Tourism is an industry where the prime attractions and some
events are owned by the host nation, not usually by the commer-
cial providers. The point here is that tourism, both quantitative
and qualitative, is within public policy control. This gives rise, in
regional conservation and development planning contexts, to a
recognition that tourism encounters should notbe left to the can-
nibalistic vagaries of the free market. We know the ‘consumers
are there’, the imperative control factor being that the ‘resource
in question’ is ownedby the state, the region, and the community
in combination as a limited supply asset. Obtaining growth and
jobs from the tourism resource is centred on a finite resource.
Tourism resource management, in line with other resource allo-
cation quota can and should be planned and managed by the gov-
ernment, local authority, first peoples and NGO agencies as
partners, and not directly led or initiated by tourism provision-
ers.
The general aim is management in a way which secures sus-
tainable (return) tourism, sustainable (continuing) tourism, and
socially sustainable (low host-impact with host-gain) tourism.
Negotiating these visitor and host satisfactions is largely a matter
of moderating unbridled narrow-sector ‘growth’ away from
prime locations toward geographically dispersed regional alter-
natives, all of which is clever and neomodernist on account of its
sustainable character and outcome.
Planning policies for the sustainable-in-spirit and authentic-in-
experience tourism format leads to the identification of other
planning objectives, which include:- Legibility and ‘sense of place’ so that by means of information
and signage tourists are always aware of where they are at;
and - Security of design at places and along routes which tourists
use. - Variety of options and a capability of these being connected
to alternative tourism-as-discovery experiences. - Permeability which enables tourists to disperse in search of
variety knowing or feeling that they are secure wherever they
are.
Unplanned and under-regulated tourism expansion, with little thought or heed for
the wellbeing of the actual environment, the actual heritage, the actual communi-
ties being visited, or indeed the actual tourist’s enjoyment, will wear down the
very attractions on which the industry is predicated. The essentially physical and
planable objectives are design components to lay over the delivery of an authen-
tic experience (also consult David Weaver, Ecotourism, 2002). The collective con-
siderations are depicted in box 4.8 as Sustainable tourism policies.178 Practice
I was drawn into a
tourism development
withconservation
operation first hand,
during the course of a
Dal Lakes (Kashmir)
project, published as
‘How To Justify
Conservation in a
Developing Country’. The
adoption of eco-tourist
principles provided an
environmental foil against
cultural asset-stripping
and resource
despoilation. The
debasements and blights
of ‘hard’ formula tourism
were supplanted by a
‘soft’, yet also
commercially viable eco-
tourism, which included
the sale of local
handicrafts.
The Kashmir project
generated two
interesting disclosures.
First, that the then (1985)
sheer number of visitors
to the Dal Lakes (0.3
million p.a.) wore down,
fouled up and degraded
the attraction.
Second, that the
economically significant
foreign visitor
component (40,000
persons) within the one-
third million aggregate,
were of ‘basic’ economic
significance to both the
tourism and the
handicraft sectors.Ecotourism Policy, Fennell
and Dowling (eds), 2002.