains a 10 per cent share of the market. First Choice had around 269 shops, 38 holiday hypermarkets and 2 call centres with a 9 per cent share, while Expedia.co.uk and the Cendant Corporation (with Travelbag, a call centre, eight shops and an online agency) both have a 3 per cent share to provide a comparison with the main high street provision. Yet in 2006, there were also debates among analysts that the low-cost airlines Ryanair and easyJet were likely to sell more accommodation as part of their online travel business than the top four high street chains. This illustrates how the travel market and model of business competition is changing rapidly. Small businesses seeking to compete in the mass market will need to become niche product providers if they are to offer something different from the mass market products now being sold by the low-cost airlines. Yet in 2007 with two mergers of major holiday companies (TUI and First Choice; Thomas Cook and MyTravel) the travel agency ownership was reconfigured thus: TUI and First Choice had 650 shops, MyTravel 458 shops and Thomas Cook 548 shops (a combined 1006 shops for Thomas Cook Group). With many countries having a strong dependence upon small businesses in the tourism sector, it is not surprising that many government agencies are concerned with improving the performance and managerial skills of new businesses when they do not enter the market for profit-only motives. For example, in New Zealand, 99 per cent of the country’s businesses are based in the SME sector, which employ 60 per cent of the working population. Over 85 per cent of these businesses employ fewer than five people and this is replicated through the tourism and hospitality sector, though the hospitality industry tends to employ more staff. What is apparent is that new business start-ups and small business ventures in tourism have specific management requirements, with a common range of obstacles to improving business performance including: ● high rates of inflation ● high labour costs ● high interest rates ● high rents or rates ● debtors/poor cash flow ● lack of external guidance on business development ● competition from other businesses ● low labour productivity ● lack of skilled employees ● insufficient customer demand ● government regulations and bureaucracy ● limited access to finance ● competition from large firms. This highlights the scope of management challenges faced by many small tourism and hospitality businesses. Addressing these through good management skills is critical, and in the initial setup stage of the business venture particular attention should be paid to the obvious financial issues through a feasibility study or business plan. The website www.scotexchange.net, funded by Scottish Enterprise and hosted by the National Tourism Organization VisitScotland, has a page entitled ‘Business development ’ aimed at entrepreneurs seeking to start their own business. The page examines the following points: ● How do I get started? ● Marketing ● Knowing your market ● Networking ● Staff-related issues ● Risks in setting up a business ● Business types. It has related links to Scottish Enterprise advice through its network of regional enterprise companies and Scotland Small Business Gateway site ( www.sbgateway.com ). Above all, these sites highlight much of the conventional wisdom on small business start-ups in tourism and hospitality, and the importance of developing a good business plan and the role of innovation.

 

TOURISM AND INNOVATION Challenges for tourism managers Innovation is often seen as one way in which businesses may seek to gain competitive advantage, especially where innovation in the face of competition leads to growth, survival or enhanced profitability. Innovation implies change of some sort ( Figure 10.2 ) and can be divided into a number of areas: diffusion of new ideas, products or processes; adoption by individual organizations and levels of innovativeness. Much of the existing research on innovation emerged after Schumpeter’s study (1952) which identified five principal routes to innovation (demonstrated in Figure 10.3 ) with a number of tourism applications. What this highlights is that much of the focus of innovation centres on creative thinking and inventiveness. For tourism managers, the challenge is to understand the ways it is adopted, used by organizations and diffused to the business and commercial/non-commercial environment to provide solutions to problems or generate ideas that can make a difference to the way a business operates or functions.

How and why does innovation occur and what is its significance in tourism? Human actors, environmental factors such as turmoil and crisis, idea champions and external factors such as government intervention and competition can induce innovation. What is not clear in existing research is whether management is necessary to encourage innovation, or whether it will occur without the influence of management. However, managers need to understand the role of innovation and its potential to improve business processes and the client –organization interface and to add value to the business (i.e. it may lead to cost savings). This is important in a people industry such as tourism, which is reliant upon new ideas, experiences and destinations for the generation of new product ideas. Business research highlights that there are pioneer adopters in some organizations who embrace innovation and the change that it may induce, and adapt the innovation to fit the company’s needs. In contrast, innovation laggards hold out against innovation and change until the majority of the workforce accepts it. Innovation in organizations is seen to pass through a number of stages including: ● invention ● application ● adoption diffusion, where a number of sub-stages exist including: marketing the idea, interest arousal, trial implementation, continued use and full implementation. One of the key stages for a tourism business is in the adoption stage, which may reflect the receptiveness of the organization –highlighting its degree of innovativeness and willingness to experiment with new ideas. This will often depend upon the level of innovation, which can range from mildly new to radically new (from the producer’s perspective), and is also reflected in how the consumer might perceive the innovation. Two contrasting examples can be seen in the field of air travel: a mildly innovative idea is the reduction in the number of cabin crew to reduce costs and service levels; a very radical one is the removal of all in-flight service. Innovation is critical in tourism, given the sector’s fast- evolving nature. Being trend driven means that tourism has to adapt and innovate to meet consumers ’ needs for improved quality and new products and experiences, a feature recognized in the recent Scottish Tourism Framework for Action 2002 –2005 and its successor which runs to 2010 (see Chapter 11). In 2001, a Tourism Innovation Group was formed by the tourism industry to promote such processes to make Scottish tourism more competitive. One intended outcome of their actions and why they are engaged in such a process as a result of intervention by Scottish Enterprise, is to promote greater levels of innovation. Much of their work in this area is world leading, since few other public sector agencies have pursued and championed such an ambitious innovation programme. Scottish Enterprise, which covers 93 per cent of the Scottish population through its regional offices, has a fourfold approach to involvement in tourism to promote a competitive edge and improvement to the visitor experience. The areas are: ● business leadership ● destination development ● product development ● innovation. It embraces: ● the Tourism Innovation Group , with its resulting Pride and Passion programme for encouraging new ideas, with passionate people able to promote it.

 

Learning Journeys to destinations deemed to be innovative and able to provide learning experiences for participants, generating ideas to introduce into their businesses ● a Tourism Innovation Day , where members of the tourism industry can gather to hear about and share new ideas and best practice in innovation ● a Tourism Innovation Toolkit and training programme to facilitate in-company innovation and training ● an annual Innovation Development Award to help fund promising new ideas by financially assisting the development of a feasibility study to implement the idea ● a Destination Development programme to help focus resources geographically into leading destinations to foster excellence in key areas ● an Ambassadors Scheme aimed at encouraging enhanced product development. Each initiative is driven by a desire to see innovative businesses fostered to cater for tomorrow’s tourists and their changing needs, while also acting as a high-profile model for other businesses to learn from and its successes are shown in Box 10.2 . This approach to tourism intervention is based on the perceived need for leadership in the tourism sector, which is dominated by many SMEs. SMEs are predominantly operationally focused and not renowned for their long-term vision and strategic assessment of how tourism markets are evolving and what new products are needed to cater for these markets. For small businesses to be innovative, they must often overcome the barriers of size and resources, especially in terms of financial, technical and human resources. They may also be inhibited by a lack of marketing expertise. Yet where innovation occurs, it can be very significant and some researchers have focused on the concept of niche tourism (i.e. new forms of specialized tourism products and experiences) as one outcome of the innovation process. Being innovative as a manager also requires being aware of the wider business environment and how this may impact on one’s business, especially given the growing interest in tourism and competitiveness as shown in Box 10.3 . Pechlaner, Fischer and Hammann (2005) point to where leadership needs to occur for innovation to flourish in a destination, also requiring cooperation among different actors and players to the extent that the innovation process can only be successfully implemented if the following are involved: ● leaders , such as political authorities and members of regional development agencies such as Scottish Enterprise with an understanding of the regional context and destination; ● managers in tourism businesses, including entrepreneurs who understand the market and likely take-up of an innovation. The recognition of these different players illustrates why networking and encouragement of cooperation and collaboration by agencies to facilitate this activity is vital. Competitiveness among tourism destinations is often framed in terms of their ability to attract an increasingly demanding consumer, seeking new experiences and attractions that stimulate their senses and feelings. This is evident with major tourist capital cites such as London where large attractions like the London Dungeon (Figure 10.4) develop a growing interest in new trends such as dark tourism which focuses on past events that have a dark history. Equally, destinations may focus upon iconic elements in their built envrionment which have a worldwide appeal and recognition as another way of attracting visitors. For example, Figure 10.5 is of a San Francisco cable car, which is a popular ‘must do’ attraction for visitors, given the city’s role as a film tourism destination. The cable car is a familiar feature in many films and has a global role in promoting visits to the city. One of the key features of competitiveness is how destinations compare against each other in terms of their performance, measured using indicators such as visitor arrivals and tourism growth. Such studies are often undertaken by analysts and this is part of a growing interest in benchamarking. Benchmarking is a research tool used to understand one’s competitive position in relation to other destinations. This may involve compiling rankings of performance which are used by organizations to measure their relative position as a destination as well as for targeting areas to improve one’s performance from a management perspective. Above all, competitiveness focuses destinations and managers on how to constantly strive to improve their tourism product and experience, so as to try to stay ahead of other competing destinations and businesses. Since tourism is very much a trend driven activity, then an understanding of competitiveness is vital to any business operating in this sector. One form of innovation that is constantly evaluated and examined by tourism managers is growth options and the need to pursue new business ideas such as establishing new developments, and the next section examines how managers need to approach such ideas.

