Literature review

This literature review is written by Bernd-Niklas Bierbaum as part of his NHTV Master in Tourism Destination Management.

In their paper, Hesket et al. (1994) introduce the concept of the service profit chain.  “The S-PC postulates that operations contribute to the profits of a service firm via the following chain of logical deduction (Yee et al. 2009, p.617):”

1. Profitability and growth are primarily stimulated by customer loyalty.
2. Loyalty is influenced by customer satisfaction.
3. Satisfaction is influenced by the service values provided.
4. Value is created by loyal productive and satisfied employees.
5. Employee satisfaction results from support services and policies that enable employees to deliver high quality services. (Heskett et al. 1994)

This paper will focus on the question whether it is enough for a company to simply „satisfy“ their customers in order to achieve loyalty and finally profitability. In the following, the question will be raised and discussed whether there might be more to the concept of profitability than simply being able to satisfy a customer. Therefore, customer satisfaction, customer loyalty, the relationship between loyalty and profitability and finally the importance of the “moment of truth” and the service encounter will be evaluated and highlighted from different standpoints.

Customer Satisfaction

Customer satisfaction and service quality seem to go hand in hand. In fact, both terms are often used interchangeably, causing confusion (O’Neill in Kandampully et al. 2001, Knutson in Kandampully et al. 2001, Cronin & Taylor 1992). Therefore, a distinction is necessary. To differentiate satisfaction from service quality, Cronin & Taylor 81992), Bitner (1990) and Parasuraman, Zeithaml& Berry (1988) describe perceived quality as a form of attitude where the customer forms a long-run evaluation whereas satisfaction is described as a reaction to a specific transaction. Supporting the theory by Cronin & Taylor et al., Rust & Oliver (1994) describe satisfaction as a result of a service quality encounter.

Bolton & Drew (1991, p.2) state: “A customer’ satisfaction/ dissatisfaction with a service […] depends on his or her current perception of performance, prior expectations about performance and perceptions of the discrepancy between these two constructs.”

Several studies have proven that customer satisfaction together with quality is one of the key drivers of service performance for a company (Anderson et al. 1994; Fornell 1992). Hence, companies should offer services that are able to satisfy not only the consumers’ expectations but also their perceptions of service quality. As they may however differ from customer to customer, companies should evaluate the perceptions and expectations of customers on a regular basis. On this ground, it is eminent to constantly assure service performance in order to increase or at least preserve customer satisfaction. The degree of satisfaction is furthermore believed to increase the probability of repurchase through a customer, hence eminent for a successful company.

O’Neil (in Kandampully et al. 2001) conclusively states that if the customer experiences better service than expected a high level or positive disconfirmation and therefore satisfaction will result (also discussed in Rust & Oliver 1994; Erevelles& Leavitt 1992).

It was Hesket et al. (1994) who, with their implementation of the service profit chain model, defined customer satisfaction as a prerequisite to customer loyalty. This customer loyalty then again would result in profitability.

Customer Loyalty

For an organization’s success, consumer loyalty plays a critical role (Li & Green 2011). This is underlined by the definition of Van Looy et al. (2003) defining loyalty as:

“Customer behavior characterized by a positive buying pattern during an extended period (measured by means of repeat purchases, frequency of purchase, wallet share or other indicators) and driven by a positive attitude towards the company and its products or services (p.59).”

Aside from a financial aspect, Oliver (1997) defines customer loyalty as “a deeply held commitment to rebuy or re-patronize a preferred product or service consistently in the future […] (p.392).” In view of Li & Green (2010) loyal costumers’ then provide a constant stream of revenue as well as ensuring cost reductions due to less promotional expenses for the acquisition of new customers; hence, increasing profitability.

As outlined in Li & Green (2010), Oliver (1997) proposes four stages loyal customers go through:

1. Cognitive stage: the customer must confirm that his expectations of the service are met on a constant basis.
2. Affective sense: customers are repeatedly satisfied with purchasing decisions.
3. Conative stage: consumers have a deep commitment to buy.
   1. Customers overcome obstacles like price sensitivity (price increase, attractive offers from competitors)

In order to create a long lasting relationship between the customer and the company, the customer needs to run through the above-mentioned stages. On the other hand, the degree on how satisfied the customer is will then determine the level of loyalty. In this context, Van Looy et al. (2003) point out that opposed to the belief that loyalty results automatically from satisfaction; research found out that there is actually a rather weak link between plain satisfaction scores and loyalty. In their paper, Heskett et al. (2008) identify that relationships between the scores and actual loyalty strongly depend on whether customers were “very satisfied” or simply “satisfied” with the product or service. Customers being “very satisfied” were 5 times more likely to repurchase. According to these findings, Van Looy et al. (2003) specify several reasons to explain the weak correlation between “satisfied” customers and loyalty.

1. As positive and negative feelings can coexist, customers may like parts of the service while rejecting other parts.
2. Non-directly related factors may play a role. E.g. an accident happens during the holiday. It is not the tour operator’s fault but the client might not be willing to book another holiday with the same tour operator again.
3. Satisfaction scores may vary upon the mood and circumstances the customer is in while answering the satisfaction survey.
4. Customer loyalty may also vary upon the commitment the customer has towards the company.

Figure 1: The relationship between customer satisfaction & customer loyalty (Hesket et al. 2008)

The figure above shows the loyalty (retention) of customers based on their satisfaction. It briefly divides the customers into three groups, subdivided into 3 different zones. The “terrorists” are those customers who are “extremely dissatisfied” up to “slightly dissatisfied” with the service of the company. According to Heskett et al. (2008) those customers are not only highly likely of defecting to a competitor but are also likely to spread negative word of mouth to others (see also Stauss& Seidel 2004). “Apostles” on the other hand are those customers who are truly satisfied with the company or the service offered resulting in true loyalty to the company.

Thus, it must be the effort of a service provider trying to achieve zero or a minimum number of customer defections. This will lead to more profitability in the long run.

Relationship between Profitability & Loyalty

Increasing and preferably maximizing growth and profitability are obviously at the end of the service profit chain developed by Heskett et al. (1994) as they constitute the final goal of every organization. In order to achieve profitability, companies need to pass through many different stages including employee satisfaction, retention and productivity to be able to achieve high level of customer satisfaction resulting in high customer loyalty and eventually profitability (for more information see Heskett et al., 1994). The relation between customer retention and customer profitability has been examined by several researchers who mostly agreed on the assumption that “increased customer loyalty has a positive effect on customer profitability” (Helgesen, 2006, p.258).

This positive relationship is mainly based on two factors. On the one hand, companies usually invest a great amount of money into each customer, which is the highest in the initial phase of the company-customer relationship. An organization must spend money on resources to acquire customers – acquisition and marketing costs – and later on to cultivate them – maintenance costs (Anderson & Mittal 2000). These costs constantly decrease each year the customer stays with the company as marketing and sales costs are lowered among other things by the customer’s engagement in positive word of mouth (Reinartz& Kumar, 2002) and due to their familiarity with the firm’s service delivery system (Hallowell 1996). A financial consulting business found out, that costs, a company spends for each customer, drop by two-thirds from the first year of the relationship to the second (Reichheld&Sasser 1990).

This leads to the second factor supporting the thesis that “retained customers are a revenue-producing asset for a firm” (Anderson & Mittal 2000, p.116) as they are interrelated. Simultaneously with the decreasing costs, customers generate increasingly more revenues throughout the relationship with a company. In fact, loyal customers buy more frequently, in higher volumes and are likely to positively respond to cross- or up- selling’s (Reichheld&Sasser 1990). Moreover, they are less price-sensitive and less likely to complain (Hallowell 1996; Reinartz& Kumar 2002). In addition, a defecting customer costs a company way more than serving existing ones; acquisition costs have to be spend once more, new customers buy less frequently and in smaller quantities, require more service, and are less active as word-of-mouth marketers (Anderson & Mittal 2000).

“These cost savings and additional revenues combine to produce a steadily increasing stream of profits over the course of the customer’s relationship with the company” (Reichheld&Sasser 1990, p.107). It is estimated that a low customer defection rate can result in profit increases between 25% and 85% concluding that managers should pay at least as much attention to the quality of market share, measured in terms of customer loyalty, as to the quantity of share (Heskett et al. 1994).

The Service Encounter and „the Moment of Truth“

The following part will emphasize the overall importance of the service encounter and the “moment of truth” for the achievement of customer satisfaction. It will outline that it is a crucial part in the derivation of the satisfaction process.

Due to Hesket et al. (1994) in the new economics of service, frontline workers and customers need to be the center of management concern. Investment in people, technology that supports frontline workers, revamped recruiting and training practices are the factors that drive profitability in the new service paradigm. These frontline workers act as ambassadors for their companies during service encounters, playing a crucial role in influencing customers’ perceptions of quality (Lee-Ross 2001). Lovelock (2007) describes a service encounter as every time a customer interacts with an employee. In line with this, many researchers define the service encounter as a dyadic interaction between customer and service provider, each influencing the other’s activity and experience (Solomon et al. 1985; Bitner et al. 1990; Ma &Dubé 2011). Presbury et al. (2005) confirm that every encounter between an employee and a customer is an opportunity for the customer to evaluate the service provided. Therefore, every service encounter is a “moment of truth”. Swedish consultant Richard Normann (as quoted in Lovelock 2007) borrowed the metaphor of “the moment of truth” from bullfighting saying:

“We could say that the perceived quality is realized at the moment of truth, when the service provider and the service customer confront each other in the arena. At that moment they are very much on their own… It is the skill, the motivation, and the tools employed by the firm’s representative and the expectations and behavior of the client which together will create the service delivery process (p.55).”

Instead of a live or death decision, Normann points out the relationship between service provider and customer, being at stake every time during an encounter (Lovelock 2007). In the post purchase phase of an encounter, a customer then evaluates if prior expectations have been met during the encounter and therefore determines if he is satisfied (Lovelock 2007).

As the service encounter (as discussed above) is an eminent or crucial factor for the overall satisfaction of a customer, researches have proposed ideas on how to improve service encounters from a companies and customers’ point of view. Pugh (2001) in his study “service with a smile” examines on how employees feel and act towards customers and in which sense displaying emotions influences customer affect and judgment of service quality. In his conclusion, Pugh (2001) points out that it is a valid tool for employees to display emotions (see also Morris &Feldmann 1996) as they can influence the customers’ attitude towards an organization through altering moods. It is not necessary though to display real emotions but to “learn norms about which emotions are appropriate to express when interacting with customers (p.1019). Pugh (2001) states that “a professional acts as they must, not as they feel (p.1018).” Hence, service encounters can to some extent be scripted or blueprinted (Lee-Ross 2001). Bitner et al. (1990) as well as Ma &Dubé (2011) suggest in their findings of improvements to service encounters for a more satisfied customer, that employee responses to customer query should be coordinated in order to create a positive synergy. In their work, Chase &Dasu (2001) add that it is possible and effective to engineer service encounters in order to enhance the customers’ experience during, and the recollection of the encounter afterwards. Using behavioral science they found out that several principles apply for a successful encounter with a customer. As people tend to especially remember the last days/ things/ sentences etc. it is important to always finish strong, get bad experiences out of the way early, combine those bad experiences rather than splitting them and give people the possibility to choose (Chase &Dasu 2001). Especially the last three findings can be very important when it comes to customer complaints as customers’ should be able to savor rather positive than negative events at the end of sequences.

