LO2 Understand different approaches to tourism planning and development
Introduction
Tourism industry contributes a major economic, social and environmental opportunity for many countries and a means of improving the livelihood local residents. The public, private sectors and international organisaton has been incorporating together in order to design development to create appropriate employment, to maintain and protect natural resource, and provides a meaningful visitor experience in tourist destination. However, many development planning failed before its reach the objectives without proper planning and without consider long –term development plan. These failure could bring negative impacts to host community.
Any form of tourist destination needs to be careful planning if it is to be successful in achieving the clear developed objectives that indicate the importance of the development. Tourism development approaching involves the application of the fundamental principles of tourism planning and engage the entire key stakeholders in the planning process rather than being left entirely in the hands of private sectors. In addition, the key players in the planning process such as different levels of government organisation need to work together in the planning process , develop and sets up the policies and regulate rules in order to control the impacts of nature.
Tourism planning is needed to coordinate the different sectors to deliver better service, and economic benefits can be achieved through an interacted tourism plan. This blog explores the main key players of tourism planning process, the various approaches of tourism planning systems and the ways that these approaches are implemented, and at least with evaluating different methods of model to measure the tourist impact whether or not the objectives of tourism and its sustainability have been achieved.
2.1 Analyse features of tourism development planning at different levels.
Tourism planning is an essential activity to achieve the goal of tourism development. Planning is about developing a vision and setting up objectives for the future. Many authors define the tourism planning depends on their concerns on different aspect of tourism planning process. One of the popular definition given be Getz (1987) proposes that tourism planning is a process which seeks to improve the local residents well-being and maintains environment along with the possible contribution of tourism industry. (Neigel D. Hongliang, 2015 P4-5)
Gunn 1994 also suggests the tourism planning is mainly focus to generate income and employment, and ensure natural resources protected and to fulfil visitor satisfaction. Again in 2002, Gunn (2002) recommends tourism planning should be directed towards four main goals: sustainable use of resources, enhanced visitor satisfaction, integration of local community and area and improved economy and business success. (Clare, Gunn, 2002 P 5-7)
To be able to achieve the Gunn four main goals of tourism planning, it is necessary to understand the development plan objectives .The nature of planning objectives depends on national, regional and local preferences grounded in the country’s social, environmental and economic values, as well as its step of development. Tourism planning is involved all levels of development –at different levels of international, national, regional and for particular areas and sites.
Tourism development planning could help to achieve a long-term sustainable development of the Myanmar tourist destination that ensures the natural, culture and other resources of tourism are conserved for the future use. Myanmar tourist destination makes their planning in such a way that tourist who visiting the country satisfies with their experiences. Tourism development plan for Myanmar has adopted in 2013, and it aims to provide a framework through which the areas’ tourism policy will be acted upon, ensuring the development reflects local values and beneficial to the tourism industry. Major types of planning tourist destination in Myanmar are economic development planning, social facility planning, infrastructure planning, heritage cultural conservation planning and urban and regional planning. For instance, the government approach to opening 21 protected area for sustainable ecotourism development. This effort supports the objectives of Master Plan to strengthen the conservation of protected areas and maintain natural resources. (International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development Conference on ecotourism in Protected Areas, 2015)
National Tourism Planning
Myanmar Tourism Master Plan is the first master plan at national level which helps to transform the national tourism policy to Responsible tourism into actions at all below levels. The government of Myanmar mainly focus on tourism policy , tourism marketing strategies and institution. For example, there was a consensus that Responsible tourism policy is needed a set of national policy principles that aimed at maximising economic, social and environmental benefits and minimizing costs to destinations. In addition, the government sets up the law and regulations in travel and tourism, market suppliers of goods and services, conservation of heritage sites and buildings and crossing international borders. Government also plans for a physical structure includes improving infrastructure in the form of roads, airports and services, development planning control. For instance, the number of hotels builds in the areas, quality of accommodation and control revenue from tourist via taxes such as airport and tourist taxes.
Regional and Local tourism planning
Regional and local tourism planning deals with specific issue that effect a sub-national area. Local governments play a significant role in tourism industry such as planning and development policy, funding and operating. Local government also supplies funding for local tourism in order to maintaining infrastructure and implementation of community planning such as
• Basic services (e.g. water and electricity)
• Maintenance of public infrastructure (e.g. roads, energy, transport)
• Promotion of the attractive area
• Funding and operating tourism activities, events and attractions (e.g. museums and art galleries, parks)
• Education and training programs on the regional level
The call for the establishment of Myanmar Tourism Federation occurred in 2011, and it presents a wide range of regional tourism organisation with 11 member associations. The aim of Myanmar Tourism Federation is to support and represent the private sector in the promotion of Myanmar as responsible world-class destination. In 2012, Myanmar Tourism Federation published Myanmar Responsible tourism policy. The planning is made at regional - was consensuses with public and private stakeholders from different sub-region to implement the policy including staging of development and short and long term development strategy and project planning. The Responsible tourism policy is to ensure that Myanmar tourism industry make possible contributing to the economy, employment an increasingly throughout operating and sustainable economy growth. Myanmar Federation tourism is making that the tourism benefits are shared equitably with local community, creating employment opportunities for local people, enhancing the public private partnership and enhancing destination promotion at the national and regional level.