TOURISM MANAGEMENT IN ACTION: DESIGNING AND DEVELOPING A VISITOR ATTRACTION One of the key features inherent in tourism is the tourist’s search for something new – a new experience and a new place to visit or new activity. Part of the innovation development process for businesses is how they evaluate the feasibility of new ideas and potential business ventures or developments. This is usually undertaken in two stages: the construction of a business plan that sets out the ideas and then a more detailed feasibility study if investment of external or large sums of money is involved. The formulation of a business plan will usually need to examine the fairly standard set of issues, many of which are listed in Table 10.2in a simplified form. This is a fairly reflective exercise for a company, entrepreneur or planner and asks a range of questions. Many lending institutions also offer advice to new ventures regarding creating a business plan, and provide software to assist in the development of the final plan to a pre-determined structure. The business plan is the stage where many of the issues are scoped out and identified, and the proposal will identify what might be expected to occur. However, for a much larger venture, such as the building of a new tourist attraction, or modification and expansion involving the investment of large capital sums, a feasibility study will normally be undertaken, which is often contracted out to consultants who can offer specialist advice on certain aspects of the project. It requires detailed research or the compilation of existing research knowledge, and analysis of a range of issues as the example in Box 10.4 will show. This is a typical framework for many feasibility studies. The critical element which has proved so controversial in the UK relates to the availability of Millennium Fund grants to new visitor attraction developments. In many cases, consultants have overestimated the market for these developments and in some cases the developments have run into financial trouble within a year to 18 months of opening; some have closed (see Chapter 9). This highlights the problems that employing consultants can pose for entrepreneurs and businesses: managers need to have a degree of understanding of the business process involved in a business plan and feasibility study. In each case, an impartial view or evaluation by a third party may help managers validate or reject the outcome of the study, rather than simply reiterate the findings which they are looking for simply to secure funding, which may lead to financial problems if the plan is implemented and it is not viable and realistic. In other words, the multi-skilled nature of managing a tourism business and new opportunities requires a balance of risktaking counterweighted by financial prudence and a questioning mind to ensure that any investment is well used.

 

CONCLUSION Managing tourism is a dynamic activity: change, more change and upheaval is a function of managing a fast-changing business. Tourism businesses are subject to the vagaries of consumer tastes and market conditions, and can easily be sent into crisis by catastrophic events such as SARS, avian flu or other disease outbreak; civil disturbances (i.e. riots); and environmental disasters such as hurricanes or floods. There is a growing recognition among large tourism organizations that they need to have contingency plans to plan for such events and to engage in an understanding of crisis management (see Chapter 13). However, this is probably less challenging than day-to-day operational issues and responding effectively in a competitive market where cost, service quality and delivery at a suitable price are now dominant. Nevertheless, there is a growing need for businesses to understand the anatomy of a crisis and its different phases (i.e. pre-crisis; crisis and post-crisis) so they can begin to understand the management challenges it poses at each stage. Even normal operating conditions can prove challenging as market trends, unforeseen events, structural problems in a business and corporate philosophy can have a substantial bearing on business performance. The following example illustrates the significance of these respective factors in relation to the airline industry. United Airlines made an operating loss of US$1 360 000 000 in 2003 and US$777 000 000 in 2004. Similarly, Delta had losses of US$785 000 000 in 2003 and US$ 3 308 000 in 2004. Since 2000, the largest six full-service carriers in the USA have incurred losses of US$14 billion. The business travel sector no longer supports the lucrative firstclass (business-class) market in the USA, which was a high-yielding segment, causing the companies to rely on less lucrative coach class (economy) in the last five years. In stark contrast, SouthWest Airlines was one of the world’s most profitable airlines after Ryanair. The full-cost service airlines like Delta and United had massive cost and management structures that are out of line with current models of profitable airline production, making it difficult for them to compete with the likes of SouthWest on an equal basis. Therefore, these full-service carriers have sought to restructure to reduce their cost base. At the same time, these airlines have been seeking to reposition, restructure and redesign their major company offerings. The low-cost carriers in the USA have provided many examples of innovative provision, tailoring their products to the changing market. Some analysts have argued that the low-cost carriers have evolved the market so that demand now follows the low-cost supply model, causing fullservice provision to be completely overhauled in the USA. These examples show that the business model airlines use, marketing, operations management and human resource management functions are critical to delivering their service to the tourist. Even in the face of adverse conditions such as 11 September, businesses responded to the market conditions and adapted, innovated and responded to new situations. In the case of the US airline industry, the scope for innovation was limited by negative publicity and a reduction in air travel. But in other sectors of the tourism industry, innovative advertising, moving capacity such as cruise ships to new destinations and routes, and promoting domestic travel, can allow managers to re-orient their business activities to fit with demand. Ultimately, management of tourism in the private sector is about marrying supply with demand, and in managing capacity so that peaked demand through seasonality is accommodated and profitability is achieved. Yet there are various agencies and organizations that work alongside the private sector businesses and act as facilitators of tourism, to ensure it is planned, managed and developed in a manner that befits each locality. For this reason, Chapter 11 turns to the role of tourism agencies and the public sector in managing tourism.

Chapter 11

Chapter 10 introduced the concept of tourism management in relation to the way private sector businesses interact, operate and perform in market economies. It highlighted the importance of management to ensure that for private sector companies profitability is ensured. Yet tourism operates in a wider macro-economic environment beyond the level of the firm and that environment can be indirectly and directly managed, influenced and directed by government. According to Elliot (1997) , there are four main questions that need to be asked in relation to the involvement of government in tourism:

 1 Why are governments important to tourism, and why do governments get involved in tourism management?

2 Who are the main participants in the tourism policy system?

 3 How is management of tourism policy carried out, and how do such managers manage?

 4 What are the effects on tourism – has it led to success or failure?

This chapter will explore these questions and explain how the public sector manages tourism, emphasizing the role of policymaking, the implementation through planning and the impact on the management of tourism.