All in all, the service encounter and the moment of truth are crucial parts of the overall service experience. Ultimately in the end, all that counts for a service provider during a service encounter is what the customer perceives occurred (Chase &Dasu 2001).

Conclusion

This paper has analyzed and discussed the steps from customer satisfaction to company profitability as outlined in Hesket et al. (1994). Throughout the research, the author has emerged the fact, that there is a correlation between customer satisfaction, loyalty and company profitability. Nevertheless, it has become clear that simply satisfying a customer will not make him or her loyal to a given company. The literature review does not support the viewpoint of researchers like Thurau-Klee (1997) and Khumar Shah (2004) who neglect the importance of customer satisfaction and customer loyalty for the profitability of a company. It has been pointed out though, that the customer has to be more then satisfied with a given service in order to becoming loyal as there are crucial differences in the degree of satisfaction levels. Customer loyalty is then considered to be an important milestone for a company on the way to becoming profitable. As previously discussed, processes during service encounters have to be optimized in order to achieve the goal of a more than satisfied customer.

As a result, customer satisfaction can be seen as a crucial element for profitability. The satisfaction of the customer goes hand in hand with every service encounter (“moment of truth”) a customer faces, each defining the grade of satisfaction and therefore the degree of loyalty towards the company in the future. It is only then, that the company can be profitable.

Reference List

Anderson, E.W., Fornell, C. & Lehmann, D.R. (1994). Customer Satisfaction, Market Share & Profitability: Findings from Sweden. Journal of Marketing, 55, 53-66.

Anderson, E.W. &Mittal, V. (2000). Strengthening the Satisfaction-Profit Chain. Journal of Service Research, 3 (2), 107-120.

Bitner, M.J., Booms, B.H. &Tetreault, M.S. (1990). The Service Encounter: Diagnosing Favorable and Unfavorable Incidents. Journal of Marketing, 54, 71-84

Chase, R.B. &Dasu, S. (2001). Want to Perfect Your Company’s Service? Use Behavioral Science. Harvard Business Review, 79 (6), 78-84.

Cronin, J.J. & Taylor, S.A. (1992). Measuring Service Quality: A Reexamination and Extension. Journal of Marketing, 56, 55-68.

Fornell, C. (1992). A National Customer Satisfaction Barometer: Findings from Sweden. Journal of Marketing, 56, 6-21.

Hallowell, R. (1996). The Relationship of Customer Satisfaction, Customer Loyalty, and Profitability: an Empirical Study. International Journal of Service Industry Management, 7 (4), 27-42.

Heskett, J.L., Jones, T.O., Loveman, G.W., Sasser, W.E. &Schelsinger, L.A. (1994), Putting the Service-Profit Chain to Work. Harvard Business Review.

Heskett, J.L., Jones, T.O., Loveman, G.W., Sasser, W.E. &Schelsinger, L.A. (2008). Putting the Service-Profit Chain to Work. Harvard Business Review.

Helgesen, O. (2006). Are Loyal Customers Profitable? Customer Satisfaction, Customer (Action) Loyalty and Customer Profitability at the Individual Level. Journal of Marketing Management, 22 (3/4), 245-266.

Kandampully, J., Mok, C. & Sparks, B. (2001). Service Quality Management in Hospitality Tourism & Leisure.Binghampton, NY: The Howorth Hospitality Press.

Lee-Ross, D. (2001). Understanding the Role of the Service Encounter in Tourism, Hospitality, and Leisure Services. In J. Kandampully, B. Mok& B. Sparks (Eds.), Service Quality Management in Hospitality Tourism & Leisure (pp. ). Binghampton, NY: The Howorth Hospitality Press.

Li, M.L. & Green, R.D. (2011). A Mediating Influence on Customer Loyalty: The Role of Perceived Value. Journal of Management and Marketing Research, 1-12.

Lovelock, C. &Wirtz, J. (2007). Services Marketing: People, Technologies, Strategy. Upper Saddle River: Pearson Education International.Ma, Z. &Dubé, L. (2011).Process and Outcome Interdependancy in Frontline Service Encounters.Journal of Marketing, 75, 83-98.

Oliver, R.L. (1997). Satisfaction: A Behavioral Perspective on the Consumer, New York: McGraw Hill.

Parasuraman, V., Zeihaml, L. & Berry, L. (1988).SERVQUAL: A Multiple-Item Scale for Measuring Consumer Perceptions of Service Quality. Journal of Retailing, 64, 12-40.

Presbury, R., Fitzgerald, A. & Chapman, R. (2005).Impediments to Improvements in Service Quality in Luxury Hotels. Managing Service Quality, 15 (4), 357-373.

Pugh, S.D. (2001). Service with a Smile: Emotional Contagion in the Service Encounter. Academy of Management Journal, 44 (5), 1018-1027.

Reichheld, F.F. &Sasser Jr., W.E (1990). Zero Defections: Quality Comes to Services. Harvard Business Review, 68 (5), 105-111.

Reinartz, W. & Kumar, V. (2002). The Mismanagement of Customer Loyalty.Harvard Business Review, 80 (7), 86-94.

Rust, R.T. & Oliver, R.L. (1994).Service Quality: New Directions in Theory & Practice. California: Sage.

Stauss, B. & Seidel, W. (2004).Complaint Management the Heart of CRM. Australia: Thomson South Western

Van Looy, B., Gemmel, P. & Van Dierdonck, R. (2003). Services Management: An Integrated Approach, Prentice Hall: London.

Yee, W.Y., Yeung, A.C.L., Cheng, T.C.E. & Lai, K.-E. (2009). The Service-Profit Chain: A Review & Extension. Total Quality Management, 20 (6), 617-632.

Customer satisfaction – a big step towards company profitability? is a post from: the weblog of the NHTV master's course in Tourism Destination Management

Literature review

This literature review is written by Ruta Dambyte as part of her NHTV Master in Tourism Destination Management.

The implementation of sustainable practices in tourism related companies is an object of discussions by many academics. There are various researches made about incentives and obstacles while switching towards sustainable business model (Le & Hollenhorst, 2005; La Lopa & Day, 2011). The scholars question if sustainability is a trend, a way to gain more profit (Higgins-Desbiolles, 2009) or moral duty (Jarvis, Simcock, Weeden, 2010). Moreover, the doubts are being expressed towards the existence of sustainability in tourism while being a very complex industry (Vukonovic, n.d.). Therefore, this literature review reefers to the main reasons limiting tourism related companies to implement sustainability, as well as the incentives to switch towards different business approach.

Before looking at sustainability from companies perspective, it is crucial to define the term sustainable tourism. The definition of sustainability in tourism is rather wide and not strictly defined. Some scholars propose that sustainable tourism is an alternative to mass tourism (Higgins-Desbiolles, 2009) other academics see eco tourism, pro-poor tourism as parts of sustainable tourism practices. Higgins-Desbiolles (2009) defines sustainable tourism as an answer to negative impacts that the industry creates. However, most of the literature reflects to three main aspects of sustainability in business: economic, social and environmental (Figge & Hahn, 2006). Economic aspect is defined as a way of saving companies costs, while social factor reefers to benefiting local community.  For instance, creating the employment. Environmental sustainability is related to preservation of natural resources.

It is interesting to question the realization of sustainable business practices among tourism enterprises, since it involves various stakeholders with different interests. Therefore, Vukonovic (n.d.) suggests that the whole idea of sustainability is meant to collapse because none of the involved actors wants to sacrifice their benefits. Tourism industry, as any other, is profit driven. It is based on commodification of culture and environment, as well as exploitation of people (Higgins-Desbiolles, 2009). It emerged together with the ideology of consumerism, therefore the whole idea of sustainability is not more than sustaining the profit (Higgins-Desbiolles, 2009). Sustainability goes against capitalism, because it means limitation of growth. However, the whole industry is based on natural recourses (nature and culture) therefore tourism businesses have to switch their interest to sustain them, otherwise the sector will suffer in longer term (Vukonovic, n.d.). The majority of british leading tour operators already realized that the dramatic changes to their external operating environment calls for a need to reshape their working attitudes (Dunbar, 2009). Therefore, it is essential to understand barriers that discourages and incentives which stimulate companies to move towards sustainability.

Firstly, the decision to adopt sustainable practices presents many challenges for tourism related enterprises. It leads to a long process of change. Although the benefits to communities and individual companies are evident and the recourses are available the motivation to change is far from universal (La Lopa & Day, 2011). Business managers knows that introduction of innovations usually takes a lot of time, effort and often causes destruction in organizational climate (La Lopa & Day, 2011). Each organization has its corporate culture, composed of values, beliefs, attitudes (Graci, 2010). Since environmental issues are usually isolated from a corporate values, the attempts to implement them doesn’t function (Graci, 2010). The successful accommodation of sustainability practices is largely related to personal believes. Graci (2010) states that unsupportive management can be a great limitation towards the development of sustainability. If people  do not see the necessity for a change, they refuse it and they don’t stand for it, any attempt to introduce the novelty is most likely to fail (La Lopa & Day, 2011). According to Le and Hollenhorst (2005), before making any decisions managers evaluate the resistance of employees. The attempts towards a changes tend to work faster, if it is easy for employees to understand the benefits (Le and Hollenhorst, 2005). The particularity with tourism products is that in most cases the quality can not be tested before the consumption. Therefore, if employees do not understand the necessity for adopting innovations, they won’t be able to perceive this sustainable tourism image to their costumers (Le & Hollenhorst, 2005).

The other barrier towards sustainability is a lack of knowledge (Graci, 2010; La Lopa & Day, 2010). Graci (2010) emphasizes, that environmental awareness of managers is rather low and it leads to a slow uptake for future initiatives. However, most of the managers, in this case in hotels, knows about the existence of solar power, waste battery collection as a means to save costs, but the knowledge how to dispose them is inadequate (Graci, 2010). Implementation of sustainability requires long term thinking. In contrary, capitalistic environment of tourism businesses leads to short term goals. The main problem noted by Graci (2010) is that without increase in general environmental awareness there is no incentive for tourism enterprises to implement sustainable ideas, except the ones who bring fast economic gain.