International level tourism planning
At the international level organisation such as WTO, UNWTO, UNESCO and Tourism Council generally provide a guideline and responsible for the promotion, sustainable and accessible tourism development in the globe. It coordinates national and international stakeholders in planning, development, and implementation of tourism projects in its member countries. The function of WTO is helping member countries to maximise the positive economic effect of tourism, tourism planning, advising the policies, practice and educating by doing research on different problem facing both in developed and developing countries. (wanhill, 2005, p 505).
United National World Trade Organisation (UNWTO) is the lead organisation in international co-operating for tourism planning. UNWTO has supported the planning tourism at all levels to achieve successful tourism development and management. UNWTO has partnered with International Trade Central (ITC) to promote Myanmar tourist destination “ Kayah State” in 2016, March at Berlin the world's leading travel show. The show aims to promote a region of Myanmar destination to an outstanding natural and cultural heritage. Kayah State is a new opened destination in the east of the country. The Government of Myanmar has worked with ITC to develop cultural and ecotourism products, preparing local community for the arrival of international visitors since 2014.
2.2 Evaluate the significance of interactive planning systems and processes in tourism developments.
Although many country have prepared tourism development planning but their plan have failed or delay to reach their goals because most of their plans are not implemented, and some other parts are only partially or very partially implemented. This may be due to ‘conventional planning’ according to Gunn defined in 1988. He said that planning has too often concerned with plan only, sometimes unclear, unthinking, lack of funding and unrelated data producing.
In 1994 Gunn proposes interactive planning rather than conventional planning. Gunn stated that better decisions could be reached by means of a participative process, even though it is far more difficult. Decisions have a much better chance of being implemented if publics have been involved. As a result, interactive planning proposes top-down, together with bottom-up input, for the better implementation of plans (Gunn, 1994, p.20). Bramwell and Sharman (1999) and Timothy (1998; 1999) suggest collaborative planning, they recommends co-operative and participatory planning, all directed along the same lines, where there is incorporation of the local community’s opinions and desires in the planning process.
Although Gunn suggests conventional planning, there could be issued relating with designing and implementing the plan, for instance if the plan did not give a clear statement with respect to its objectives - objective must be achievable and non-conflicting. The plan also fails with the issues relating to environmental and social impacts. However, the plans are unlikely to fail if all tourism development planning should go through careful analysis, selection of the choice after environmental scanning and finally laying out frameworks for implementation strategies. It can be agreed that interactive planning is better than conventional, however getting involves local community in decision making process it is not always easy. There could be conflict between the government and local community for example land-using right to build new hotels in the areas. For local community to come to know the benefit of tourism industry broadly and participate in the planning can be difficult without consulting them.
Interactive planning is more focusing on the present but it is concerned with organising some future events in order to achieve the specific objectives. There are three main characteristics of the interactive planning are:
1. In interactive planning organisation has to work in present for the better future.
2. Collaborative with local community.
3. Encourage all stakeholders involved in the plans. .
Interactive planning is the most important part in the Myanmar tourist destination because it aims to present its popular destinations with international level in which attracts numbers of international visitors in the future. In such developments, the interactive planning system plays an important role in the successful implementation. In order to process a development plan it is necessary to have clear understanding of the objectives that are to be achieved by the development of tourism.
Objective of tourism planning process destination in Myanmar-
➢ To develop a tourism sector at all levels
➢ To help in the development of the market and also stated the needs for the tourists
➢ To increase employment opportunities
➢ To encourage local community participating in decision –making process
➢ To preserve cultural and natural resources a part of tourism development
➢ It helps in manufacturing and developing the goods and services for the specific market through which they achieve the goal.
After setting up the objectives the above stated program, it should be implemented by collecting information. The information can be filled by the undertraining data collection. Once the objectives have been formulated, it should be it should be evaluated and monitored. This is done to check its accountancy as to profits and success to achieve the objectives and goals of the organization.
2.3 Evaluate different methods to measure tourist impact
A review of tourism studies shows that development of tourism industry can have very impacts according to the way activities are managed. Tourism can have a positive on social, economic and environmental of the destinations. The aim of planning process is to evaluate whether objectives have been fulfilled through measuring the economic, environmental and social impacts. There are different methods can be used to measure these impacts such as Scarborough Tourism Economic Activity Monitor (STEAM), Triple Bottom Line and Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA).
