Tourism Planning and Development in Western Europe

Konstantinos Andriotis, Carla Pinto Cardoso, Dimitrios Stylidis, Konstantinos Andriotis, Carla Pinto Cardoso, Dimitrios Stylidis

• Publisher: CAB International
• Year: 2022
• ISBN:
  9781800620810
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Hospitality, Travel & Tourism Industry
• Index: Business

For many decades, Western European countries have undertaken diverse pathways in tourism development and planning. Most have experienced fast or even unlimited growth, resulting in overtourism and, now, the introduction of policies that respect the limits of communities and the sustainability of their resources. Focusing exclusively on tourism development, planning and policy, this book draws together new voices to discuss issues across Belgium, Denmark, Faroe Islands, Finland, France, Germany, Greenland, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Malta, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden and the UK. It: - Provides both successful and unsuccessful case studies to illuminate real, practical solutions, developed by tourism scholars who are experts in their researched context countries.- Adopts a range of methodological approaches to cover diverse and less-covered areas such as industrial tourism, saltpans, natural and cultural heritage, and micro-destinations.- Considers post-COVID tourism and the significant role of tourism stakeholders in Western Europe's re-development. An invaluable collection for policy-makers, researchers and academics, this book is also an insightful source of engaging contemporary case studies for use in the classroom.

1 Informed Developments for a Sustainable Community: An English Case Study in Renewal and Rejuvenation

Peter Wiltshier*

Consultant Researcher, Community and Tourism Development NZ at Research Consultancy NZ

*[email protected]

© CAB International 2022. Tourism Planning and Development in Western Europe (eds K. Andriotis et al.)

DOI: 10.1079/9781800620797.0001

1.1 Introduction

This chapter uses various discourses and related recorded case studies to demonstrate the value and purpose of sustainable development goals (SDGs). These discourses reflect the improving capability to utilize local resources and partnerships to underpin an emergent destination management strategy. Tourism can reflect the undeveloped yet innate capacity of a community to adopt a coherent destination management approach to rejuvenation and regeneration that is considered appropriate to the stakeholders and the visitors attracted by the resources and inimitable offer provided.

SDGs can be used to benchmark and optimize the future health of communities from a developed nation perspective. The community at the heart of this research has a specific focus on the usage of existing resources and existing strategies to achieve development commensurate with stakeholders’ vision and beliefs. These resources and strategies have been identified in economic growth, innovation in practice, sustainability in community development, and partnership in collaboration between sets of key stakeholders in both community and business development. The chapter also acknowledges the benefit of best practice through experience from a worldwide academy and practice-based background (Norström et al., 2014; Poudel et al., 2016). It uses a case study of a small market town (population 5000) in the English Midlands. The town epitomizes a long-held belief in the positive outcomes of rejuvenation and regeneration in the era of services marketing and against a background of decline in manufacturing and extractive industry that took hold of the local and national economies in the 1980s.

In terms of the research activity, students from tourism courses at undergraduate and postgraduate level were set tasks as part of the revitalization project employing what is often described a real-world-learning (RWL): work-based or problem-based learning techniques to obtain modular credits towards their university awards (Jamal et al., 2011).

The discourse and development process employed to maximize sustainable development planning is predicated on a long-held set of actions emergent from good practice employed over the past 50 years (Wood, 2002). Initial steps to be taken by stakeholders review values, beliefs and preferred shared identity (Galuppo et al., 2014). These steps support the advocacy of supportive marketing that can enable adaptive exploration of alternative segments. Establishing key segments that support identity and values requires management and practices to identify achievement of key performance indicators that must be regularly monitored and managed (e.g. Norström et al., 2014). Embedding from the management is a corpus of learning that reflects goals for local stakeholders’ education and an ability and capacity established to transform existing practices and, where essential to meet SDGs, a series of resilient alternatives.

These practices and actions, once adopted and embedded in a sustainable plan, can use tourism as part of the learning community. Stakeholders can reflect on visitors’ expectations and perception gaps, which can inform specific aspects of sustainable development that reward behaviour changes appropriate for the community (Dangi and Jamal, 2016). This chapter encourages reflection by stakeholders on diverse windows of discourse. The relational perspectives demand that stakeholders respect such perspectives but adopt a methodology to incorporate these variations (Della Lucia and Franch, 2015). The perspective of actor network and structuration additionally is seen as growing new social capital, a sharing economy that understands the diverse needs of actors and which is predicated on partnership and the revisiting of values, beliefs and identity over time (Baggio et al., 2010).