One more limiting factor for innovations, is that sustainable practices are considered to be expensive. La Lopa and Day (2011) suggest that businesses should be educated about the purchasing costs being lower, than benefits of being sustainable. Companies do not realize that once they invest, the economic gains in a long term will be bigger. Therefore, financial recourses is defined as a another limitation for implementing sustainable business approach. Rojo (2009) notes that natural recourses are considered to be public goods, therefore, investing in their preservation does not bring direct economic benefits to the company. The recent economic downturn made companies to revise their expenditures. Hence, increase of sales at any costs becomes a primary goal, while any socially or environmentally friendly activity is considered to be less important. Since in the times of economic crisis dropping sales is one of the major concerns, the companies could try to sustain their income while adopting yield management schemes. Such type of management focuses on profit made per customer and not on growth of clients. Yield management principles are mostly used by airline companies, large hotel chains and lately by destination management organizations (Macbeth & Northcote, 2005) but it could be also adopted by a smaller scale businesses, like tour operators.

The idea of high expenses while implementing sustainability partly arrises because of governmental policies. Usually, The National Tourist Authorities (NTA) and Tourism Destination Organizations (TDO) are responsible for encouraging tourism companies to impede sustainability (La Lopa & Day, 2011). Quite often such organization establish guidelines for nature and culture friendly approach and certifies the companies who follow the rules (La Lopa & Day, 2011).  However, acquiring such certificate leads to many hours of bureaucratic work and requires solid financial resources to fulfill the imposed obligations (Jarvis, Simcock, Weeden, 2010). Therefore small and medium sized companies quite often fail in adopting sustainable tourism practices (Jarvis, Simcock, Weeden, 2010). According to Lee and Hollenhorst (2005) firms perceive uncertainty in government policies as a risk, and does not invest in innovations. This barrier could be removed, if governments would agree on more friendly policies towards sustainability implementation. For instance, providing subsidies for necessary technology.

Figge and Hahn (2006) states that companies contribute to sustainability only if the  expenses are lower than the perceived benefits. However, most of the scholars relate sustainability with the positive image of the company (Le &Hollenhorst, 2005; Jarvis, Simcock & Weeden, 2010). Therefore, marketing is recognized to be the biggest driving force towards sustainability. For instance, quite often companies strive to get “green label”, because they believe that this creates a good image and distinguish them from the competitors. Le and Hollenhorst (2005), states that “becoming green” by implementing environmental innovations is a great strategy towards differentiation in the hyper competitive environment. However, do these companies represent the acquired positive image in the right way? Jarvis, Simcock and Weeden  (2005) states that after obtaining the certificate, enterprises use it as a tool to charge higher prices for their services. Therefore, consumers often thinks that service provided by sustainability oriented businesses are more expensive. Shouldn’t it be the opposite? By implementing environmentally friendly approach companies save costs on energy, water and waist bills (Jarvis, Simcock & Weeden, 2010), but they are not willing to share the saved costs with their clients by offering lower prices. That’s why Jarvis, Simcock and Weeden (2010) concludes, that companies overestimate the numbers of clients who are willing to pay more for sustainable holiday. Another problem is that “sustainable campaigns” in travel business are being used as a marketing tool. The leading travel related companies are implementing environmentally based approach by helping to develop sustainable source of energy and establishing carbon offset schemes. The issue is that most of those so called “sustainable” practices, implemented by travel business giants quite often does not have independent auditors, or are not supervised at all. Unfortunately, the big tourism business players see sustainability as a key for a growth, because through their “greenwashing” campaigns they introduce a new product for a new segment of costumers. Higgins-Desbiolles (2009), notes that large tour operators are only paying lip service to sustainable tourism and fails  moving towards sustainability taking into account their relationships with tourism destinations. Mass tourism consumers have money to spend, therefore big companies created a new, “green” product, to make people to pay even more.  Therefore, if the companies will claim that they are implementing responsible traveling when in reality just abusing the popularity of sustainable ideas, it will have negative affects. Customers will get disappointed.  Their unfulfilled visions about contribution to something good will become an obstacle for honest companies to make an effort towards sustainable practices and address them successfully.

In conclusion, it is important to understand the limitations to sustainability in order to move forward the intensions from attitude to action (Graci, 2010). Travel industry is focused on natural resources and the negative impacts caused by tourism provokes attention to change management strategies of tourism businesses. The sustainability “movement” put the tourism enterprises into the spotlight, therefore we can claim that the industry has the moral obligations to spread good examples of sustainability. One of the main barriers to impede innovations is the unreadiness by managers and employees to go through the process of change. Managers are afraid that the costs to persuade their staff towards environmentally friendly activities will cost more than the gained benefits. Therefore it is essential to educate the staff about positive aspects of sustainability before switching to different business model (La Lopa & Day, 2010). The establishment of educational programs about advantages of sustainability would help to overcome another barrier – lack of environmental awareness. This is were the governmental bodies have to interfere. Sustainable approach is understood as costly investment. Local government should reduce the level of bureaucracy exercised on environmentally and socially responsible companies.

Nevertheless, there are various limitations, marketing opportunities seemed to be the biggest incentive towards sustainability. Through joining various “green” movements companies hope to increase the advertising possibilities. Unfortunately, usually it only stays the advertising tool and in reality little is done to sustain natural recourses. Thus, this advantage can turn into obstacle for businesses with honest intentions due to mistrust of costumers, willing to contribute to responsible travel. Finally, the achievement of sustainability depends on moral responsibility of each individual.

References:

Dunbar, M. (2009). Brits leads way on  sustainability. Canadian Travel Press, 42(5): 8. Retrieved 16 November, 2011, from EBSCO database.

Jarvis, N., Simcock, N., Weeden, C. (2010). The benefits and challenges of sustainable tourism certification: A case study of the Green Tourism Business Scheme in the West of England. Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Management, 17, 83–93. Retrieved November 17, 2011 from EBSCO database.

Desbiolles-Higgins, F. (2009). The elusiveness of sustainability in tourism: the culture-ideology of consumerism and its implications. Tourism and Hospitality Research, 10(2): 116-129. Retrieved November 16, 2011 from EBSCO database.

Figge, F., Hahn, T. (2004). Sustainable value – added measuring corporate contributions to sustainability beyond eco-efficiency. Ecological economics, 48: 173-187. Retrieved November 15, 2011 from Science Direct database.

Graci, S. (2010). Examining the factors that impede sustainability in China’s tourism accommodation industry: a case study of Sanya, Hainan, China. Journal of Hospitality Marketing and Management, 19: 38-55. Retrieved November 16, 2011 from EBSCO database.

La Lopa, M., J., Day, J. (2011). Pilot study to assess the readiness of the tourism industry in Waled to change to sustainable tourism business practices. Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Management, 18: 130-139. Retrieved November 17, 2011 from EBSCO database.

Le, Y., Hollenhorst, S. (2005). Perceptions of vietnamese tours companies toward adopting sustainable tourism practices. An International Journal of Tourism and Hospitality Research, 16(1): 79-99. Retrieved November 17, 2011 from EBSCO database.

Macbeth, J., Northcote, J. (2005). Conceptualizing yield sustainable tourism management. Annals of Tourism Research, 33(1): 199-220. Retrieved November 16, 2011 from Science Direct database.

Roberts, Sh., Tribe, J. (2008). Sustainability indicators for small tourism enterprises – an exploratory perspective. Journal of Sustainable Tourism, 16 (5): 575-594. Retrieved November 17, 2011 from EBSCO database.

Rojo, M. (2009). Economic development versus environmental sustainability: the case of tourist marinas in Andalusia. European Journal of Tourism Research, 2(2): 162-177. Retrieved November 15, 2011, from EBSCO database.

Vukonovic, B. (n.d.). Can sustainability be questioned? Retrieved November 16, 2011, from EBSCO database.

Limitations and incentives for sustainable tourism development is a post from: the weblog of the NHTV master's course in Tourism Destination Management

Literature review

This literature review is written by Claire Bougot as part of her NHTV Master in Tourism Destination Management.

The issues ofauthenticity in relation to the commodification of culture are present in many sectors of the tourism industry (e.g. heritage tourism, ethnic tourism) and are relevant to most destinations worldwide, in the developing as well as the Western world (Chhabra et al., 2003; Gjerald, 2005; McIntosh and Prentice, 1999; Silver, 1993; Van den Berghe, 1995). This review will however focus on developing world destinations in order to highlight the power imbalance created by western defined criteria of authenticity in tourism and its subsequent staging. Since cross-cultural encounters have been designated as one of the drivers of the commodification of culture in host societies (Shepherd, 2002),the global context in which such encounters take place highlights the relevance of the debate on authenticity for tourism studies. Indeed, many host-guest encounters occur as a result of the tourists’ quest for authenticity as described by MacCannell (1973). Many authors have contributed to the debate on authenticity and the commodification of culture in the academic literature since MacCannell’s (1973) work. The debate starts around the definition of authenticity, a wide and complex concept used by academic writers with different meanings. This review will start by clarifying some of the uses of the term in the academic literature with regard to object, staged and emergent authenticity, but will be centredon the concept of the quest for authenticity. Once the concepts of authenticity used in this context have been clarified, the review will move on to consider the positive and negative impacts of culture commodification and staging authenticity, as well as the use of staged authenticity as a resistance tool by host communities. It will attempt to highlight the shortcomings of the literature in considering the impacts of culture commodification on locals existing outside the tourism industry and the need to update the debate on authenticity and culture commodification in the light of new tourism trends such as poverty tourism. The review will focus mainly on the perspective of the host (including both locals existing within and outside the tourism industry) to consider these impacts.

This review centres the debate regarding authenticity and commodification on culture. It is therefore important to define what is meant here by the term ‘culture’. Culture will include both the ‘arts’ perspective namely “performances of theatre, dance or music and displays of fine art, and other expressions of culture” (George and Reid, 2005:89), as well as Meethan’s (2003:13) definition of culture “in a more holistic sense to a ‘way of life’”.

The issue of authenticity in tourism starts with the tourist quest for authenticity as claimed by MacCannell. Because tourists are concerned with the shallowness and inauthenticity of their everyday lives, tourism becomes a quest for authenticity, to be found in primitive societies (MacCannell, 1973).Handler (1986:2, as cited in McIntosh and Prentice, 1999) describes the quest for authentic cultural experiences as a search for “the unspoiled, pristine, genuine, untouched and traditional”.Connell (2007) also echoes MacCannell’s view and emphasises the ‘otherness’ and exoticism sought by tourists in primitive societies as part of this quest, which is grounded in the belief that western societies have lost this authenticity. Authenticity can however be found in many forms, in objects / events or in tourist experiences.

One of the angles from which the concept of authenticity can be considered relates to object authenticity, which Steiner and Reisinger (2006:299) define as “the genuineness of artifacts or events”. Object authenticity appears as a simple concept in which the real has to be distinguished from the false. It is however a subjective attribute, as the criteria for authenticity are set by tourists (Connell, 2007; Fesenmaier and MacKay, 1996; Steiner and Reisinger, 2006) from a western perspective in this context. Cole (2007) notes that the same western or ‘euro-centric’ perspective has been used in most academic studies on authenticity and cultural commodification. Since most tourism promotion portrays hosts and culture in developing countries in a post colonialist light as static and unchanged in order to maintain a power imbalance between hosts and guests (Echtner, 2002; Echtner and Prasad, 2003), modernity and change in indigenous societies are often considered as inauthentic (Connell, 2007; Green, 2002; MacCannell, 1999 in Olsen, 2002; Silver, 1993; Wang, 1999).