 

GOVERNMENTS AND TOURISM Governments become involved in tourism either through direct action to develop facilities and areas or indirectly by nurturing organizations that foster tourism. To the political scientist, tourism is an interesting phenomenon because for it to thrive, the ideal conditions are political stability, security, a well-defined legal framework and the essential services and infrastructure (roads, water supplies and a suitable environment) that the state is able to provide these services at both the national level and also at a regional and local level, through local councils (see Table 11.1 ). In addition, national governments are the main organizations, which negotiate on immigration, visa requirements and landing rights for airlines. These statutory responsibilities are often delegated to different government departments and do not take account of more active involvement in tourism. The main factor at work here is power – the ability to use influence and authority to effect decisions and change. Whilst governments are expected to perform statutory tasks such as immigration and negotiating aviation rights for the wider public good, it is their degree of involvement and commitment to tourism over and above these statutory functions that is important. In other words, if power is about ‘who gets what, when and how in the political system ’ ( Elliot 1997 : 10), then the political system is worthy of consideration. This is because it can explain why some countries, regions and localities are characterized by high levels of public sector management (PSM) and involvement and others are not. PSM is how the government influences tourism through actions and policies to either constrain or develop tourism. To governments, PSM is expected to effect change due to intervention, which is being in the ‘public interest ’ and based on principles of accountability, which are determined by the political and legal system and PSM culture. In other words, PSM is the way in which governments manage tourism although few tourism commentators would adopt that perspective, preferring to deny that government has an active role in management directly, since it is often delegated to purpose-designed tourism bodies such as National Tourism Organizations.

 

Why governments intervene in the tourism sector

At the country level, governments have an interest in tourism because it is an environmentally damaging activity if left uncontrolled, and may affect the people and economies of areas in positive and negative ways (see Chapter 12). In other words, governments have a strong interest in tourism in terms of its benefits to the economy and society. It is usually argued that the government’s utilizing of the concept of leverage, namely investment in facilities and infrastructure to promote and stimulate tourism, brings wider benefits of tourism for the well-being of the population (i.e. it can create jobs and raise tax income). This is illustrated by the World Tourism Organization (now UN- WTO) (1998 : 29) Guide for Local Authorities on Developing Sustainable Tourism , which highlighted the preconditions, benefits and effects of government intervention: Tourism requires that adequate infrastructure such as roads, water supply, electric power, waste management and telecommunications be developed. This infrastructure can also be designed to serve local communities so that they receive the benefits of infrastructure improvements. Tourism development can help pay for the cost of improved infrastructure. Tourism can provide new markets for local products … and thereby stimulate other local economic sectors. Tourism stimulates development of new and improved retail, recreation and cultural facilities … which locals as well as tourists can use. The report also acknowledged that tourism can contribute to environmental improvements as tourists seek out unpolluted places, also promoting cultural and heritage protection. In fact Middleton and Hawkins (1998: 6) identified the attraction of state-encouraged tourism in the developing world as being because of its potential to expand rapidly as an economic sector. This shows that it is a global phenomenon, has major economic (e.g. foreign currency) benefits, can promote employment growth and creates value in natural, cultural and heritage resources for visitors. According to OECD (2008: 7) ‘The state can stimulate this process [of helping tourism-related industries improve their competitiveness] by offering macro-economic stability, a tourism-friendly business environment, attractive public goods and an innovation-oriented tourism policy ’ as highlighted in Chapter 10. In contrast to other sectors of the economy it has been described as a smokeless industry (i.e. it is perceived as low polluting compared to developing heavy industry) and can contribute to the quality of life of residents and visitors. But there are sceptics who question the positive reasons behind state intervention, since it can induce social and cultural change amongst the resident population, and alter the character and ambience of places as tourism development is followed by the resort life cycle and mass tourism. Furthermore, the economic benefits of tourism are not necessarily oriented to generating local wealth and employment, as in less developed countries (LDCs) and non-urban areas, the benefits leak out and low-paid, seasonal employment is the norm rather than full employment for all. The economic drawbacks become more serious when external control by multinational companies results in the environmental costs being borne by the locality while the profits are expropriated back to the company, often located overseas. This has been reinforced by concerns over policies designed to liberalize barriers to trade, such as the World Trade Organization General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS). Critics pointed to the potential removal of entry barriers in LDCs which may intensify the impact of foreign direct investment on the tourism sector. Jeffries (2001) also pointed to wider political objectives by governments in affecting tourism development: ● In Spain, the Franco regime in the 1960s sought to use tourism to legitimize its political acceptability, as well as recognizing its economic potential. ● Since the 1930s, France has used the concept of social tourism (similar to the former Soviet Union’s idea of recreational tourism, to improve the quality of life of workers at resorts, spas and holiday camps), especially among low-income groups, to enhance the welfare role of the state. A similar approach has also been adopted in Belgium. ● The UK government in the 1980s emphasized the employment potential of tourism to create new jobs and wealth in an era of high unemployment. ● Some countries and transnational bodies such as the EU actively promote grants and aid to the peripheral regions to help develop the tourism infrastructure (e.g. road improvements in the Republic of Ireland and the Highlands and Islands of Scotland) to encourage the expansion of the tourism potential. Since the expansion of the EU to include 27 member countries, its tourism policies have particularly focused on new Member States in Eastern Europe and Southern Europe to improve the competitiveness and capacity of their tourism sector. ● In LDCs, tourism expansion is often politically justified as a means of poverty eradication and a number of developed countries’ governments (e.g. the UK, Australia, New Zealand and the EU) provide aid to assist with this objective, as evident in the case of the Pacific islands. This has been more recently focused on pro-poor tourism initiatives, where notable successes have occurred in countries such as the Gambia and South Africa.

 

Government intervention and tourism performance Governments also intervene in the tourism arena because it is perceived to be a complex industry, being an amalgam of different businesses and sectors, where benefits accrue if these businesses are coordinated better to achieve common goals – the development and improvement of the quality of tourism. A more controversial argument for intervention is that it can prevent market failure. Indeed, some commentators argue that when the public sector gets too involved in tourism, such as through major investment in business activities like visitor attractions, failure is never far away. This is because the imbalance with public sector intervention may deter private sector investment if tourism becomes overly bureaucratized with a multiplicity of agencies involved in its management and regulation. In extreme cases, too much public sector investment may lead to a dependency culture where tourism is protected from market forces, becomes uneconomic due to the subsidies, is unattractive to investors and fails to reach its full potential. But intervention is often politically justified since the highly seasonal nature of tourism activity in some regions and countries means that there is often insufficient business to support all-yearround operation. In extreme cases, there may not be adequate flows of tourists to support a tourist attraction. State subsidies, grants and assistance to the tourism sector in this context is justified, supporters argue, because without support the attraction may not be able to survive, and therefore would not provide a vital element of the region’s attractiveness. This is highly controversial in countries where the performance of the tourism sector (in terms of visitor arrivals, productivity per business and high levels of seasonality) has been supported by public subsidies to operators and the tourism sector. Critics of such policies point to the obvious advantage of allowing the tourism sector to operate in a market economy with no subsidies or state intervention: it improves competitiveness (see Box 10.3). They argue that a market forces culture is important to stimulate innovation and new ideas, exciting developments and a dynamic tourism industry. For example, one concept which has informed such intervention by the public sector concerns the use of the triple helix model ( Figure 11.1 ). The triple helix model in simple terms suggests that where mutual benefits exist in the intersection of the three stakeholders (public sector, private sector and universities/research institutes) it may be possible to foster innovation. To lead the nurturing of mutual benefits, it is vital that one of the stakeholders (e.g. the public sector) leads and champions the process, initially through networking and then through the creation of a smaller community of like-minded individuals committed to promoting innovation. This particular focus in Norway on the triple helix has informed its thinking on collaboration and cooperation in many of the networks which Innovation Norway (which has absorbed the roles of the National Tourism Organization) has supported and funded. Enterprise, development and innovation may need support and assistance at a fledgling stage, but first ideas on innovation need to be generated.