The first part of this chapter identifies the legacy and its content. The second part explores the literature around revitalization, rejuvenation and interpretation of the stories that abound into reasons to be justly proud and future-focused: firstly, future-focused to identify and accrue materials that underpin extant beliefs and values; secondly, to interpret those stories and the lessons learned into materials to underpin destination development in the future. Finally, the chapter outlines lessons learned in the process and recommendations for any destination, especially those more mature places that need skills, capacity and resources to effect change for their future welfare and enduring legacy.

1.2 Literature Review

Through the lenses of various discourses and using case studies this chapter explores outcomes for a destination that best reflect the capacity of the community to adopt a coherent destination management approach to rejuvenation and regeneration. These lenses are postmodern, they are reflexive and built around an emergent body of social science research that reflects on the divergent and occasionally contradictory needs of communities facing development dilemmas within a community, business or tourism context (Billington et al., 2007; Napolitano et al., 2007; Beritelli and Bieger, 2014; Sebby and Jordan, 2018; Wise, 2018).

The focus is on the lessons learned from experience, using a case study. Evaluations used in discourse analysis in the social sciences are held up to the lens of inspection. These include relational discourse, structuration, endogeny, stakeholders and structure agency/actor networks. The identities of these communities are not revealed as this is irrelevant. In the face of mounting pressure from central government and against a background of competitive thrust from post-industrial commerce and enterprise, anonymity is best to ensure frank and open discussion (Baggio et al., 2010). Rather than focus on idiosyncratic issues raised by a study of special cases it might be more useful to draw conclusions from discussions which may have universal appeal in terms of solutions for application (some might say best practice) in other locations (Fyall, 2011; Jenkins et al., 2011; Haven‐Tang and Jones, 2012).

The components of such lenses of analysis are set out in Table 1.1. In conjunction with data collection and analysis of values, beliefs, identity and current market activity, the discourses permit a socially constructed reflection to accompany a marketing perspective (Norström et al., 2014).

Revitalization and regeneration as concepts and practices are highly dependent on incorporating non-traditional resources and stakeholders in a mix, leading to community development. The proposed model incorporates diverse orientations evolving from heritage and history, environmental concerns from sustainable development, social equity stakeholder views and an array of non-governmental spokespersons (Baggio et al., 2010). Table 1.1 shows a range of stakeholders, their identity within the community and their contribution to the revitalization and regeneration capacity within their community.

Table 1.1. Elements and discourses for renewal.

Discourse	Example	Outcome
Relational	Local food and beverages	Territorially specific (butchery and milk products)
Structuration	Marshalling multiple decision makers	Events specific (festival arts and books)
Endogeny	Farmers’ market	Farmers/growers
Stakeholder	World Heritage Site	Coherent products and services
Actor/network	Partnerships and collaborations	Education sponsored by arts and performance

Adapted from Senge (1990), Saxena (2014), Puhakka et al. (2014), Flaccavento (2016), Latour (2004).

There are many areas of the UK that have outstanding stories of the past, borne of legacies of times past that were remarkable for the innovations in those eras that were, at the time, creative, innovative and are now, perceptibly, legendary in their gestation and birth (Bontje and Musterd, 2016; Carley and Spapens, 2017). This reflection is of an era where new forms of work, new industry and creativity were fostered from new knowledge that had the UK, and more specifically certain areas in England, as the centre of that creativity and innovation during the Industrial Revolution (Moore, 2014).

It is the legacy of the Industrial Revolution in the 18th century, an era of unparalleled creativity and innovation, that has caused some despair in key stakeholders and created some dysfunction in more recent centuries – specifically, the years following the Second World War. From a visitor perspective we all need to care more about the way in which 21st-century knowledge economies present services innovation (Wiltshier, 2018). In terms of the 18th-century innovations in heavy industry, the creative and astounding aspects of 200 years ago may now be a little tired and more than a little depressing, both to the visitor and the local (Ashworth and Tunbridge, 2013). Through focusing on discourse, the related corresponding examples and outcomes, a community can identify development processes for necessary and desirable shared outcomes (Table 1.1.).

