Tourism is changing. Only a generation ago, relatively few
people travelled abroad; if they did, it was usually to easily
accessible and familiar places, or further afield mainly in groups.
Today, many tourists are more sophisticated, making their own plans
and holiday bookings - they are what tourism specialists call 'Free
and Independent Travellers'.
Most countries recognize the potential of tourism and seek to
increase the number of foreign visitors, which is an opportunity to
increase their exports of services. Until the last five years, the
few existing tourism strategies have been mainly about selling. But
even a well-organized approach to tourism promotion is not enough
to constitute an adequate tourism strategy.
Managing rapid growth
By 2020 it is estimated that three times as many people as now
will travel internationally. Where are all the extra tourists
expected to go? Capacity at popular places is limited as are
potential locations for intensive new development, without ruining
the environment that holiday-makers are seeking.
I am an enthusiast for the benefits that tourism can bring. But
I am also concerned at the lack of coordinated management - and in
many places, there is evidence of what can go wrong when tourism
evolves according to demand. The question is: What to do about
it?
Generalized aspirations in a national tourism strategy are not
enough. Tourism is usually concentrated in certain regions and even
more locally on small, highly popular areas which themselves need
specific local plans. If the key places are not analysed, planned,
developed and managed, a simple national strategy is useless.
Three precepts
There are three ideas that tourism strategy-makers need to bear
in mind from the outset:
- The tourists will come anyway, whether the country has a
strategy or not. The question is, will they be the kind of tourists
that you want, and will you be prepared to receive and manage them
to increase the benefits and minimize the problems?
- Tourists are diverse: the backpacker trekking round the world
is not looking for the same thing as the businessman, or the
frequent leisure holidaymaker, or a person travelling to another
country for medical treatment, or to visit friends and
relatives.
- Tourism strategy must not only be about selling - it is about
management, about optimizing the social, economic and environmental
benefits that tourism can bring.
A perishable commodity
Tourism is also a most perishable commodity. You can always sell
a manufactured product made today, sometime tomorrow, or in the
future. A tourist bed unfilled represents revenue lost forever.
Tourism demand is often seasonal, so matching supply to available
demand is essential for viability. In contrast to conventional
industries, too, tourism makes an impact on everybody in a locality
- not just on those directly involved in the business.
Unfortunately, few countries, regions and localities have
cohesive tourism strategies. In developed countries, the existing
regulatory, social and commercial infrastructure provides a
management context for tourism, but in developing countries this is
much less evident and tourism developments are often driven by
short-term financial judgements of individual developers and
multinational companies. Recently 'environmental sustainability'
has become a fashionable focus for local tourism plans. Cultural
and community sustainability are just as important. The
popularizing of crafts and traditions can cause permanent
distortions if local culture is turned into a commodity to appeal
to foreign visitors.
Neglected factors undercut
strategy
Often a national tourism strategy just considers international
visitors and misses or undervalues domestic tourism by residents.
In developed countries with sizeable populations this will be much
larger, in volume and value, than foreign tourism. In the United
Kingdom, which is very successful at attracting foreign visitors,
domestic tourism is still 80% of the total. Even in a developing
country, domestic visits can be a significant proportion of all
tourism, and most of the tourism infrastructure will depend on this
home market.
Tourism often underpins the affordability to the host community
of maintaining their cultural and heritage assets. The continuity
of local services, facilities and retail businesses may be
dependent on tourists, even when their spending is only a minor
proportion of total income, but is essential for viability.
But what usually happens as tourism demand grows and changes?
The new developments and the bigger hotels will thrive on new
demand and more sophisticated visitors. Some of the more
traditional and long-established mid-market hotels may use the
demand wisely, upgrade and thrive. But many in the middle and
bottom end of the market are unlikely to gain enough from this new
demand and will decline and fail.
Answers
The answers to these problems lie in analysis and planning, in
improving the skills of those working in tourism and developing
clear management strategies, which are communicated to and
understood by the industry and agencies involved. You can influence
the type of foreign tourists who are attracted, the pattern of
their visits and encourage the development of appropriate
facilities and services to meet their needs.
It is really important to appreciate the value of improving
facilities for domestic tourists and valuing this sector, as the
more people choose to stay in their own country rather than
travelling abroad, the more revenue is retained within the national
economy, effectively doubling its worth.
Countering fragmentation
Tourism is not a cohesive industry. It involves many different
types of businesses: airlines, boats, bus companies, hotels and
other accommodation, attractions, car hire, festivals and events,
tour guides, retailing, sightseeing destinations - the list is
seemingly endless. Though in most countries the major businesses
are members of trade associations, the majority of the tourism
industry comprises small and medium-sized enterprises, which are
much less organized and much less likely to participate. So how are
they to be brought into the dialogue? Methods will vary - but
everyone must feel involved in the process of devising and
implementing a strategy if it is to be credible and effective.