If there is no incentive for such activity due to dependency, and the tourism sector operates in a protective environment and does not have to compete globally, then public sector support may actually dampen vital activity. The result of increased competition may well be the loss of businesses without a viable market to support them in the short-term if subsidies were removed. Yet a decline in the number and range of tourism operators may actually be desirable if it removes marginal and poor-quality operators with low service standards, who may depress the market for other businesses seeking to promote a quality product. The perceived impact of such changes on marginal tourism regions, which have a heavy dependence on seasonal tourism for local employment, is viewed as politically unacceptable. Removals of subsidies are only implemented where public sector funding for tourism is reduced owing to financial stringencies in central, regional or local government budgets. Yet critics of state subsidies for tourism argue that few other sectors of the economy with significant private and public sector involvement enjoy such levels of state-related support to facilitate economic activity. Advocates of continued state support, often described as ‘lobbying’ or ‘interest groups ’ (e.g. the Scottish Tourism Forum in Scotland, the British Hospitality Association in the UK and Tourism Industry Association in the USA, which represents its tourism members) highlight the wider benefits of state involvement in tourism. Even in the USA, where Congress suspended funding of the US Travel and Tourism Administration in 1996 and pushed the marketing and promotion of the US to an industry body (the Tourism Industry Association), it re-intervened in 2005 to provide federal funds for marketing the USA overseas since a combination of problems had damaged the country’s attractiveness as a destination. Industry lobby groups argue that improvements to the range of infrastructure (e.g. roads), attractions and business activity may also have benefits for residents of areas. In many local council areas, especially in towns, tourism is seen by residents as a problem in that cleansing, rubbish collection, policing and marketing/promotion that arises from tourism adding to the tax burden. Yet the beneficial effects of tourist spending on the local economy (see Chapter 12) arguably can reduce rating levels, as tourism supports local businesses, which pay business rates, create employment and generate greater revenue for councils, thereby reducing the potential rates burden for local residents. The following statement in the Parliament of New South Wales in relation to Byron Bay, a popular coastal tourist destination and community on the east coast of Australia, highlights many of the reasons why the public sector is involved in tourism, particularly planning, because of the problems which may arise from uncontrolled development and the negative consequences of tourism development. It also shows how small communities may be forced to take the pressure of seasonal tourist development and be forced to pay for it through the rates charged by local authorities to meet tourist and resident needs. Governments and tourism 423 I want to raise the general issue of the pressure that is placed on people and the facilities in the popular tourist destination of Byron Bay ... Everyone knows that the beaches and landscape around Byron Bay are simply magnificent. During the past 10 years in particular Byron Bay has become a significant international destination, especially for backpackers ...

 

 Whilst tourism is the economic lifeblood of Byron, and tourists generally are most welcome, if the amenity of Byron for locals and the atmosphere of Byron which attracts tourists in such large numbers are not preserved it will end up being neither attractive for locals or tourists. I believe the Coalition’s policy is an enlightened one because it recognises that a community with a small population, and therefore a small rate base – in the case of Byron some $7.3 million a year only for the whole of shire – which hosts one million tourists a year is deserving of some special assistance ahead of a community of similar size which hosts no tourists. Another problem is that the sewerage system at Byron cannot cope with the demand on it. Some progress at last is being made on this front, but overloads are not uncommon. Water consumption is up, sewerage loads are up and it is doubtful that the upgraded sewerage plant at West Byron, which is due to come on line in 2004, will provide more than temporary respite ... On the positive side, council has commissioned a tourism plan to be developed for Byron Bay specifically, and the voice of the local community is being heard more than in the past. The locals are fighting back. A recent public meeting of residents looked at ways of bringing under control the worse excesses of backpacker and other visitor behaviour – namely public drunkenness, using the streets as toilets, loud all night parties and overcrowded houses ... The Byron tourism plan needs to be developed to address all the key issues. It must include strategies for protecting the amenity and the beauty of Byron Bay for locals and tourists alike. ( D. Page 2002 ) Such arguments are highly controversial and different facets of each argument are invariably highlighted by interest groups, depending upon the evidence used and points raised to advocate or reject public sector support. There is often a great deal of conjecture, supposition and value-laden arguments used by interest groups and stakeholders when debating tourism. This may explain why some local councils, which periodically change their political complexion, can be described as ‘blowing hot and cold ’ towards tourism, exemplified in the policies and planning approaches they adopt towards tourism. This is one reason why governments have endorsed better research methods to understand, analyse and explain how local economies are impacted by tourism. As Chapter 12 will show, the use of Tourism Satellite Accounts have begun to provide some objective data to support the wider economic arguments on the importance of tourism to national economies. This has started to address the ongoing tension associated with situations where objective tourism data do not exist. Inevitably, government involvement in tourism at any level is about the resolution of conflict, seeking to achieve a balance between actively promoting tourism and acting as guardians of the public interest in the manner, form, direction, impact and effect of tourism from a national to local level. For example, state intervention in Spain, Greece and Cyprus in 2008 was critical due to drought and water shortages, requiring Barcelona and Cyprus to import water to address a strategic crisis facing their tourism sector upon which their economies depend. Thus the state has a crucial role as a strategic planner and crisis manager. This conflict resolution process will often mean balancing the protagonists (i.e. the tourism industry) and antagonists (often residents) who are both valid stakeholders in the tourism economy, in seeking to meet the needs of the visitor in a sustainable and locally appropriate manner (see Box 11.1 ). A more active role for governments, and a potential reason for intervention in the tourism economy or markets, is related to strategic objectives aside from the development process. Here one dimension of public sector management has been divided into two perspectives by Jeffries (2001) : 1 strategic seasonal redistribution of tourists 2 strategic geographical redistribution of tourism. In the first instance, seasonal redistribution is a major global issue, given the problems of seasonality in tourism discussed in Chapter 10.

Seasonality can lead to a highly skewed pattern of business for tourism operators outside major urban areas but tourism organizations responsible for tourism promotion, development and management may intervene in the market, as the case of Destination Northland (north of New Zealand, www.destinationnorthland.co.nz) suggests. It was able to: ● provide a new series of innovative new products for visitors in the low season that are less weather dependent, by emphasizing the appeal to the domestic market (e.g. through hosting sporting events and promoting sightseeing on the twin-coast highway route, and wine and food tourism based on local products) ● operate marketing campaigns via printed media and the worldwide web to highlight the region’s indigenous culture (i.e. the Maori of Tai Tokerau iwi) and the built heritage, at Russell, the country’s first capital, as the birthplace of New Zealand. It also recognized the appeal of the marine environment of the Bay of Islands, with the attraction for yacht-based tourists to winter over in the region. Despite the example of Destination Northland, the tourism industry in many localities remains highly fragmented, lacks cohesion and lacks the ability to have political clout and influence change, since the individual operators are focused on their own activities rather than the strategic development of the region. By seeking to extend the tourist season, and expand the range of opportunities for low season visitation, public sector agencies argue that they will encourage increased business activity and turnover that will lead to greater profitability, as well as possibly increasing employment and gaining a higher profile as a tourism region. One widely used tool that tourism organizations use to promote out-of-season tourism is the staging of events. These act as a nucleus for visits, as an attraction (see Chapter 9) but also as a wider catalyst for tourism activity. In some very unlikely locations that have a limited tourism potential, innovative and sometimes bizarre associations or the creation of events may be used to create a unique proposition to attract visitors. For example, in the USA the Eccentric America Guidebook ( www.eccentricamerica. com) provides over 1000 entries and an annual events calendar of many weird events that sometimes attract visitors to small towns with few other attractions, or to tourist destinations with a highly seasonal industry. Table 11.2lists a number of these events which the local tourism industry and other bodies promote as unique attractions, and often attract a substantial community involvement in their organization, management and promotion. In the second instance the public sector directly intervenes in tourism planning and development by seeking directly to achieve a geographical redistribution of tourists and the volume of visits. For example, in the 1960s the French government produced a plan to develop a coastal region to the south of Montpellier, known as Languedoc-Roussillon. The initial plan was to develop a resort area with 150000 bedspaces; this was subsequently revised and expanded in the 1970s and 1980s. This is a widely cited example of state-led tourism development in a peripheral area, and reveals the state’s motives: seeking to direct tourism to an undeveloped region to assist with regional development. In contrast, tourism in London, which is the gateway for UK tourism, saw resident views, congestion, overcrowding and high occupancy rates in hotel accommodation result in the London Tourist Board commission the Tourism Accommodation in London in the 1990s report (Touche Ross 1988 ). This formed the basis for policies to limit further hotel growth in London’s West End, while encouraging out-of-town accommodation development. The result was the development of tourism accommodation in the period 1988 –2000 in districts adjacent to the West End of London and the expansion of accommodation in London’s urban fringe adjacent to Heathrow and Gatwick airports – especially budget accommodation next to the M25 motorway junctions.