In order to fulfil those western criteria, host populations often resort to staging authenticity. Modernity is excluded from staged performances (Connell, 2007) to fulfil the tourist’s quest. Staged authenticity can be seen as inherently inauthentic, in the sense that the objects [also referring to cultural performances] lack the genuineness characteristic of object authenticity. However, this is not always the case. First, as authenticity is a subjective concept, its staging cannot always be recognised by tourists (Connell, 2007). In this case, the staged event / product can therefore still fulfil the tourist’s quest, as the authenticity of experience is not necessarily linked to object authenticity (Fesenmaier and MacKay, 1996).Additionally, Cohen suggests the concept of emergent authenticity, whereby “…a cultural product, or a trait thereof, which is at one point generally judged as contrived or inauthentic may, in the course of time, become generally recognized as authentic, even by experts” (Cohen, 1988:379), demonstrating that authenticity is not indeed static, but evolves in response to changing circumstances (Steiner and Reisinger, 2006).

In most cases, culture is staged to satisfy tourists in order to create an income for host populations. It is therefore commodified. Cohen (1988:380) defined the process of commodification (or commoditization) as the “process by which things (and activities) come to be evaluated primarily in terms of their exchange value, in a context of trade, thereby becoming goods (and services)”. This process of culture commodification is not without consequences, which have been repeatedly discussed in the academic literature (Cohen, 1988; Cole, 2007; Edensor, 2001; Fesenmaier and MacKay, 1996; George and Reid, 2005; Green, 2002; Medina, 2003; Steiner and Reisinger, 2006).The question of ethics in the search for authenticity can therefore be raised. In the words of MacCannell (2011:10), “authenticity as a substitute for ethics can be regarded with suspicion that it is either intentionally or unwittingly unethical “. Since the criteria of [object] authenticity are imposed by western perspectives, the ethical nature of such a quest can be questioned with regards to thepower imbalance involved, particularly when the impacts of staging authenticity and culture commodification are considered.

Extensive academic literature exists on the impacts of staging authenticity on tourist satisfaction (Connell, 2007; Pearce and Moscardo, 1986; Wang, 1999). However this review is primarily concerned with the impacts on host populations.Various positive impacts of culture commodification on hosts in tourism destinations have been noted by academics (Cohen, 1988; Cole, 2007; Edensor, 2001; Green, 2002; Medina, 2003). One of those impacts relates to the preservation of host cultures and traditions. By giving them an economic value, commodifying cultures motivates locals to revive, preserve and reconfirm belief in tradition for future generations (Cohen, 1988; Cole, 2007; Edensor, 2001; Medina, 2003). In that sense, commodifying culture does not destroy it, but simply changes it overtime (Cohen, 1988). The benefits of commodifying cultures has also been acknowledged beyond its economic aspect and considered for its power to generate pride for locals. Cole (2007) argues that tourism works as an authenticating agent generating a sense of self pride and identity for locals in marginalised primitive societies that have been labelled as isolated and backwards by their own society and government, while Green (2002) argues the worth of tourism to generate pride in host societies at a national level. Bruner (1991) also argues the sense of self hosts can gain through tourism, by displaying a culture they are proud of to the western world. However, Bianchini (1993, as cited in Steiner and Reisinger, 2006) argues that there are tensions between the use of culture for economic purposes and community identity expression in tourism settings. Such tensions mainly lie in the limits host populations put on what can be staged and commodified. Cole (2007) found that some host populations disagree with the idea of staging sacred, religious rituals for tourists, whilst staging other cultural performances such as dance displays is acceptable.

The literature also deals with the use of staged authenticity as a resistance tool used by locals in an attempt to limit the negative impacts of culture commodification and re-establish some balance in host guest-power relationships. This happens by staging what Goffman (1959, in MacCannell, 1973) has described as front regions [in which hosts and tourists meet] in order to make them appear as back regions [where tourists are normally not present], thereby protecting the true back regions from tourists.Some host communities use staged authenticity to prevent direct contact with outsiders (Buck, 1978 as cited in Pearce and Moscardo, 1986),since they see tourists as shallow and therefore not truly seeking authenticity (Maoz, 2006). In such societies, the possibility that a stranger might enter a back region is a source of concern (MacCannell, 1973). Connell (2007) indeed explains that the inauthentic nature of staged performances can be perceived by tourists, who will then attempt to enter the back regions of the destination to fulfil their quest for authenticity. Lau (2010) exposes MacCannell’s (1975:21) argument that hosts “who live their lives totally exposed to their relevant others” do not need to question the authenticity of their lives, as the very survival of their society demonstrates the victory of real over false (MacCannell, 1973). However, MacCannell’s argument does not take into account the western definition of authenticity imposed on developing countries destinations, whereby exposing locals’ lives also involves exposing levels of modernity and industrialisation which tourists do not associate with authenticity, pushing hosts to adapt their culture to western expectations. This issue is raised by Fesenmaier and MacKay (1996) who explain that locals often have to live a lie generated by false realities created by western societies, and thereby see their culture robbed of its authenticity. Boorstin (1961, 1964, as cited in Steiner and Reisinger, 2006) argues that hosts cannot be authentic since they must conform to tourist expectations, and see their culture distorted. Eventually, host society structures are changed as a result from the corrosive effect of culture commodification, and the traditional culture may even die and be reborn in the form of a new culture created based on the [western defined] icons of the traditional one (George and Reid, 2005).

Although the academic literature surrounding the topics of authenticity and culture commodification is broad, some considerations have been given insufficient attention. As previously stated, it widely considers how change and development (in the sense of modernity and industrialisation) in host societies can affect the success and attractiveness of the tourism product in developing countries. It also examines the extent to which tourism hinders the potential for host societies to develop and modernise themselves, but it frequentlymerely takes into account the participants in the tourism industry. MacCannell (1973) quotes Goffman (1959:590) to categorise the people who need to be considered when examining staged authenticity and culture commodification in tourism, namely: “those who perform; those performed to; and outsiders who neither perform in the show nor observe it”. The impacts of staging and commodifying culture on the latter category’s potential to develop and modernise their societyis often overlooked, although the locals existing outside of the tourism industry are also affected by the myths and stereotypes of primitivism associated with such processes.

Furthermore, the change and damage to rituals and traditions in host societies areaffecting the tourist’s quest for authenticity itself. According to MacCannell (1999, as cited in Olsen, 2002), this quest is bound to fail because the tourist, by his/her mere presence into authentic back regions, destroys what he/she was looking for (the authenticity of the object he/she has come to see). Nevertheless, tourists are still on this quest for authenticity, but the (western) criteria defining it have changed since the origins of the academic discussion on authenticity. For some time, as explained by Silver (1993), the representation of developing countries was based on escapism and obscured the inherent realities of these destinations such as levels of industrialisation and poverty, based on the principle that “one cannot sell poverty” (Mowforth and Munt, 1998:146). However, the debate on authenticity must be reconsidered in the light of relatively new forms of tourism such as ‘poverty tourism’ (comprising of slum, favela and township tourism), a trend that emerged in the 1990s (Meschkank, 2011). Poverty has only been recently recognised as part of the tourist quest for authenticity. Poverty tourists indeed seeks to explore the less visited parts, or back regions of the developing world (Mowforth and Munt, 1998). Additionally, slums, favelas and townships are relevant to the definition of object authenticity as they represent the real, genuine life of the destination. Meschkank(2011) has indeed revealed that the quest for authenticity constitutes a central motivation for poverty tourism, and concludes that authenticity and poverty are closely related. The debate on authenticity and culture commodification needs to evolve in the light of new trends such as poverty tourism.In this type of tourism, the traditional balance between positive and negative impacts of culture commodification can potentially change quite drastically. Although the economic benefits for the hosts can be debatedas poverty is then commodified, the generation of pride and (positive) self-identity is less inherent to poverty tourism than cultural or ethnic tourism. Moreover, the staging of authenticity is not relevant to poverty tourism (poverty is not staged), it cannot be used by locals as a resistance tools in a similar way to other types of tourism (cultural, ethnic). The impacts on hosts and the ethical implications of such new trends in tourism therefore need to be considered in the academic debate on culture commodification, as tourists move away from rituals and traditions to explore the back regions of the host’s living conditions to satisfy their quest for authenticity.

References

Bruner, E.M. (1991) Transformation of self in tourism. Annals of Tourism Research, 18, 238-250

Chhabra, D, Healy, R. and Sills, E. (2003) Staged authenticity and heritage tourism. Annals of Tourism Research, 30(3), 702-719, Retrieved September 28, 2010, from EBSCO database

Cohen, E. (1988) Authenticity and commoditization in tourism. Annals of Tourism Research, 15(3), 371-386

Cole, S. (2007) Beyond authenticity and commodification. Annals of Tourism Research, 34(4), 943-960, Retrieved October 15, 2010, from EBSCO database

Connell, J. (2007) The Continuity of Custom? Tourist Perceptions ofAuthenticity in Yakel Village, Tanna, Vanuatu. Journal of Tourism and Cultural Change, 5(2),71-86, Retrieved October 14, 2011, from EBSCO database

Echtner, C.M. (2002) The content of third world tourism marketing: a 4A approach. International Journal of Tourism Research, 4, 413-434, Retrieved October 16, 2011, from EBSCO database

Echtner, C.M. and Prasad, P. (2003) The context of third world tourism marketing. Annals of Tourism Research, 30(3), 660-682. Retrieved October 15, 2010, from EBSCO database

Edensor, T. (2001) Performing tourism, staging tourism. Tourist Studies, 1(1), pp.59-81, Retrieved October 29, 2010, from EBSCO database

Fesenmaier, D. and MacKay, K. (1996) Deconstruction destination image construction. The Tourist Review, 2, 7-41

George, E.W. and Reid, D.G. (2005) The power of tourism: A metamorphosis of community culture. Journal of Tourism and Cultural Change, 3(2), 88-107, Retrieved October 14, 2011, from EBSCO database

Gjerald, O. (2005) Sociocultural impacts of tourism: A case study from Norway. Journal of Tourism and Cultural Change, 3(1), 36-58, Retrieved October 14, 2011, from EBSCO database

Green, G.L. (2002) Marketing the nation: Carnival and tourism in Trinidad and Tobago. Critique of Anthropology, 22(3), 283-304, Retrieved September 28, 2010, from EBSCO database

Lau, R.W.K. (2010) Revisiting authenticity – A social realist approach. Annals of Tourism Research, 37(2), 478-498, Retrieved October 6, 2010, from EBSCO database

MacCannell, D. (1973) Staged authenticity: Arrangements of social space in tourist settings. American of Journal Sociology, 79(3), 589-603

MacCannell, D. (2011) The ethics of sightseeing. University of California Press. Retrieved November 19, 2011 from Google Books database

