5885T TOURISM POL PLAN-PT2-lb_246x174mm 04/04/2013 18:18 Page 1 Copyrighted material - Taylor & Francis www.routledge.com/cw/page CHAPTER 1 Introduction The aim of this chapter is to provide introductions to the topics of tourism policy and tourism planning from a global perspective. Tourism – a set of dynamic and growing industries – involves not just people traveling, but also planning and protecting the destinations and attractions to which people travel. Tourism is composed of private, public, and not-for-profit components interested in tourism development, new products, destination marketing, economic benefits, and future sustainability. These tourism interests have broad ramifications on community life and need parameters and guidelines to help define and plan the future direction of tourism policy, ultimately providing quality tourism products and services. Tourism policy should aim to improve the quality-of-life of the local citizenry at any given destination. Good tourism policy will assist in that process. This book identifies some of the issues and concerns that tourism policy should address in order to ensure a positive sustainable future for tourism. This chapter provides brief introductions to three central concepts – tourism, tourism policy, and tourism planning. Setting a foundation for these concepts adds to the readers’ understanding of subject matter covered throughout the book. The conceptual foundations in this chapter can also be a good reference for students or tourism professionals who are new to the study of tourism-related public policy. Understanding tourism In this book, the term “tourism” is used synonymously with all aspects of travel and tourism, unless otherwise specified. With respect to international tourism, this text uses the following definitions as recommended by the United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO): 5885T TOURISM POL PLAN-PT2-lb_246x174mm 04/04/2013 18:18 Page 2 Copyrighted material - Taylor & Francis www.routledge.com/cw/page 2 1 Introduction • Visitor: Any person visiting a country (or community) other than that in which the person usually resides, for any reason other than following an occupation remunerated from within the country visited. This definition covers two classes of visitors: tourist and excursionist. – Tourist: A temporary visitor staying at least 24 hours in the country (or community) visited, the purpose of whose journey can be classified under one of the following headings: (a) leisure, recreation, holiday, health, study, religion, or sport; or (b) business, family, mission, or meeting. – Excursionist: A temporary visitor staying less than 24 hours in the country (or community) visited (including travelers on cruises). • Tourism: In terms of balance-of-trade, accounting is defined as travel and transportation and is determined a business service export from the tourism recipient to the tourism generating economy. Tourism is inherently a complex field and difficult to define, resisting comparability within itself and with other industries. As an example, consider meals served in a restaurant, which is integral to the travel experience. Depending on the restaurant’s location, tables could be filled by local residents or it could be filled with visitors. In reality, customers in most restaurants come from both groups at any given time. Local residents may even be entertaining out-of-town guests at the restaurant making it even more difficult to identify how much of the restaurant demand is tourism-related and how much is derived from community members. Depending on who pays the restaurant check, the revenue generated from the meals – and subsequent economic impact – may or may not be attributable to tourism. Despite the complexities of tourism, discussed throughout the book, simple definitions of tourism exist. Tourism is the practice of traveling and also the business of providing associated products, services, and facilities. Tourism is not a single industry but instead an amalgam of industry sectors – a demand force and supply market, a personal experience, and complicated international phenomenon. Tourism incorporates social, cultural, and environmental concerns beyond physical development and marketing. It encompasses both supply and demand, more than the sum of marketing and economic development. Tourism has strong links to cultural and social pursuits, foreign policy initiatives, economic development, environmental goals, and sustainable planning. Tourism includes the buying, selling, and management of services and products (to tourists) that might range from buying hotel rooms to selling souvenirs or managing an airline. To accomplish these complex activities, tourism demands the most creative and innovative managers because tourism represents collections of perishable products. For example, if hotel rooms, airline seats, cruise-ship cabins, or restaurant tables are not filled daily and repeatedly, the point-of-sale moments to generate revenues from these products are gone forever. There is no opportunity to put such unsold products on sale at a later time, in storage, or in inventory. This perishability distinguishes tourism from consumer goods, such as automobiles, sunglasses, or food sales in retail markets. 5885T TOURISM POL PLAN-PT2-lb_246x174mm 04/04/2013 18:18 Page 3 Copyrighted material - Taylor & Francis www.routledge.com/cw/page Introduction 3 Tourism is also wide-ranging in the sense that it demands products from other sectors of the economy. For example, many economies’ top agricultural exports include leaf tobacco, live animals and animal products, cotton, and forestry products that supply demand throughout the world. These products are also assistance goods used by tourism. Tourism is comprised of many business components including hotels, resorts, conventions, meetings, events, entertainment venues, attrac tions, amusement parks, shopping malls, music venues, festivals, parks, restaurants, theaters, museums, history, heritage, culture, and nature sites and more. It is a large and highly competitive sector of the economy at all levels: local, state/province, national, and international. The full scope of domestic and international tourism, therefore, encompasses the output of segments of many industries. The travel industries consume the output of and create a far-reaching base of wealth for feeder industries such as agriculture, fishing, food processing, brewing, construction, airports, transportation vehicles, communications equipment, and furniture to name a few. In addition, tourist activities make use of the service of other industries, such as insurance, credit cards, advertising, database and niche marketing, the internet, and e-commerce tools. In order to plan for and provide rational order to such a diverse and dynamic set of industries, it is necessary to develop policies and plans to assist decision-makers in the management of this complex phenomenon – tourism. Since the agricultural and industrial revolutions of the nineteenth century, we have measured the wealth of nations almost entirely on the development and exportation of tangible goods (agriculture and livestock, mining and manufacturing), on the construction of infrastructure (highways and dams), and transportation (ocean vessels, railroads, airplanes, buses, automobiles, and other vehicles that transport people and assets from place to place around the world). In the twenty-first century we are deep into the services revolution that is changing the way we live and evaluate the world’s wealth and economy. An ever-expanding world of innovation has already provided us with smart phones, e-commerce, digital cameras, high definition television, and satellite technology. In this bright new world, we have found another major growth service sector – tourism – sometimes referred to as an invisible or intangible activity. According to the United States Travel and Tourism Advisory Board, the world has entered a new golden age for travel and tourism.1 Demographic changes, increasing disposable income levels, heightened emphasis on sustainability, greater availability of leisure time, new communication tools and technology, higher levels of education, emerging tourism markets, growth in the supply of facilities and destinations and other supplementary factors are having an impact on demand for tourism. Tourism has become one of the most dynamic industries throughout the globe as it adapts to technological change, product innovations, and new markets. Tourism embraces technology in its widespread use of e-commerce tools, for its applications to new products such as space and undersea tourism and developing new methods of marketing and promotion. Managing sustainable tourism in today’s world adds an important dimension to the growth of tourism. The policies we set for tourism in an 5885T TOURISM POL PLAN-PT2-lb_246x174mm 04/04/2013 18:18 Page 4 Copyrighted material - Taylor & Francis www.routledge.com/cw/page 4 1 Introduction ever-changing world will direct the courses of action for tourism in the future. This book is an effort to meet this challenge and to provide policy and planning solutions for the orderly growth and development of tourism and add to its sustainability. The opportunity offered by tourism for future economic, environmental, and social benefits will depend on understanding the tourism industry of yesterday, making the best possible decisions today and addressing forward-thinking trends. We can define clear plans and policy guidelines for the future of tourism or let it happen