 

 This policy of constraint and directed development has taken a number of years to evolve, but despite the lead-time for new accommodation and even over a 14-year period, changes are notable. London is a crucial gateway, with 48 per cent of all overseas visitors to the UK entering via London. Other leading cities also handle a high proportion of their country’s international arrivals (e.g. Sydney 50 per cent; Dublin 54 per cent; Amsterdam 52 per cent) although this does not apply to all capital cities (Paris only accounts for 12 per cent of all arrivals in France and Rome for 10 per cent of arrivals in Italy). What many public sector analysts recognize is that London is competing globally as a world city and tourism is a necessary component of that globalization. Therefore, policies constraining tourism have had to be replaced with those seeking to facilitate growth ‘to create jobs and increase the contribution of tourism to the economy of the capital and the country as a whole ’ (London Development Agency 2004: 60). This has meant developing a public sector policy of dispersal where growth needs to be more evenly spread across London, with new businesses encouraged to develop outside the central London area. This will increase choice and improve value for money for visitors, and help ensure all parts of London can share in the economic benefits of tourism. The Mayor’s Culture Strategy has also highlighted the importance of the spatial (geographical) diversification of London’s Cultural amenities. (London Development Agency 2004: 60) In the wider scheme of tourism, key elements identified in this dispersal strategy are: ● improving the supply of London’s accommodation with a further 26 000 rooms as well as improved value for money and quality control ● developing new attractions and accommodation to achieve the dispersal strategy in outer London boroughs ● improving transport and infrastructure to facilitate this dispersal in areas identified for economic growth (as well as safeguarding the West End of London as a key element of London’s international appeal as an entertainment district). One area that has seen considerable growth is the night-time economy in London both for tourist and leisure use, with a rise in restaurant and bars opening since the 1990s. This in itself has been stimulated by a greater provision of all-night buses by Transport for London. However, a number of problems also exist and these can impact upon the tourist image of London. They include crime and antisocial behaviour, and street-cleanliness, all of which are aggravated by the expansion of the night-time city. In 2005 controversial legislation in the UK allowed pubs to open for 24 hours in approved instances, in a bid to address the problems of binge drinking and a yob culture among 18- to 30-year-olds in city centres. Thus, whilst policies to decentralize tourism in London have seen a degree of success, the expansion in central and suburban London’s nightlife, where residents and visitors co-exist, may prove a major social and environmental nuisance for residents and affect the image of London as a destination for tourists. More explicit state intervention is evident in many of Europe’s small historic towns, where local planning authorities have adopted radical measures to constrain the saturation effects of mass tourism in cities such as Canterbury, York, Stratford-upon-Avon and Cambridge. But how do organizations in the public sector affect such change, and what processes and procedures are used to manage tourism? This begins through the development of tourism policy.

policy

 

 Tourism

 

According to Hall and Jenkins (1995: 2) , tourism public policy can help the causes and consequences of policy decisions, since it indicates the way in which policy influences tourism through: ● the political nature of the policy-making process ● the degree of public participation in the tourism policy and planning process ● the sources of power in the tourism policy-making environment, and the choices and decisions made by civil servants towards complex policy issues ● the perceptions of stakeholders as to the effectiveness of tourism policies. This illustrates that tourism policy-making is inherently a political activity, affected by the formal structures of government. A wide range of forces affects policy-making. According to Hall and Jenkins (1995: 5) public policy in tourism is ‘whatever governments choose to do or not to do ’, and it is a function of three interrelated issues according to Turner (1997) : ● the intentions of political and other key actors ● the way in which decisions and non-decisions are made ● the implications of these decisions. Figure 11.2illustrates the continuous nature of policy-making, which requires one to understand the nature of the institutions and organizations involved in shaping policy, since policy-making is filtered through a range of different institutions that may seem complex to the uninitiated observer. These institutions help shape policy outcomes because they are involved in negotiation and bargaining to achieve their own organization’s objectives. At the same time, interest groups (producer groups such as national tourism associations), non-producer groups (e.g. environmental organizations) and single issue groups (e.g. opponents of an airport project) seek to influence the decision-making element of policy-making. Tourism policy does not exist in a vacuum because various agencies exist to implement policy. The implementation is, again, a resolution of conflict and attempt to meet the needs of stakeholders whilst meeting national or local tourism development needs. Policy cannot be viewed in isolation from political decision-making, which determines the direction of policy, which is constantly evolving. For example, in the case of China, a series of policy changes post-1978, when the country first opened its doors to tourists, required major policy changes. After 1978, policy success has often been measured through one simple barometer of tourism – international visitor arrivals. In 1978, international visitor arrivals in China were a modest 1.8 million; these subsequently increased to 17.8 million in 1985 and 33.3 million in 1991. Five years later, visitor arrivals exceeded 51 million, and in 1997 some 57.5 million arrivals were recorded. This incredible rate of growth in inbound tourism required a shift in policy from the pre-1978 socialist idea that tourism was a vehicle to educate visitors about the virtues of communism to one that was accommodating a large influx of vis itors who were only allowed to visit certain areas.

 

A similar rationale characterized inbound tourism policy in the former Soviet Union and pre-1990s Albania. In the case of China, tourism policy was effectively embodied in the Five-Year National Plans, which controlled a statecommand economy. From 1986 to 1991, state policy saw tourism as a lucrative source of foreign exchange. This view evolved from the 1978 –1985 period where a general tourism policy with little state intervention created major operational problems in terms of a general shortage of supply, an inadequate non-market pricing structure, and ineffective management of tourists and employees, resulting in poor service standards. By developing a National Tourism Plan, the government tourist agency – the China National Tourism Administration (CNTA) – began to establish key policy objectives to guide the future development of Chinese tourism. As Page and Connell (2009) observed, policy changes resulted in: ● greater coordination of tourism, with the establishment of the National Tourism Commission in 1988 and with an initial focus on civil aviation followed by hotels and travel agencies ● the restoration of tourist attractions in the top 14 tourist cities, such as the Forbidden City (as depicted in the famous film The Last Emperor ) ● reform in the aviation sector, particularly the Civil Aviation Authority of China, to transform the airlines and airports into independent corporations ● improved education and training, with regional tourism bureau governing tourism education in their region ● greater regulation of the tourism sector by the CNTA the promotion of international tourism, with CNTA’s budget for overseas marketing increased from US$1.4 million in 1986 to US$3.2 million in 1991 following the decline of tourist arrivals and the impact of the Tiananmen Square incident. Subsequent policy changes in 1992 were embodied under the new ‘market economy under socialism ’ policy, whereby tourism could move towards a market system without unduly compromising the underlying principles of Chinese socialism. One notable change was the introduction of competition into China’s aviation sector (subsequently reversed after safety concerns), a greater use of tourism promotion, and recognition of the diversity of inbound tourism and niche markets as well as the need for state-led regulation of the tourism sector to improve quality standards. In addition, government policy towards the economy may have an indirect and direct effect on tourism. In the period 1986 –1996, the government used a growth pole strategy: a key location is chosen and investment and economic development concentrates in less developed areas to pump-prime the economy. The growth pole was located at the town of Yunnan in inland China, which became the basis for economic development fostered around tourism; the aim being to assist in dispersing the current patterns of tourism development from the coastal region and key cities. This was found to help address regional economic inequality where the tourism sector had powerful backward linkages with other economic sectors (e.g. agriculture (see Chapter 12 for more discussion)). The growth pole strategy helps to spread the effects and benefits of tourism, but equally it can pose planning problems where policy decisions have to be taken over the style of tourism development to pursue (i.e. small-scale versus mass tourism). A similar strategy of growth pole development in tourism has been used and has had a benefit in economically remote areas in Ireland, Scotland and Canada.