Maoz, D. (2006) The mutual gaze. Annals of Tourism Research, 33(1), 221-239, Retrieved November 13, 2011, from EBSCO database

McIntosh, A.J. and Prentice, R.C. (1999) Affirming authenticity – Consuming cultural heritage. Annals of Tourism Research, 26(3), 589-612, Retrieved October 15, 2010, from EBSCO database

Medina, L.K. (2003) Commoditizing culture- Tourism and Maya identity. Annals of Tourism Research, 30(2),  353-368, Retrieved November 13, 2011, from EBSCO database

Meethan, K. (2003) Mobile cultures? Hybridity, tourism and cultural change. Journal of Tourism and Cultural Change, 1(1), 11-28, Retrieved October 14, 2011, from EBSCO database

Meschkank, J. (2011) Investigations into slum tourism in Mumbai: poverty tourism and the tensions between different constructions of reality. Geojournal, 76, 47-62, Retrieved November 18, 2011, from EBSCO database

Mowforth, M. and Munt, I. (1998) Tourism and sustainability – New Tourism in the Third World. London: Routledge, Retrieved November 18, 2011, from Google Books database

Olsen, K. (2002) Authenticity as a concept in tourism research – The social organization of the experience of authenticity. Tourist Studies, 2(2), 159-182

Pearce, P.L. and Moscardo, G.M. (1986) The concept of authenticity in tourist experiences. Journal of Sociology, 22(1), 121-132, Retrieved October 10, 2010, from EBSCO database

Shepherd, R. (2002) Commodification, Culture and Tourism. Tourist Studies, 2, 99.183-201, Retrieved September 28, 2010, from EBSCO database

Silver, I. (1993) Marketing authenticity in third world countries. Annals of Tourism Research, 20, 302-318

Steiner, C.J. and Reisinger, Y. (2006) Understanding existential authenticity. Annals of Tourism Research, 33(2), 299-318

Van den Berghe, P.L. (1995) Marketing Mayas. Ethnic tourism promotion in Mexico. Annals of Tourism Research, 22(3), pp568-588, Retrieved October 15, 2010, from EBSCO database

Wang, N. (1999) Rethinking authenticity in tourism experience. Annals of Tourism Research, 26(2), 349-370

Authenticity and commodification in changing tourism trends is a post from: the weblog of the NHTV master's course in Tourism Destination Management

Literature review

This literature review is written by Akshara Walia as part of her NHTV Master in Tourism Destination Management.

Dark tourism- also known as ‘Thanatourism’- is a thriving phenomenon which has generated considerable interest within the tourism industry. The term was first coined by Foley and Lennon (Stone Sharpley, 2008), and has been generally described as “tourism involving locations associated with death and great suffering” (Gibson, 2006: pg. 47). This literature review will attempt to understand and analyse the various motivations and perceptions of tourists visiting these dark sites.

The fundamental motive for visiting dark sites is being explored in modern research. According to Stone and Sharpley, “visitors are seen to be driven by differing intensities of interest or fascination in death” (Stone Sharpley, 2008: pg 6). Hence, it can be perceived that visitor motivations are not homogenous.

The motivations of visitors can be further explored through the differentiation in degrees of dark tourism. Due to the varied and uniquely different nature of dark tourism products, the term dark tourism itself is vague and ambiguous (Stone, 2006).

The existing literature on the motivations for dark tourism is fragmented (Stone, 2011). To bridge the gaps in existing literature, a deeper insight is required relating to the definition of dark tourism itself.

Relating to this perspective, seven suppliers of dark tourism have been identified ranging from ‘light’ to ‘dark’ dark tourism (Stone, 2006). These were described as a “spectrum of supply outlined with a subsequent seven type categorisation of dark tourism suppliers” (Stone, 2006: Pg. 157). They include dark fun factories, dark exhibitions, dark dungeons, dark resting places, dark shrines, dark conflict sites and dark genocide camps. Thus a range of tourist experiences has been created from the lightest shades (haunted houses at amusement parks) to the darkest (Auschwitz). This sub categorization of dark tourism enables a broader perspective into the motivations of visitors depending on the ‘degree of darkness’. For example, the motivations of a tourist on a Jack the Ripper tour in London will differ from those of a tourist at the Killing Fields in Cambodia.

Literature Review:

Traditionally this form of tourism has been studied on the premise that visitors of dark sites- also known as ‘dark tourists’- are fascinated with the concept of death. Modern society’s fascination with death has indeed spurred the phenomenon of dark tourism (Stone, 2006). Gibson further explored this premise within the paradigms of serial murder related tourism- an emerging genre of dark tourism, particularly in the United States. According to his findings, wound culture theory- which stems from an innate fascination of death- is directly related to the growing interest in serial murder tourism (Gibson, 2006). A prime example is the Jack the Ripper Tourist Experience in the United Kingdom which is focused on entertainment purposes despite an inclination towards the macabre (Gibson, 2006). However, Thanatourism extends beyond a dark fascination with death and studies have shown that this is not the only motivation for visiting dark sites. Several factors take precedence over this alleged fascination and were subsequently identified. They have been summarised below.

Personal Heritage:

The most commonly cited reason has been to obtain a sense of emotional heritage. Based on this motivation, it can be argued that the incentives for visiting dark sites are similar to those visiting a regular heritage site (Biran Poria Oren, 2011). Focusing on the sub category of battlefield tourism, visitor motivations stemmed from a sense of moral or cultural obligation to the dead and as a result, a visit to a dark site manifests as a ‘pilgrimage’ owing to a sense of heritage (Dunkley Morgan Westwood, 2011). These visitor motivations were identified to be based on a sense of personal heritage owing to the participation of their relatives and kin in the First World War (Dunkley Morgan Westwood, 2011).

The same phenomenon was observed with respect to slave tourism where visitors were drawn to the Slave Castles in Ghana irrespective of transnational boundaries owing to shared cultural roots and a desire to identify with these sites and the events that transpired there (Mowatt Chancellor, 2011). The motivation to visit sites connected with the personal heritage of the visitor was the highest and most significant reason to visit these sites (Biran Poria Oren, 2011). Hence the motivations in this case arise from a sense of personal and cultural connection and the site is treated as a heritage site.

It was also noted that visitors with heritage based motivations considered themselves to be ‘representative pilgrims’ and felt that they were paying homage to the dead on behalf of other people who could not be there physically (Dunkley Morgan Westwood, 2011). The same phenomenon was observed amongst visitors of Slave Castles in Ghana who saw themselves as less of tourists and more as witnesses to history and travellers on a pilgrimage (Mowatt Chancellor, 2011) irrespective of transnational boundaries and united by a common ethnic history. As a result a collective, communal feeling of shared heritage also acts as an incentive and strengthens the desire to visit dark sites.

The ‘see it to believe it’ phenomenon:

Other motivations with these sites were identified as ‘a sense of validation’ or a desire to understand the magnitude of the situation and even further (Dunkley Morgan Westwood, 2011). This phenomena of ‘see it to believe it’ is among the most common motivations for Thanatourism (Biran Poria Oren, 2011).

Tourists felt the need to validate the tragedies of these sites for themselves and reflect on the scale and magnitude of the happenings. Visiting these sites is an exercise in self education which is focused on internalized understanding of the dark history of these sites. This motivation may or may not stem from a sense of personal or cultural heritage. However, it has been identified as a major inducement for Thanatourism.

Detached Interest:

Detached interest is a motivational category encompassing a span of motivations related to educational reasons, incentive to visit a famous site and even recreational purposes.

There were also visitors who were interested in the strategies and logistics of War itself, owing to detached military interests (Dunkley Morgan Westwood, 2011). These ‘War hobbyists’ are part of a growing sub culture in contemporary society and their motivations to visit do not stem from a sense of personal loss, validation or relation to the dead but as an observer of the War itself.

General interest in ‘famous dark sites’ was motivated by the fame (or infamy) of the site in question, and a general curiosity about death (Biran Poria Oren, 2011). This motivation is directly related to the level of information available regarding the site as it pertains to the ‘famousness’ of the site. In addition, this factor was also linked with the desire to ‘learn and understand’ in terms of a historical context. In the case of Auschwitz, the educational aspect was one of the highest motivators to visit (Brian Poria Oren, 2011).

On the same note, a study conducted by Braithwaite and Leiper (2010) pertaining to the Death Railway on the Kwai River showed that while some tourists were induced to visit for emotional and cultural reasons, a considerable proportion of tourists visited the area for recreational purposes and with the intent of experiencing something novel but with no real knowledge of the tragic history of the River (Braithwaite Leiper, 2010). This particular case highlights the importance of knowledge and information relating to dark sites with respect to the motivations of visitors. The recreational tourism in this case had arisen owing to a lack of information about the wartime tragedy of this site (Braithwaite Leiper, 2010). Due to the lack of information, tourists remained unmindful of the dark past of this site. Nature based tourism was also cited as a motivation to visit Korea’s Demilitarised Zone sites by some of the tourists despite the war related history of this site (Bigley Lee Chon Yoon, 2011).

Hence, it can be ascertained that tourist motivations also depend on the information available regarding these sites. Motivations vary on the basis of marketing efforts and destination management creating a ‘pull’ for the tourists as was observed in the case of Korea’s War Tourism (Bigley Lee Chon Yoon, 2011). Thus, the knowledge about a site and the level of fame effect the motivations of tourists as well.

Reflection of Mortality:

Another view has also emerged that focuses on the collective need for reassurance relating to death. It has been suggested that dark tourism has flourished owing to the perspective of death in contemporary society (Stone Sharpley, 2008). The inevitable nature of death exerts a sense of dread and isolation within every individual. In the same vein, dark tourism has emerged as a way for people to ‘observe death from a safe distance’ in a socially sanctioned environment. It has been stated that “a melancholic fascination exists within post-conventional society, for some individuals at least, to witness the work of the Grim Reaper up close and personal, but within the apparent safe confines of tourism.” (Stone, 2011: Pg 3). It is the distancing of modern society from the reality and inevitability of death that has resulted in a rising demand for the consumption of dark tourism as a means of sanitizing the death experience (Stone Sharpley, 2008).

Stone further exemplifies this through the case of Body Works- a touring cadaver exhibit which has garnered significant interest in recent years. According to the findings, tourists were compelled to visit this exhibition in order to ponder their own mentality (Stone 2011). Thus dark tourism becomes an exercise in reflection and empathy, and motivates tourists to visit as a means of dealing with the inevitability of death.

This premise is applicable to the collective public and as a result, homogenizes the incentive for visiting dark sites into a singular motive- to reconnect the self with reality by observing the finality of death.

Conclusion

The range of motivations for visiting dark sites and Thanatourism in general is considerable. Motivations vary on the basis of personal heritage, an urge for validation, educational reasons, reflection of death and in completely different case even entertainment or general interest.

However, a number of factors affect the motivations of visitors and these are yet to be fully explored. These factors have to be considered in order to correctly analyse the motivation for visiting dark sites.