Lessons learned from that industrial legacy provide narratives from the evolving destination story that are captured and reflected in the tales that may be used by stakeholders with support from historians, novelists and diarists, to create an identity, brand and aim for sustainable destination development (see examples from Hartman et al., 2019; Korez-Vide, 2017; Bassano et al., 2019).

The aim is to turn those cultural and heritage remnants that are old, tired and in need of revitalization into the content to steer communities into revitalization as sustainable destinations of distinction for the future (Agarwal, 1999, 2002; Saxena, 2014; Holladay, 2018). Partnerships between the cultural, economic and environmental stakeholders and agents can, and do, embed community values and beliefs easily within the governance and structures necessary to develop destinations for tourism and for community coherence. There are philanthropic goals espoused by stakeholders where the importance of returning something acquired during association with the community leaves expectations, even anticipations, of returning cultural resources and knowledge to the community that drives revitalization (Murzyn-Kupisz, 2012; Aquino et al., 2018; Bec et al., 2019; Little et al., 2020).

In conclusion, the extant literature usefully informs multiple lenses of inspection and highlights discourses that can provide frameworks for a socially balanced way forward, incorporating environmental sustainability goals as well as productivity and community-shared values as targets for future regeneration and revitalization. It is contemporary debate that reassures us that the research is equally focused on triple-bottom line components. These triple-bottom line components include good governance (Nunkoo, 2017), where responsibility as well as rewards are shared by stakeholders. Heritage and culture, seen as creating a sticky cohesive opportunity to share new resources, are based on addressing any social inequality (Calicchia et al., 2017). Inclusivity and sharing of heritage and cultural assets are also highlighted through the discourses (Dragouni and Fouseki, 2018). A community-interest company can also provide resources for expanding the range of cultural resources that provide inimitable competitive advantage and have recently been explored as constituent to a healthy set of achievable SDGs (Fouseki and Nicolau, 2018; Kryder-Reid, 2018).

1.3 Methodology

Student-centred, work-based learning was undertaken in June 2017. It was focused on the sustainability of a nascent community interest company (CIC). More specifically, students were engaged to identify and test the development of a marketing, communication and media plan for the destination in collaboration with existing public and private sector stakeholders. To do this, students selected an appropriate framework devised from secondary desk research covering a range of sustainability issues to engage ‘best practice’ in identifying essential components of marketing and communication for the newly formed CIC.

An initial meeting with business owners/operators was organized by the key tourism business stakeholder and conducted at the local museum by a panel of six students posing questions relevant to tourism development, community development and general business confidence, insights, perceptions and expectations. The student panellists collected varying views clarifying business confidence and expectations from both the public and private sectors. A further cohort of second-year tourism students donned bright orange sweatshirts and conducted primary research with visitors over a week’s duration in April and June of 2017 to identify expectations and perceptions. The results of the focus group and consumer survey have been published elsewhere. The overarching findings informed the group working to create the CIC and on...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Contributors
• Introduction
• 1 Informed Developments for a Sustainable Community: An English Case Study in Renewal and Rejuvenation
• 2 Foreign Tourists Reaching Italy: Transport Mode Choice and Seasonality
• 3 Malta’s Tourism Development: Themes, Impacts, Challenges, Patterns and Contrasts: Pointers for a Framework for Short/Long-term Tourism Development
• 4 Industrial Tourism in Seville, Spain
• 5 Salt pans: An Indissociable Natural and Cultural Heritage – A Comparative Study Between Aveiro, Portugal and Guérande, France
• 6 Strategic Considerations for Sustainable Tourism Development of the Micro-destination East Belgium
• 7 Perceived Impacts of Urban Tourism on Host Communities: Comparing Milan and Porto
• 8 Sociocultural Dimensions of Destination Resilience and Implications for Innovative Product Design in Experimental Destinations in Germany, Italy and Ireland
• 9 Planning for a More Sustainable Tourism? A Pan-Nordic Analysis of Regional Tourism Strategies for Rural Areas
• Conclusion
• Index
• Backcover