 

In each case, the state has invested in the infrastructure and provided incentives for private sector investment in tourism. Yet it is not just governments which influence tourism policy, but also a range of international non-governmental agencies (NGOs) such as the World Tourism Organization. The UN-WTO, based in Madrid, seeks to assist its member countries to work in a cooperative and collaborative manner to provide statistical information on tourism, and to advise on policies and practices to improve tourism planning and education and training. Other international lobby groups seek to influence the air transport and its industry groups (i.e. the IATA, ICAO, ATAG and ACI – see Chapter 7). These bodies promote the interests of their members, who have vested interests in tourism. One additional agency that is influential in government tourism policy is the EU. The 27 member countries of the EU represent an important trading bloc, which is mirrored by similar blocs in other parts of the world. The EU seeks to promote tourism as a free-trade activity in and between member states by trying to simplify and harmonize policies and procedures to facilitate the free movement of travellers. The EU also seeks to develop measures to improve the quality of tourism in member states although tourism policy remains the remit of individual governments. The scale and extent of the EU’s impact on the wide range of issues which affect tourism are shown in Table 11.3which highlights the diversity of EU measures affecting tourism (see www.europa.eu.intfor more up-to-date information as EU policy and developments in tourism are constantly evolving). Among the most influential agencies that develop policy for tourism in individual countries are: ● ministries of tourism, which fund or part-fund National Tourism Organizations (NTOs) such as VisitBritain (which replaced the former British Tourist Authority) ● NTOs ● Regional Tourism Organizations which manage the implantation of national and regional policy in their respective areas ● local authorities and other agencies, which set policies at the local area level. This vast array of public sector agencies is complemented by ad hoc agencies set up within specific areas such as inner city regeneration projects (e.g. the London Docklands Development Corporation in the 1980s and 1990s). These specific area-based initiatives by local economic development agencies have been reintroduced in England and Wales; they highlight how policy changes can affect the actual structure of provision. In Scotland, Scottish Enterprise’s regional enterprise companies set out policies for the tourism sector and intervene, using public funds, to meet specific tourism objectives (see Chapters 9 and 10) as is explained in considerable detail in Page and Connell (2009) . It is apparent that in many countries, while tourism policy may rest with the Ministry of Tourism or department responsible for tourism, a host of agencies interact to produce a multilayered system of public sector support. Figure 11.3illustrates this model of support in the UK, a model that has been described as chaotic and extremely bureaucratic. Whilst there is a growing debate over whether governments are still about direct control of tourism, or whether they should be encouraging other agencies to govern the public sector and be more accountable to stakeholders, the UK government is creating an overly complex web of agencies that may have confused, overlapping and competing roles. For example, the UK model is characterized by: ● One national organization, VisitBritain, to market the UK overseas. ● Four country-based NTOs – enjoyEngland (incorporating the former English Tourism Council and Visit England), VisitScotland (formerly the Scottish Tourist Board), the National Ireland Tourist Board and VisitWales (the former Wales Tourist Board now incorporated into the Welsh Assembly). In some cases, these NTOs market each country to domestic and international tourists, which may seem as a duplication of the efforts of VisitBritain, which markets the UK as a united destination overseas. An amalgam of regional tourist boards and destinationmarketing organizations funded by Regional Development Agencies in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, and the former network of area tourist boards in Scotland which are now part of the VisitScotland networks. These agencies are funded by grants from the devolved governments in Wales and Scotland. ● Local authorities in England of which there are 387 – 34 are non-metropolitan county councils, 238 are non-metropolitan district councils, 36 are metropolitan councils, 46 are unitary councils, 32 are London boroughs, plus the City of London Corporation. ● According to OECD (2008) , the funding arrangement in 2006 for UK tourism comprised the DCMS (see Figure 11.3 ) providing £50 million to VisitBritain, £38 million to VisitScotland and £22 million to the Welsh Assembly; £50 million was provided by the Regional Development Agencies in England. In addition, English local authorities spent around £120 million on tourism. This provides a conservative estimate (excluding special cross-government initiatives) of £280 million of public sector expenditure on supporting UK tourism which must rate amongst the highest amount of any developed country. Through their role in managing services for visitors, such as tourist information centres (TICs) (some local authorities undertake this role in other countries), regional and area tourist boards provide a network of contact points for visitors. This function has been discussed more fully in Chapter 4 where their significance and role in tourism is explained. Given the scope and nature of the public sector agencies in tourism, attention now turns to how these organizations plan for tourism.

 

Introduction

Tourism often plays an important part in a nation’s economy by providing opportunities for regional employment, contributing to the balance of payments and stimulating economic growth. Countries that experience an influx of large numbers of tourists, however, suffer the environmental and social consequences of mass tourism, unless care is taken to plan for and control the flow of tourists. Any economy that has become overly dependent on tourism can be massively weakened by a single political or natural disaster– as the chaos created in Bali following the terrorist strike there has shown. Tourists in the generating countries were ‘strongly advised’ against travelling to Indonesia for a whole year after the event and, as a result, tourism virtually came to a halt. Neither does it necessarily benefit a country to switch labour and other resources away from, say, agriculture towards tourism. For both economic and social reasons, therefore, governments cannot let market forces rule – they must take a direct interest in the ways tourism affects their country. The more dependent a nation becomes on tourism, whether domestic, inbound or outbound, the more likely it is that the government will intervene in the industry’s activities.

The nature of government involvement

A country’s system of government will, of course, be reflected in the mode and extent of public intervention. At one end of the scale, centrally planned economies may choose to exercise virtually complete control, from policymaking and planning to the building and operating of tourist facilities, the organization of tourist movements and the promotion of tourism at home and abroad. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, such central control is now limited to a very few countries and even some of those nations still ostensibly operating centrally planned economies – China, Cuba and Vietnam, for example – recognize and accept the importance of private enterprise, and the benefits of private investment, in their tourism planning. China, ostensibly a centrally controlled economy, happily cooperates with privately owned American hotel interests to establish chains of hotels in popular tourist destinations throughout the country and accepts the independent movement of tourists on itineraries tailor-made by Western operators. Even Saudi Arabia, which for cultural and political reasons has long restricted the movement of independent. Western tourists, is easing its constraints and allowing some freedom of movement for foreign tourists. Only North Korea and Turkmenistan still control tourism so rigidly that independent travel around either country is impossible. Most other nations have mixed economies, in which public and private sectors coexist and collaborate in the development of tourism within their borders; only the balance of public versus private involvement will vary. Thus, the United States, with its belief in a free enterprise system and a federal constitution, delegates much of the responsibility for overseas promotion of the nation either to individual states or even to private organizations created for the purpose. Central government intervention in the USA is limited to measures designed to protect the health and safety of its citizens (such as aircraft safety and air traffic control). It even disbanded its public tourism body, the US Travel and Tourism Administration, in 1996, allowing private enterprise to fund overseas marketing. The public body has been replaced by the privately sponsored Travel Industry Association of America (TIA), which markets the USA abroad under a number of brands, including the Visit USA Association, Discover USA and Discover America, in some cases maintaining an office abroad to serve the trade’s (but not the public’s) needs. Public ownership of transport is also generally declining, as rail and air services are denationalized, but, in some developed countries, there are still examples of widespread public ownership. The French government, to cite one example, owns 100 per cent of SNCF, the French rail network, 100 per cent of Aéroports de Paris, 44.6 per cent of Air France and has shares in SNECMA aero engines and aircraft manufacturer EADS. Public ownership of the railways undoubtedly made it easier to invest in the hugely expensive TGV network for which the country is now famous. The system of government is not the only factor dictating the extent of state intervention. If a country is highly dependent on tourism for its economic survival, its government is likely to become far more involved in the industry than if it is not so important. The government department allocated the responsibility for tourism can highlight the perspective and importance placed on tourism by governments. The relative importance attached by government to tourism in the UK can be judged by the amalgam of responsibilities assigned to the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. Not only does tourism not appear in the title of the department, the job title of the minister within the department, as of 2006, became Minister for Creative Industries and Tourism. This minister is now responsible for broadcasting, film, alcohol, entertainment licensing, the press, IT and science, in addition to tourism. Countries where tourism has only relatively recently become a significant factor in the economy and that sudden growth has become problematic, are likely to exercise stronger control over the development of tourism than are those where tourism is either in its early stages of development or has developed slowly over a long period of time. Mauritius, for example, recognized that the wave of visitors it experienced in the early 1980s could soon lead to the country being swamped by tourists, destroying the very attractions that had brought the visitors to the islands in the first place, unless it took steps to control such key activities as hotel construction. Tunisia, too, learned that lesson and introduced control over hotel and other construction related to tourism early in the development of mass tourism to that destination. Unfortunately, the potential for quick riches can exercise a greater influence than the long-term interests of the country and there are all too many examples of countries that have suffered from lack of sufficient control over building and development, leading eventually to a drop in visits as tourists turn to less exploited destinations. Overbuilding in Spain was held up as an example in the late 1960s and could have influenced subsequent development in other Mediterranean countries to which tourists turned en masse somewhat later. Nevertheless, the 1980s and 1990s witnessed overdevelopment in some key regions – first in Greece, then in the Portuguese Algarve and, later (despite initial efforts to control hotel-building), in Turkey. Corruption and nepotism – the significance of having influential ‘connections’ to overcome planning controls should never be underestimated –are very real enemies of sustainable tourism policies. All countries require reliable supporting infrastructure in order to encourage tourism in the first place, which will inevitably involve local and central government. Adequate public services, roads, railways, harbours and airports must all be in place before the private sector will be interested in investing in the equally necessary superstructure of hotels, restaurants, entertainment, attractions and other facilities that will bring in the tourists.