It is clear that cultural relevance and personal heritage remain the most significant reason for visiting dark sites and tourists with a cultural relation to the site show the highest degree of motivation in visiting. However, a point of interest that has emerged is the feeling of shared responsibility and obligation that these visitors perceive. As ‘representative pilgrims’ they feel that their visit is not only for their own benefit, but is on behalf of others who could not be present physically. As observed among tourists of African descent at the slave castles in Ghana and among descendant of victims of the First World War, this sense of collective heritage is also a motivation to visit these sites

The ‘degree of darkness’ of the site in questions is a factor that has yet to receive due consideration in research as a factor affecting visitor motivations. The ‘range of darkness’ is a significant facet in deciding visitor intentions and incentives. Some sites simply touch on the concept of the macabre to provide an entertainment experience, while others are sombre remnants of tragic histories of war and genocide. Dark fun factories are frequented for reasons that are completely different from those for visiting prisoner of war camps. Thus visitor motivations differ in accordance with the ‘degree of darkness’ along the dark tourism spectrum. This aspect has to be explored in the context of analysis of visitor motivations.

Another aspect that has to be considered is the attraction of dark sites for subcultures of tourists. Battlefield tourism for example, is an emerging tourism avenue not only among those with personal and cultural reasons to visit but also amongst a subcategory of tourists who are interested in the militaristic aspect and logistics of war. These tourists have a general interest in the happenings but are not emotionally inclined. Hence, new and emerging subcultures may also find something of relevance in these sites despite no personal motivations for visiting. These emerging subcultures are a niche market and they have to be taken into consideration during marketing and promotion.

Another factor affecting the motivation to visit was the ‘fame’ associated with the site. Effective dissemination of knowledge and information about the sites history enables tourists to understand the tragedies that occurred and empathise with the victims. In contrast, it was shown that if the information available was limited tourists may not be able to understand the dynamics of the historical situation. As in the case of visitors at the River Kwai, their reasons for visiting may not be related to the site at all but instead be based on recreational purposes (Braithwaite Lieper 2011).

All these factors need to be considered while analysing the motivations of dark tourists as well as in marketing and knowledge dissemination of these sites in order to effectively manage tourism for such destinations and their unique appeal for tourists.

In conclusion, dark tourism’s appeal lies not within the realms of the dead and forgotten but in a sense of cultural legacy, desire to understand and reassurance and closure with respect to death. Hence, it is an embodiment of living desire to sustain and preserve history for future generations, empathise with those who suffered injustice and a hope to come to terms with the mistakes of the past.

References

Bigley J. Lee C. Chon J. and Yoon Y. (2010) Motivations for War Related Tourism: A Case for DMZ Visitors in Korea, Tourism Geographies (12) 371-394

Biran A. Poria Y. and Oren G. (2011) Sought Experiences at Dark Heritage Sites, Annals of Tourism Research (38); 820-841

Braithwaite R. and Lieper N. (2010) Contests on the River Kwai: How a Wartime Tragedy became a Recreational, Commercial and Nationalistic Plaything, Current Issues in Tourism (13); 311-332

Dunkley R. Morgan N. and Westwood S. (2011) Visiting the trenches: Exploring Meanings and Motivations in Battlefield Tourism, Tourism Management (32); 860-868

Gibson D. (2006) The Relationship between Serial Murder and the American Tourism Industry, Journal of Travel and Tourism Marketing (20)

Mowatt R. and Chancellor C. (2011) Visiting Death and Life: Dark Tourism and Slave Castles, Annals of Tourism Research (38); 1410-1434

Stone P. (2006) A Dark Tourism Spectrum: Towards a typology of death and macabre related tourist sites, attractions and exhibitions, Tourism: An Interdisciplinary International Journal (52); 145-160

Stone P. (2011) Dark tourism and the cadaveric carnival: Mediating Life and Death Narratives at Gunther von Hagens’ Body Worlds, Current Issues in Tourism (14); 685-701

Stone P. and Sharpley R. (2008) Consuming Dark Tourism: A Thanatological Perspective, Annals of Tourism Research (35); 574-595

Thanatourism and Dark Tourists: Why they Walk in the Shadows is a post from: the weblog of the NHTV master's course in Tourism Destination Management

Tourism is a global phenomenon with its characteristic as a large and complex business industry. Therefore, planning, developing and managing the tourism industry for a long-term success is a very difficult task. In order to achieve long-term success of tourism development, however, sustainable principles are required and necessary applied to strategic planning of tourism development processes. This involves various participations of all kinds of stakeholders from global to national and local levels respectively. To encourage the best practices of sustainable tourism development, voluntary initiative and codes of conduct are considerably as an effective tool on preventing or reducing negative impacts caused by tourists. This aims to influent tourists’ behavior in a more responsible way.

Based on this, the article focused mainly on the implementation of voluntary initiatives and codes of conduct in the process of achieving sustainable tourism development in ecotourism context. The introduction of these measures aims to protect tourism resources in terms of natural, cultural, historical and other resources from the increasing numbers of tourists in a tourist destination. Consequently, the negative impacts of tourists on the destination can be minimized by the way of educating and changing their behavior with sustainable approach. To carry out these tasks more effectively in the planning tourism development, among all parties actively involved in tourism such as investors, local authorities and tourists, marketing plays a significant role of not only attracting tourists to the destination, but also delivering a appropriate message to potential tourists on raising their awareness of sustainability before, during and after their visits in a tourist destination. The creation of the rules of conduct is particularly for tour operators, hotels and tourists who are directly participated in tourism industry. As the result, tourism industry can be kept as a main driver for economic growth of a country, the destination competitiveness is enhanced and other positive benefits are maximized while the negative impacts are minimized. The article also exemplified Croatia as an empirical case study in which these rules of conduct are existing and using as an integrated part in the process of the tourist destination management of Croatia to protect national parks and other nature protected areas such as ‘Regulation on Compensation for Damages Caused by Unlawful Actions on Protected Animal Species’ as a regulated legal document and codes of conduct for tourists.

Approach

In order to get a clear picture, the relevant perspectives are taken into account such as identification of the codes of conduct and their application in tourism contexts, and the relationship between the codes of conduct and sustainable tourism.

The different definitions of code of conduct are critically analyzed such as the general definition of code of conduct presented by Song (2000), and in tourism form such as in ecotourism based on the definition of Weaver (2001). Two examples of the codes of conduct in ecotourism activities used by TIES and by the International Association of Antarctica Tour Operators are exemplified to support for the case.

Furthermore, explores the evolution of the concepts of ‘sustainability’ and ‘sustainable development’, and their integration into tourism industry namely ‘sustainable tourism’. This will be based upon the early works and the principles of the Brundtland Report in 1987 over the term ‘sustainability’, and then the principles of sustainable tourism development and guidelines introduced by UNWTO in 1998 which consists of the model of the 12 aims and the 3 pillars (social, environmental, and economic). The principles of sustainability are widely adopted by many countries to use as a guideline in the process of forming a strategy of sustainable tourism development in order to ensure of the best practices of sustainability.

Structure

Code of conduct and its application in tourism

According to Song (2000), a code of conduct is ‘a set of rules of behavior formulated as either a gentleman’s agreement, a social norm, or a rule of law sanctioned by enforcement authorities’. Thus, it acts as a set of guidelines or rules that related participants have to be compliant with. However, this is a general definition of code of conduct. But in tourism context, particularly in ecotourism, Weaver (2001) classified codes of conduct as one of the subsets in the quality control, besides accreditation and quality system, and the definition of codes of conduct is relatively vague, because it is based on an assumption of self-regulation, lack of any concrete time lines or commitments and absence of any penalties for non-adherence. Consequently, the code of conduct is roughly defined as codes of practice acted as an ‘industry-general guide to behavior and no requirement for participation by individual/organization’. Thus, it is more about moral commitment and voluntary adherence. If the industry cannot manage this on its own, then the government should intervene as a regulatory agent (Weaver, 2001).

Besides the promotion of responsible and sustainable tourism, in the first International Congress on Ethics and Tourism recently in Madrid (2011), the Code of Conduct for the Protection of Children Exploitation in Travel and Tourism was recognized and signed by business sectors. The aim is to protect children, eliminating of child prostitution, child pornography and the trafficking of children for sexual purposes. The Code is founded by ECPAT (End Child Prostitution, Child Pornography, Child Sex Tourism and Trafficking in Children for sexual purpose), funded by United Nations Children Funds (UNICEF) and supported by UNWTO (UNWTO, 2011).

In a tourism context, especially tourists who have different value systems in terms of their backgrounds (social environment, cultural identity and way of live) such as people from Western countries travelling to Asian countries, they may cause conflicts with local customs and the natural environment in the process of encounters and interaction. Therefore, codes of conduct have been produced for tourists to educate them about societies they visit, and how to behave without causing offence (Cole, 2007). This means that the codes of conduct have been used as a visitor management tool and its aims are to prevent or minimize potential negative impacts of tourists on the destination they visit. To do this, a wide variety of codes of conduct have been produced aiming at the different stakeholder groups such as tour operators, travel agents, specific activity participants, host communities and tourists (Dubois, 2000, cited in Cole, 2007).

In addition, the codes of conduct, such as DO’s and DON’T’s, are able to act as a form of persuasive communication giving guidance to raise awareness of tourist of their impacts on host societies in terms of social, cultural, natural and environmental impacts.

The International ecotourism society (TIES) imposed code of the conduct on their ecotourism as a principle guideline for those participate in the activities to follow the following ecotourism principles:

• Minimize impact
• Build environmental and cultural awareness and respect
• Provide positive experience for both visitors and hosts
• Provide financial benefits and empowerment for local people
• Raise sensitivity to host countries’ political, environmental, and social climate (TIES,2010).

Another good example of a voluntary code of conduct is in the case of ecotourism provided by the International Association of Antarctica Tour Operators (IAATO, 2000a, cited in Weaver, 2001) which includes a list of procedure expected to be followed by organizers and tour operators before, during and after their trip to Antarctica. The code of conduct includes elements such as;

1. Comply with all requirements of the Antarctic Treaty system, and relevant national laws, and ensure that visitors are aware of requirements that are relevant to them.
2. Reconfirm arrangements to visit stations 24-72 hours before their arrival and ensure that visitors are aware of any conditions or restrictions established by the station.
3. Ensure that visitors are supervised by a sufficient number of guides who have adequate experience and training in Antarctic conditions and knowledge of the Antarctic Treaty system requirements.
4. Monitor environmental impacts of their activities, if appropriate, and advise the competent national authorities of the appropriate Party or Parties of any adverse or cumulative impacts resulting from an activity, which were not foreseen by their environmental impact assessment.
5. Operate ships, yachts, small boats, aircraft, hovercraft, and all other means of transport safely and according to appropriate procedures, including those set out in the Antarctic Flight Information Manual (AFIM).
6. Dispose of waste materials in accordance with Annex III and IV of the Protocol. These annexes prohibit, among other things, the discharge of plastics, oil and noxious substances into the Antarctic Treaty Area; regulate the discharge of sewage and food waste; and require the removal of most wastes from the area.
7. Cooperate fully with observers designated by Consultative Parties to conduct inspections of stations, ships, aircraft and equipment under Article VII of the Antarctic Treaty, and those to be designated under Article 14 of the Environmental Protocol.
8. Cooperate in monitoring programs undertaken in accordance with Article 3(2)(d) of the Protocol.
9. Maintain a careful and complete record of the activities conducted.