Remember that some of the most important people for tourism may not
even be in tourism.
For the strategy-maker, simply dealing with all tourism-related
businesses poses problems. Getting accurate statistics is very
difficult. The type of statistics recorded by businesses for
commercial management and accounting purposes, and by countries for
border-entry controls, are not adequate for tourism management,
development and marketing purposes. Com-mercially reported figures
tend to be understated when values are minimized for tax and
overstated to demonstrate popularity in league tables. Strategies
and management cannot rely on industry sources.
ICT is changing tourism
ICT (information and communication technology) is rapidly
changing the tourism business, particularly in research, booking
and activity patterns. As yet only major hotels, airlines and key
players can be booked online.
This trend can only increase. But until most of a country's
tourism businesses are online, one cannot reap the full benefits of
a tourism network. In the meantime, ICT can still make it more
cost-effective to communicate and gather information regarding
industry performance.
Quality standards
Quality assurance is vital for most tourists, and therefore
critical to the success of a strategy. But few places, even in
developed countries, train all their staff in technical skills and
customer service. Customer service, likewise, is not just a matter
for hotel and resort staff. The Moroccan Tourism Office, for
example, has sponsored television drama programmes, shown at peak
times, to make everyone in the population sensitive to the feelings
of tourists.
Tourists often have to make choices, unseen, about what they
buy. There is not yet a global system of standards to describe
hotels and other visitor accommodation. In many countries, national
systems do not exist because of the perceived cost of inspections,
yet they could work on the basis of self-assessment, with
inspections as needed in the event of complaints.
Quality schemes require regulation, or need to be advocated by
peer groups and adopted because there is real commercial value in
doing so. Customer recognition is vital.
Watch your language
Tourism businesses are not used to the terminology familiar to
export strategy-makers. However, the export-strategy terms
'border-out', 'border' and 'border-in' adapt well to the physical
characteristics of tourism. For example, in considering border-out
issues, tourism planners need to analyse how most foreign visitors
book - through travel agents, tour operators or over the Internet
in their home countries. These become the marketing targets. Border
issues include licensing, visas, entry procedures and tourist
taxes. Border-in issues, as in other industries, must be a key
focus of strategists' efforts. Developing the right products,
fostering sound management, training staff, building awareness
among the public, and creating a welcoming atmosphere wherever
tourists go, are just as important as creating export readiness
among conventional product marketers.
Key motivator assets
As a strategy-maker, look first at existing tourism. One should
know the profile of the country's present and potential tourists:
categories of visitors, length of stay, visit patterns. One also
needs to know 'key motivator assets' - what makes people come and
differentiates a country from other competitor destinations?
Catalogue resources, facilities and infrastructure. This can then
be tested, through a SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and
threats) assessment and by applying a PEST (political, economic,
social and technological) analysis. This helps define the key
considerations - what tourism specialists call the 'product-market
fit'. Very often, when developing tourism destinations, the
existing product does not closely fit potential markets; this leads
to unplanned, evolutionary changes which fix the market where it
is, rather than fitting the product for where it could be.
From this review, devise a 'product development plan' including
'aspirational resources' (what a country does not have, but wants
to develop to attract preferred markets) and the in-country
alliances that will improve one's position. Developments will not
only involve the 'hardware' of tourism facilities but also the
'software' of people and themes. Environmental and community groups
play an important part in protecting heritage and cultural assets;
these may be able to build alliances with tour operators and
guides. Tourism is a 'people' business, and tourists respond to a
genuine sense of welcome from staff working in tourism as well as
everyone they meet in host communities. It is important to build on
intrinsic strengths and optimize these software aspects of tourism
as well as the hardware.
Tourists choose to visit safe and pleasant places. But what has
been called the 'Disney-fication' of destinations is not the answer
to providing the standards visitors demand. More sophisticated
foreign tourists want to experience the real life, atmosphere and
culture of a country. Preserving the intrinsic ambience is often a
key factor in attracting tourists.
International tourism is fiercely competitive. Even with the
right products, success will still depend on marketing, monitoring
and continuous improvement. But tourism will come anyway. Without a
strategy, tourism will distort and may destroy. The economic,
environmental and social benefits of a tourism strategy are too
valuable to be ignored.
Ken Robinson directs a consultancy that has worked on some
1,500 tourism development and management projects since 1967 from
Los Angeles to Taiwan, from Gomera to Singapore. This article is
based on remarks to an Executive Forum brainstorming on 'Tourism
Development for the Secrets of Strategy Template'. Ken Robinson can
be contacted at krobinsonlrt@aol.com