Example

St Helena

St Helena is a British dependency in the Atlantic, 1200 miles west of Angola. One of only 13 remaining UK overseas territories, the island has a population of around 3900 and has suffered economic deprivation for many years, owing to its isolated setting and lack of an airport. Its sole regular link with the outside world is a government subsidized cargo passenger ship operating out of Cape Town. With better communication links, its prospects of developing tourism would be good — with its rocky, semi-desert coastline, but an attractive tropical interior and two national parks. Its most notable feature is Longwood House — Napoleon’s home during his final years of captivity. The planned construction of an airport has been under consideration for a number of years and, in 2004, the Department for International Development invited proposals for a public—private partnership (PPP) to improve transport links and develop tourism for the island. Initial proposals were rejected on the grounds of ‘unacceptable levels of financial and other risks and uncertainties’ and the government’s consultants eventually put forward plans entailing construction costs beyond what a PPP would accept as financially viable. More than four years later, there is still no firm decision regarding the awarding of a contract. The original plan was for the airport to be operational by 2010, but further delays followed in 2009 and no timescale can be currently envisaged for the development. Subsidies provided to the shipping company will cease once the airport is operational. The cost of developing and operating the airport will be substantial, given that the planned runway is big enough to accommodate long-range Boeing 737-800s and Airbus A320s, which will call for a runway some 2250 metres in length, in a small country with very little flat land. The resultant improvement in communication, however, would allow the expansion of all kinds of trade, including tourism, which should result in a reduction in the need for subsidies from the UK that fund the island’s budget. St Helena’s administration has welcomed the scheme, but it has not found universal acceptance among the islanders. Even the director of tourism has expressed concern that the development of an airport and upmarket resort could easily lead to the island being swamped by tourists, causing it to lose much of its present charm. Developing nations may have a further incentive for involving government. Private developers may be reluctant to invest in speculative tourist ventures, preferring to concentrate their resources in countries where there is already proven demand. In this case, it may fall to the government to either aid private developers (in the form of grants or loans for hotel construction) or even to build and operate the hotels and other tourist amenities that will first attract tourists. Where the private sector can be persuaded to invest, it is often companies from the generating countries that first show interest, with the result that most of the profits are repatriated rather than benefiting the local economy. There is also the danger that private speculators will be more concerned with achieving a quick return on their investment rather than the slow but secure long-term development that will benefit the country most. The state is called on to play a coordinating role in planning the provision of tourist amenities and attractions. Supply should match demand as closely as possible and the state can ensure that facilities are available when and where required and they are of the right standard. As tourism grows in an economy, so its organization, if uncontrolled, can result in the domination of the market by a handful of large companies. Even in a capitalist system, the state has the duty to restrict the power of monopolies to protect consumers from malpractice, such as unfair constraints on trade or exorbitant prices. Apart from these economic reasons for governments becoming involved in tourism, there are also social and political reasons. In many countries, especially in developing nations, national airlines are state-owned and operated. While, of course, the income accruing from the operation of the airline is important to the state, there is also the political prestige of operating an airline, even if the national flag-carrier is not economically viable. In other situations, certain airline routes may be unprofitable, but, if they provide a vital economic lifeline to the communities they serve, they will need to be subsidized by the government. Governments also have a duty to safeguard a nation’s heritage. Buildings of historical or architectural interest (particularly UNESCO World Heritage sites and others of international importance, such as Angkor Wat and its surrounding temples, a complex of magnificent twelfth-century ruins of Khmer culture in Cambodia) have to be protected and maintained, as must landscapes of exceptional merit. The state will therefore fund national heritage agencies (such as English Heritage, Historic Scotland and CADW in Wales) and establish national parks to protect sensitive sites and buildings.

Example

Protection versus development — the case of Pumphouse Point, Tasmania

Balancing the demands of developers seeking to provide tourist resources and encouraging the reuse of redundant buildings can often conflict with the desire to protect the natural environment. After a decade of deliberation, the local council has finally given approval to develop at Pumphouse Point, Tasmania. The development of a former hydro-electric substation, located on the shore of Lake Clair, which sits within the Cradle Mountain Lake St Clair National Park, part of the Tasmanian Wilderness Area World Heritage site, has required extensive planning and consultation. Negotiations related to developing this site commenced in 1995, with controversial plans for a AUS$15 million wilderness lodge being given government approval. Alterations to the resort plans, as well as delays, however, led to the government reclaiming the site in 1999. In 2002, Doherty Hotels announced plans to develop a AUS$5 million resort, but withdrew in 2003. The latest plans aim to provide visitors with accommodation as well as an interpretation centre, designed to enhance visitors’ appreciation and understanding of the physical and cultural locality. Permission was granted in April 2008, although gaining the detailed construction approvals was expected to delay the start of construction until the end of the year. The decision to give approval for this development was controversial, with the National Parks Authority disappointed by the decision: ‘We had hoped that the council would have regard for the Wilderness World Heritage Management Plan which basically says developments shouldn’t occur in parks, as a matter of course they should generally be outside.’ The long search for a third London airport was extended by several years while the government weighed up the relative merits of the economic benefits of a particular site and the environmental damage that the development would cause. Still more recently, a longrunning conflict emerged in the UK between conservation and economic development over the construction of a fifth terminal at London’s Heathrow Airport. Economics won out, but not before the construction had been delayed for many years, undermining the strategic importance of the airport vis-à-vis its competitors on the Continent. Needless to say, the power of political lobbying may be the critical factor in any decision made by the public authorities. We can sum up by saying that a national government’s role in tourism can be manifested in the following ways:

•   in the planning and facilitating of tourism, including the provision of financial and other aid

•   in the supervision and control of the component sectors of the tourism industry

•   in direct ownership and operation of components of the industry

•   in the promotion of the nation and its tourist products to home and overseas markets

•   in supporting key tourism interests in a time of financial crisis.

This clarification of the range of activities that need to be undertaken by national governments is helpful when they are considering their own responsibilities in relation to the provision and management of tourism.