The code has been claimed to be successful in changing the behavior of operators and tourists (abstracted from Weaver, 2001, p 157). This is because the code of conduct provides very useful information needed to know by tourists and tourism-related sectors prior to conducting tourism activities in the areas, hence raising awareness among the participants is enhanced as well as negative impacts are minimized.

Sustainable tourism

The term ‘sustainable tourism’ is derived from the more general concept of ‘sustainable development dated back in 1987 of World Commission on Environment and Development Report (also known as the Brundtland Report) under the title of Our Common Future. This brings together the concept of economic development and environmental conservation. The most widely used definition of ‘sustainable development’ is ‘development that meets the needs of the present generation without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs’ (Garrod & Fyall, 1998, p 200).

Towards the concept of sustainable tourism, the World Tourism Organization (UNWTO by now) defined sustainable tourism as early as 1988 as ‘leading to management of all resources in such a way that economic, social and aesthetic needs can be fulfilled while maintaining cultural integrity, essential ecological processes, biological diversity and life support systems’ (Ashley, Roe & Goodwin, 2001, p 2). Furthermore, van Egmond (2008) defined sustainable tourism development as ‘development meets the needs of present tourists and host regions while protecting and enhancing opportunities for the future’ (van Egmond, 2008, p 184). The all definitions are based on the Brundtland’s concept of sustainable development that sustainable tourism should be operated in harmony with the local environment, community and cultures, so that these become the permanent beneficiaries and not a victim of tourism developers. The figure 1 below shows the triple bottom line of environmental, economic and social sustainability surrounded by the twelve aims for an agenda for sustainable tourism. This is the way to keep balance between 3Ps (People, Planet, and Profit).

Figure 1: Relationship between the 12 aims and the pillars of sustainability (UNEP & WTO, 2005, p 20)

The code of conduct in tourism and their impact on sustainable tourism

Obviously, the codes of conduct are mostly aimed at reducing negative impacts of tourists on social, cultural and environmental heritages in a tourism destination in which it can contribute to sustainable tourism context. Consequently, it can help tourists adapt themselves to the local environment easier and behave properly during their visit. But as several researchers have pointed out, there has been very little analysis of their effectiveness (Holden, 2000; Malloy & Fennell; Mason, 2005 cited in Cole, 2007). Thus, it is quite unsecure to rely on. However, code of conduct approach has been so far widespread acceptance as a useful tool, and it has generally potentials to minimize negative impacts of tourists on a tourist destination (CSD, 2005, cited in Cole, 2007). This is, to more or less extent, coherent with the Global Code of Ethics for Tourism of UNWTO which acts as a frame of reference for the responsible and sustainable tourism development among the member countries of UNTWO, especially for business sectors. The aim is similarly to help minimize the negative minimize the negative impacts of tourism on the environment and cultural heritage against the predicted increasingly growth numbers of tourist arrivals in the 21^st century, the international tourism forecast of arrivals in 2020 is 1.6 billion (UNWTO, 2011).

Conclusion

All in all, the code of conduct can be a useful tool on modifying tourists’ behavior in a more responsible way on their visiting to a tourist destination as it can provide necessary information for tourists on how to behavior in accordance with local rules in order to prevent other negative impacts on both environment and host society. But yet regarding to its effectiveness, it is very difficult to measure, because it depends on individual voluntary and the legal framework of the code of conduct itself which is issued and enforced by an organization or a government. The major aim of code of conduct is relatively indifferent from the principles of sustainable tourism; it is to minimize negative impacts of tourists on environment and host community of a tourist destination while maximize the positive ones. Thus, it is related to each other or it can say that the code of conduct is a subset of the tools created for the purpose of implementing sustainable tourism development.

Reference

Caroline Ashley, Dilys Roe, Hardold Goodwin. (2001). Pro-Poor Tourism Strategies: Making Tourism Work for The Poor. The Russel Press, Nottingham.

Cole, S (2007). Implementing and evaluating a code of conduct for visitors. Tourism management, 28(2), 443-451

Garrod, B & Fyall, A. (1998). Beyond the rhetoric of sustainable tourism?. 19 (3), 199-212

Song, Y. (2000). Codes of conduct in the South China Sea and Taiwan’s stand. 24(6), 449-459

The International Ecotourism Society (TIES). (2010). TIES CODE OF CONDUCT. Retrieved on November 19, 2011, from http://www.ecotourism.org/site/c.orLQKXPCLmF/ b.4875111/k.68EF/TIES_Code_of_Conduct.htm

United Nations Environment Programme & World Tourism Organization. (2005). Making Tourism More Sustainable – A Guide for Policy Makers. Joint Publication of UNEP & WTO. Paris.

UNWTO. (no year). Leading business commit to Global Code of Ethics for Tourism. Retrieved on November 19, 2011, from http://media.unwto.org/en/press-release/2011-09-19/leading-businesses-commit-global-code-ethics-tourism

van Egmond, T. (2008). The Tourism Phenomenon – Past, Present, Future. TeorBoek. 3^rd Edition. Leiden.

Weaver, D. (2001). Ecotourism. John Wiley & Sons Australia Ltd. Sydney.

Code of conduct in tourism and their impact on sustainable tourism is a post from: the weblog of the NHTV master's course in Tourism Destination Management

Bhutan is a small land-locked kingdom situating in the Himalayan Mountains between India and China. This tiny country has enjoyed the reputation as one of the most pristine and exclusive travel destinations in the world – the “last Shangri-La”. The number of inbound tourists has increased each year despite its controlled tourism policy imposing an over-priced daily tariff of US$ 200 on each tourist. This daily tariff is a result of the high-value, low-volume strategy based on the “Gross National Happiness” (GNH) philosophy – a formula to measure the country’s progress considering equitable economic development, environmental conservation, cultural promotion and good governance rather than Gross Domestic Product (GDP) (Tourism Council of Bhutan, 2011). The objectives of this high-value, low-volume policy are to earn the foreign currency and to limit the number of arrivals in order to prevent the negative impacts of tourism on its cultural heritage and natural environment (Department of Tourism, 2005). However, a growing number of tourists could jeopardize the intended objective of safeguarding Bhutan’s culture and nature which it is known for.

Many studies agree that the “High Value, Low Volume policy had been successful. The tourism had the potential to both stimulate private sector growth and transform the rural economy, without having a negative impact on its culture and environment (Brunet, Bauer, Lacy, & Tshering, 2001; Gurung & Seeland, 2008; Reinfeld, 2003; Rinzin, Vermeulen & Glasbergen 2007).

However, there are some arguments against this policy especially in regard of tourism causing the environmental issues (Dorji, 2001). The increasing number of uncontrolled Indian tourists who don’t have to pay the daily tariff which according to Nyaupane & Timothy (2010), threatening the policy and country’s cultural and natural resources.

The goal of this literature review is to provide insight in the positive as well as the negative impacts of Bhutan’s controlled tourism policy on its economy, culture and environment. The research question will therefore be:

What are the positive and negative impacts of Bhutan’s controlled tourism policy on its economy, culture and environment?

The research question will be answered by a synthesis of relevant articles and journals related to Bhutan’s tourism policy and its impacts. Using a thematic approach, both the published and unpublished government documents focusing on this topic will also be analyzed.

The first part of this literature review will explain a theory of tourism impacts, a concept of Bhutan’s controlled tourism policy and why it has been chosen. The second part will emphasize on positive impacts of the policy while the third part will discuss the negative impacts. Finally the conclusion will be drawn.

Theory of tourism impacts

Tourism has significant effects on every destination it has reached. The impacts of tourism can be categorized into 3 groups which are economic, social and cultural, and environmental impacts. The economic impacts of tourism have been widely accepted as positive forces through increasing foreign exchange earnings, increasing income and increasing employment. The social and cultural impacts of tourism can potentially be both positive and negative. Tourism has positive impacts on society and culture when the destination realizes that its unique tradition attracts tourists and therefore the effort is made to preserve that tradition. On the other hand, loss of cultural authenticity, commercialization of tradition and displacement of local people to make way for tourism facilities can be the negative impacts of tourism on society and culture. Lastly, the environmental impacts of tourism can be positive when there is more protection of natural resources to support tourism and when tourism income is spent on a better nature conservation program. However, air pollution, solid waste disposal and loss of vegetation are the negative impacts of tourism on environment (Mill & Morrison, 2009).

Bhutan’s controlled tourism policy

Maximizing the economic benefits while minimizing the negative impacts of tourism on the cultural and natural resources has been an ultimate goal of most destinations. Impacts of mass tourism on both environment and culture in neighboring country Nepal is a good example of a failure from an unplanned tourism. Realizing these 2 reasons, Bhutan has opened its door to tourism with a caution in 1974. Based on the GNH philosophy, the high-value, low-volume strategy has been introduced to ensure that tourism will stimulate an economic growth in order to alleviate the poverty and at the same time will not pose any threat to the country’s natural and cultural resources.

Bhutan’s present tourism vision is “Fostering a vibrant industry as a positive force in the conservation of environment, promotion of cultural heritage, safeguarding sovereign status of the Nation for significantly contributing to Gross National Happiness is our vision” (Tourism Council of Bhutan, 2011).

A US$ 200 daily tariff including visa, accommodations, meals, transportation and guiding service is the mechanism to limit number of arrivals. It has discouraged low-budget tourists and backpackers who flock to Nepal which has similar attractions to Bhutan and captured only high spending tourists. This results in a small number of inbound tourists to what the Government of Bhutan considers to be a sustainable level for the country. However, this daily tariff does not apply to the regional tourists from India because of a long close relation and cooperation India and Bhutan have. This leads to a huge increment in number of Indian tourists that is even more than the sum of all non-Indian tourists altogether (Nyaupane & Timothy, 2010).

Out of US$ 200 paid by each tourist per day, US$ 65 is a tourism royalty which becomes an income for Bhutan government to provide free heath care and free education for its people. The rest of the tariff is for the local tour operator to provide services to tourists (Nyaupane & Timothy, 2010).