1. Economic measure
The studies of tourism research shows that the development of tourism planning is mainly related with economic prosperity. So, the most commonly used measure in tourism impacts has been associated with economic. Frechtline (1994) stated that tourism entomic potential could be understood as the gross income for local people, usually measured in monetary terms. Measure dealing with the direct benefits of tourism includes labour earnings, business receipts, number of jobs, and tax revenue. (Pearce and Butler 567, 2010)
STEAM is a tourism economic impact modelling process which approaches the measurement of tourism from the bottom up, through its use of local supply side data and tourism performance and visitor survey data collection The STEAM model propose to use quantity the number of local economic impact of tourism, from number of visitors, through analysis and use a variety of contribution including attraction numbers, accommodation and visitor expenditure levels.
Myanmar tourist’s destination economic impacts can be measure with STEAM model as such number of visitor, generation income and visitor expenditure levels. The total tourist number into the Myanmar increased by 3% from 2010-2015, with a total number of 3 million visitors. The total number of tourist expenditure in the Myanmar was 620 million into the 1100 million in 2013 being spent on overnight visitors. A total contribution of Travel and Tourism business to GDP was £ 170 bn with 4.8% to the national GDP in 2014, in 2015 t rise by 8.4 % of GDP. The number of employment has increased more than 1.5 % compared to 735,000 jobs in 2012 of 2.8% of total employment. (WTTC, annual research key facts, 2015)
2. Environmental measures
Any forms of tourism development will bring with its impact upon the environment in which takes place. The environment impacts associated with tourism development as like the economic impacts can be positive and negative. It is impossible to develop tourism without incurring environmental impacts, but it is possible with correct planning and monitoring assessment in order to minimises the negative impacts. EIA helps in measuring the effect environment activities on tourism from any future risk and ecological imbalances is avoided and it also give compensation for any damages which is caused due to the nature.
It is important to use EIA process at the early stages of tourism development because it is easier to avoid environmental damage. There are a variety of methods that may be used for EIA including checklist and network systems, but generally EIA depends on researcher to predict the environmental consequence associated with any development project.
EIA examines:
• Environment evaluating systems;
• Limitations for natural assets;
• Environmental issues and clashes that may influence project
• Possible damage effects to people
3. Social measures
According to Cooper et al. (1998, p.247) the socio-cultural impacts of tourism are the most difficult to measure and quantify, because they are often highly qualitative and subjective in nature. The nature of social impacts can be measured such as the outbreak of particular types of disease, safety levels of tourists or local community, crime rates and number of infrastructure. However, there are those impacts that may be difficulty to measure such as changes in customs and code of conduct.
There are two key methods for collecting information for social impact measurement: primary research through surveys or interviews including visitor surveys. Although this method is more actual for data collection, it is time consuming and costly. It is also sometimes difficult to reach the level of objective when asking awareness questionnaire to residents it needs very careful construction. There are a variety of sources found in government records, public documents and newspapers. These include statistics, employment and unemployment data.
Conclusion
The development of tourism has both advantages and disadvantages effects on destinations. Host communities are often doubted with development plans, and they feel threatened from unplanned or carelessly planned tourism expansion. In order to overcome these situations, effective or comprehensive tourism is required to minimise the negative impacts and maximize the benefits through the involvement of the local community.
The above report indicates that the reason and the need for planning in tourism development, but it should not only to design a development plan but also it need implement. Therefore, it is necessary to develop policies that will be widely accepted by the local community. Although Gunn encouraged the interaction planning that active participation of the local community in the planning process is very important for achieving a balanced tourism development. Given the fact that integrated planning can be considered as a device for future and present problem-solving orientation and as a tool to provide a balance impact of tourism.
There are some example that the best plans fail or knock off because of unexpected events such as act of terrorism, disasters including earthquake, hurricanes and outbreaks of infections diseases. For instances, the terrorist attacks in Paris last year have changed tourism flows in ways that have some damaged the tourism development plans of many European countries. When tourism development plan occurs, is likely to be failed from the design stage or the implementation stages. So it is important that planners or government have contingency plans in place to deal with unexpected events that may fail the tourism strategy.
Planners and governments must measure environmental and socio-economic impacts of tourism, in order to ensure long-term benefits for residents and tourists alike without damaging the manmade and natural environment. Tourism planners should be concerned through planning to provide better preservation of its environment and culture, understanding the needs and desires of the local community and increased awareness in the community as to what the industry means in terms of costs and benefits.
Reference
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International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD), Conference on ecotourism in Protected Areas 2015, Available at http://www.icimod.org/?q=18660, Access on 2016)
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