Planning and facilitating tourism

Any country in which tourism plays a prominent role in national income and employment can expect its government to devise policies and plans for the development of tourism. This will include generating guidelines and objectives for the growth and management of tourism, both in the short and long term, and devising strategies designed to achieve those objectives. It may be the case that the government feels the need to invest in the tourism industry in order to ‘pump-prime’ or stimulate investment, development and growth in a sector of the economy. For example, British government policy on tourism favoured investment in tourism to create employment opportunities, although the cost on the public purse was seen as a concern. While support for tourism was initially through grant aid, by the 1990s the government took the view that the industry was now ‘mature’ and further investment should be left to the private sector. VisitBritain, as a quasi-autonomous national government organization with the responsibility to promote Britain abroad, had as its aims not just to increase the total number of tourists to Britain but also to spread visitors more evenly throughout the regions and across the months, to avoid the congestion of demand in the South and during the summer months. In Spain, as demand had already been created by the private sector for the popular east coast resorts and the Balearic and Canary Islands, its national tourist office policy has focused on promoting the less familiar north west coast and central regions of the country, while coastal development has become subject to increasing control. Tourism planning calls for research – first, to assess the level of demand or potential demand to a particular region, second, to estimate the resources required in order to cater for that demand and, finally, to determine how those resources should best be distributed. As we have seen, demand is unlikely to be generated to any extent until an adequate infrastructure and superstructure are in place, but it is not sufficient simply to provide these amenities. Tourists also need staff to service the facilities – hotel workers, travel agents, guides – trained to an acceptable level of performance. Planning therefore implicitly includes ensuring the availability of a pool of labour, as well as the provision of apprenticeship schemes or training through hotel, catering and tourism schools and colleges to provide the skills and knowledge the industry requires. In some cases, providing the facilities that tourists want can actually have a negative impact on tourism to the region. To take one example, while the building of airports on some of the smaller islands in Greece opened up these islands to larger flows of tourists, it made the islands less attractive to the upmarket high-spending tourists, who preferred the relative isolation that existed when accessibility was limited to ferry operations.

Government control over entry

Accessibility is a key factor in the development of tourism. It relies on both adequate ransport and the absence of any political barriers to travel. If visas are required for entry to a country, this will discourage incoming tourism. At the beginning of the 1990s, the UK imposed a visa requirement on citizens of Turkey seeking to enter Britain. The Turkish retaliated by imposing a visa requirement on British visitors to their country. The flow of tourists was almost entirely one way, however, so the Turkish emerged as the clear losers, the visa requirement dissuading tourists from visiting their country.

Example

Entry to the USA

In 1988, the USA abandoned the requirement for visas for many visitors from Western Europe (albeit with some limitations that continued to hinder the free flow of tourism), having recognized the barrier that this bureaucratic constraint created at a time when other factors, such as relative exchange rates, were favouring the rapid expansion of tourism to North America. The political panic that followed the 9/11 disaster changed attitudes, however, and the US government tightened entry requirements, including the need for computer-scanning of pass- ports. Biometric data (including fingerprinting and iris-scans) were taken on entry and visas, where required, became more difficult to obtain, with prospective tourists having to travel long distances to attend interviews at US embassies. Since October 2005, the Department of Homeland Security requires airlines and cruise ships to provide details of their passengers, prior to arrival. The information required includes each passenger’s full name, date of birth, gender, citizenship, passport details, country of residence, address while in the United States and arrival and departure transport details. This has raised debate regarding the rights to privacy,as well as concerns over protection and security of the data provided. The difficulty in obtaining visas and concerns that the increased security will cause problems for arriving travellers has combined with other factors to influence arrival figures. Despite a weak dollar, arrival figures in 2007 had yet to reach the levels that existed prior to the terrorist attacks of 2001. The ending of visa requirements for trips to the Baltic states following the collapse of communism in Russia and the satellite countries led to a substantial increase in tourist visits. Russia, by contrast, continued to insist on visas. The predictable result has been a drop in the numbers of visitors to Russia while the Baltic states have enjoyed a significant rise, which has accelerated since their entry into the European Union. Ukraine and Georgia have also both since abandoned the need for visas for EU nationals, which will further reduce demand for visits to Russia (and see Case study 10 for an example of how visas hinder travel to the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad). Maximizing revenue from inbound tourism flows is always a temptation for governments, but it is a practice that backfires if visitors can simply switch to alternative destinations offering similar attractions. Arguably, long-haul travellers will be more willing to accept reasonably high visa costs when travelling extensively in a country, but such costs are off-putting for short-break visits or calls by cruise liner (and St Petersburg has become an important port for cruises in the Baltic region). China has restricted access to leisure travel for its citizens by granting visas only for selected destinations, with only six countries having approved destination status (ADS) by the end of the nineties. ADS allows Chinese visitors to participate in group tours for reasons other than business or education. The list of countries gaining ADS has rapidly expanded, however, and at the end of 2007 the USA became the ninety-fifth country to be added. With almost 41 million Chinese taking trips overseas in 2007, and up to 100 million forecast to do annually so by 2020, countries gaining ADS are hoping to gain a significant share of the massive market. Importantly, although ADS allows Chinese companies to offer tours to the overseas country, the travellers still require entry visas and these are not always easy to obtain.

 Example

 The benefits of expansion of the European Union’s Schengen Agreement for non-EU visitors

 In December 2007, the Schengen zone was expanded — 8 eastern European countries and Malta being added — so the Agreement now covers travel across 24 European countries. Border controls have eased for travellers between these countries. While EU travellers and visitors from the USA and Japan can travel without a visa in the EU zone, other travellers moving around Europe would have required a separate visa for each country they entered. Now, a single Schengen visa can provide access to all 24 countries, saving money as well making travel across Europe more convenient and thus making Europe a more attractive destination for some international tourists. The cost of obtaining visas as well as the complexity of applications can encourage travellers to choose to travel to countries that do not require visas.

 Taxation policy

 Government policies on taxation can impact on tourism, whether the taxes are applied directly to tourists (such as an entry or exit tax), the industry (such as on hotel accom- modation) or indirectly (such as VAT or sales taxes, which can discourage shopping and benefit countries with lower taxes). It may even encourage day trips across borders to shop in areas where taxes are lower. Transportation taxes, such as those introduced in 1997 both into and out of the state of Florida, increasing the cost of an airline journey for a family of four travelling to the Walt Disney World Resort by some £70 – a substantial percentage of their total flight costs – can have a significant impact on demand for a destination. Even within the European Union, variations in taxation can impact on tourism flows. In 1993, Greece increased its airport departure tax threefold, to 5200 drachmas (roughly £15), sufficient to antagonize tour operators and persuade the ‘marginal’ tourists to switch to other Mediterranean destinations. The British government’s imposition in the 1993 Budget of an airport departure tax (Air Passenger Duty, or, APD) of £5 in the European Union and £10 elsewhere was widely criticized in the press and the decision to double this rate from November 1997 provoked fury in the trade. It was further increased in February 2007. If the revenue raised by such taxation were reinvested in the tourism industry, there would be less of a sense of outrage, but when it is introduced purely as a convenient means of raising taxation, travellers often feel that it is an injustice. More recently the government has proposed removing the APD, replacing it with an aircraft tax (paid on each flight, rather than on the number of passengers), which is aimed at encouraging airlines to ensure flights operate close to full capacity. This is seen as a small step towards making the industry ‘greener’. Overall, when one considers the level of taxes paid against the low-cost fares offered within Europe by carriers such as easyJet, it is appar- ent that taxes can regularly account for as much as 25 per cent of air transport costs.

Introduction

Tourism often plays an important part in a nation’s economy by providing opportunities for regional employment, contributing to the balance of payments and stimulating economic growth. Countries that experience an influx of large numbers of tourists, however, suffer the environmental and social consequences of mass tourism, unless care is taken to plan for and control the flow of tourists. Any economy that has become overly dependent on tourism can be massively weakened by a single political or natural disaster– as the chaos created in Bali following the terrorist strike there has shown. Tourists in the generating countries were ‘strongly advised’ against travelling to Indonesia for a whole year after the event and, as a result, tourism virtually came to a halt. Neither does it necessarily benefit a country to switch labour and other resources away from, say, agriculture towards tourism. For both economic and social reasons, therefore, governments cannot let market forces rule – they must take a direct interest in the ways tourism affects their country. The more dependent a nation becomes on tourism, whether domestic, inbound or outbound, the more likely it is that the government will intervene in the industry’s activities.

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