In global terms, Bhutan’s tourism is young and tiny. However, it has seen a tremendous increase in the number of arrivals (excluding Indian tourists). Bhutan received only 287 tourists when it first opened for tourism in 1974. In 1999, the number of arrival reached 7,158. A decade later 23,480 tourists visited Bhutan in 2009. The tourism receipts have also seen a big leap from US$ 8 million in 2002 to US$ 42 million in 2009 (World Tourism Organization)

Positive impacts of Bhutan’s controlled tourism policy

Findings from previous studies indicate that Bhutan’s controlled tourism policy had positive impacts on the country’s economy. The tourism income was an important source of revenue for Bhutan because it contributed 56% of the national tax revenue in 2005. Tourism also created self-employment and provided additional income for rural communities through selling of local produces and handicrafts to tourists (Rinzin, Vermeulen & Glasbergen 2007). An increase of tourists in rural areas benefited rural communities through working as local guides, hiring of porter-pony services and providing cultural performances to tourists (Gurung & Seeland, 2008).

More authors prove the positive impacts of Bhutan’s tourism controlled policy on its environment. The farmers of Phobjikha valley was in conflict with the endangered black-necked cranes which migrated to that area every winter. The cranes posed threats to the farmer’s farming which was the only source of income. Therefore, the “black-necked crane festival” was established with the help of local NGO to benefit the farmers and help conserve the cranes. The entrance fees earned from tourists during the festival provided the local communities more income and also the alternative opportunity in selling local produces and handicrafts to tourists. The festival has been proved to reduce the human-wildlife conflict through tourism (Brunet, Bauer, Lacy, & Tshering, 2001; Reinfeld, 2003)

Negative impacts of Bhutan’s controlled tourism policy

Some researchers argue that Bhutan’s controlled tourism policy had negative impacts on its country. Along the tourists’ trekking routes, there were forest destruction through cutting of slow-growing trees for firewood, soil erosion through the use of horses and yaks for trekking tourists and garbage trail of non-biodegradable waste (Dorji, 2001). According to Nyaupane and Timothy (2010), this tourism policy was implemented only on the non-Indian tourists but ignored the Indian tourists who were actually more in number and had a high potential of polluting Bhutan’s environment and tradition without having any local guide and rules to regulate them while visiting Bhutan.

Conclusion

This literature review has revealed many researchers believed that Bhutan’s controlled tourism policy has been a successful story in increasing the economic development while preventing the negative impacts on the country’s cultural and natural resources. However, the contrary researches argued that this policy was not able to protect Bhutan’s environment therefore many negative results occurred such as forest destruction, soil erosion and garbage trail. Moreover, another negative effect of this tourism policy was pointed out that the policy only limited and controlled non-Indian tourists but failed to limit and manage a bigger group of Indian tourists which could potentially lead to negative impacts of the country’s rich resources.

There are not many articles and journals on this topic and the peer-reviews ones are very rare. Out of all articles and journals used in this literature, only half are peer-reviewed. The non-peer reviewed articles are not reliable because they were not well-structured and lack of a proper study method. Only a few articles used in this literature review conducted the surveys or interviews to find out the results. Therefore, there is an urgent need for more research on the impacts of Bhutan’s controlled tourism policy.

References

Brunet, S., Bauer, J., Lacy, T. D. & Tshering, K. (2001). Tourism development in Bhutan: tensions between tradition and modernity. Journal of Sustainable Tourism, 9(3), 243-263.

Department of Tourism, R. G. o. B. (2005). Sustainable Tourism Development Strategy. Department of Tourism, Royal Government of Bhutan.

Dorji, T. (2001). Sustainability of tourism in Bhutan. Journal of Bhutan Studies, 3, 84-104.

Gurung, D. B. & Seeland, K. (2008). Ecotourism in Bhutan extending its benefits to rural communities. Annals of Tourism Research, 35(2), 489-508.

Mill, R. C. & Morrison, A. M. (2009). The tourism system: Kendall Hunt Publishing.

Nyaupane, G. P. & Timothy, D. J. (2010). Power, regionalism and tourism policy in Bhutan. Annals of Tourism Research, 37(4), 969-988.

Reinfeld, M. A. (2003). Tourism and the politics of cultural preservation: a case study of Bhutan. Journal of Public and International Affairs, 14.

Rinzin, C., Vermeulen, W. J. V. & Glasbergen, P. (2007). Ecotourism as a mechanism for sustainable development: the case of Bhutan. Environmental Sciences, 4(2), 109-125.

Tourism Council of Bhutan. (2011)  Retrieved 1 October, 2011, from http://www.tourism.gov.bt/about-tcb

World Tourism Organization.  Retrieved 1 October 2011 http://www.e-unwto.org/content/v486k6/?k=%28Country%3a%28Bhutan%29%29&sortorder=asc

Impacts of Bhutan’s controlled tourism policy is a post from: the weblog of the NHTV master's course in Tourism Destination Management

Diving is becoming more popular. It started as a recreational activity and diving is now developing into a booming sector of travel industry all over the world. The Professional Association of Dive Instructors (PADI) measure the increasing participation in diving activity, from 2.5 million certified divers in 1988 to 17.5 million in 2008 (PADI Diver Statistics, 2008). One the world’s most popular diving destination is the Great Barrier Reef in Australia. Actually it’s not possible to leave Australia without diving here, or at least snorkel. But also new diving destinations as Myanmar and Mozambique will be developed and this stimulates the development of diving tourism worldwide. More new tour operators and travel agencies specialized in diving holidays are started the last years (T.F. Ong and G. Musa, 2011).

It’s useful to find out what influence diving has on the environment and if divers’ attitude can make a difference.

Diving is often related with damaging and fracturing of coral. This will be examined from different perspectives with case studies of three dive destinations as Malaysia Sipadan, Cayman Island in the Caribbean and a Marine National Park inThailand, called Surin.

Sipadan, Malaysia

In the case of Sipadan, an island claimed by Malaysia, Dr. Musa (2002) found in his case study that the increasing of development of diving tourism, crowding and their environmental impact has become a matter of concern.Sipadan is a diving paradise since its discovery as a dive destination in the late 1980s. Up to now tourismdevelopment on the island is staggering and threatens its small and fragile resources.Sipadan is renowned for their turtles, but their nesting on the beach has been reduced from 1470 in 1992 to 1001 in 1997, an alarming decline. During high season, crowding is common. Especially the peak months July – August, when circa 500 divers per day are underwater with an average of threedives each a day and there are only 13 dive-sites around the tiny island. No fixed arrangements were made by dive centers and their divers were being taking out at any time, with the result that too many divers were underwater.Various scientific studies have been done and one of the major problems identified was coral damage.

Grand Cayman, Caribbean

Another interesting case study is the coast of Grand Cayman in the western Caribbean, the home of the Southern Stingray and also famous for ‘Stingray City’. Since 1930s, stingrays have been present here. They were attracted by fishermen cleaning their catch. Diving became popular at Stingray City and trips started to hand feed the rays in 1986. Today most leisure tourism for this area is motivated by diving or fishing. And the dive, with 50 stingrays at least, has become one of the best in the world as the fish are harmless and not aggressive to people. Actually their only natural predators are humans and sharks.Shackley presented this case with observations of the impact and management of visitors viewing only the stingray. There are no official numbers for Stingray City available, but the Cayman Islands Department of Tourism and their Protection andConservation Unit estimates between 80,000 to 100,000 visitorsper year. In high season more than 500 divers and snorkelers each day can befound in the water feeding and stroking the rays.There is concern expressed about the effect of consistently high levels of visitation upon the rays’ population, because such visitor numbers seems likely to start or accelerate existing changes in the behavior of the stingray. Also other visitor-related problems as overcrowding, like the provision of poor and inaccurate information and minimal safety precautions will be become a problem. Unfortunately is Stingray City, by far the most frequently visited marine tourism attraction in the Caymans, outside the network of protected areas off the coasts. This means that the activities of local dive tourism operators are the most profitable, but not subject to protected arearegulations. The levels of overcrowdingthese days influence the quality of the visitor experience and seem to have an unfavorable effect upon the rays. (Shackley, 1998).

Surin Marine Park, Thailand

According to Worachananant, Carter, Hockings & Reopanichkul (2008), the aim of their study was to examine the impact on coral, caused by diving in Thailand, in Surin Marine National Park. Thailand’s maritime environment is one of the major attractions for (international) visitors. More than 80% of overseas tourists come to visit Thailand’s seas.This result in an increasing concern for the impact tourist activity might have on reefs, because the coral reefs are one of the most popular resources for tourist use (Hall, as cited in Worachananant et al, 2008). Divers could damage through direct physical contact with corals with their hands, body, equipment and fins. The number of contacts with coral and the amount of damage depends on the characteristics of individual divers. Level of dive education and briefing, diving experience and even gender can make a difference. Male divers tend to be more adventurous and more likely to take risks. And comparing with female divers, men are less likely to follow instructions.(Rouphael and Inglis, as cited in Worachananant et al, 2008).Also photographing underwater is a possibility for damage. It is reported that underwater photographers caused less damage than non-photographers even as they will touch corals more often. Nevertheless, the loss per contact is less. There is also a difference in diver behavior among dive sites. The sites with stronger current for example, can account for a much higher number of contacts.But also some damage originate may be from diving-associated activities, such as anchoring.In this study they mentioned that divers often made contact with corals, and coral was damaged on more than half of these occasions. The frequency when it happened was relatively high, around 19 times per dive.It is examined that the reef condition at Surin has declined in the past decade, in common with most reefs in Thailand (Worachananantet al., 2007).Other possible problems are sedimentation and pollution, but these are not major issues for Surin as the park is remote from the mainland, circa 60 km, and all the islands are covered with healthy forest. Still most researchers, as referred in the article,believe that the major threat is from human-related activities as diving.

Hughes (2002)found in his study that the physical damage of coral may not be intensive enough to be fatal immediately, but it could expose the host to pathogens that ultimately cause death of the coral a few years later. If the intensity of diving increases at a coral reef through more divers, this will normally be linked with a decrease in the percentage cover of live coral and also a decrease in the diversity of species.However, the decline in diversity depends on the differential resistance of coral to physical pressure. For example, more massive forms are more resistant than fragile and branching forms of coral.

Different studies verify the impact of diving and the damage on the coral is not that enormous as they maybe think. Actually, it’s surprising to see that in the Caribbean, in Bonaire at sites where divingis more intensive, it was found that coral diversity increased. And in Egypt, there appeared to be no significant impact on the abundance of different coral morphologies after 15 years of intensive tourism pressure on the Red Sea. Liddle and Kay (as cited in Hughes, 2002) explained this by suggesting that the more fragile skeletal forms also have higher recovery rates after damage and this may compensate for their vulnerability. (Hughes, 2002).

Analysis

The different case studies show the development to control the increase and intensity of diving. The question is which different solutions are necessary to reduce the possible damage of diving and to protect the environment of the marine area.

For Sipadan, all of the research teams propose that the island should be designated as a Marine Park. One of the conclusions was that marketing should place greater emphasis on diving quality, and not the convenience of the diving, as this is currently widely marketed by all the operators. To protect the environment of Sipadan, the government decided to limit the dive activities and a certain number of diving permits will be released. Today a total maximum of 100 divers is allowed to dive in one day. However, Davis (1993) reported that diving activities are unlikely to cause damage to marine life compared to natural causes, overdevelopment of the land may do so. (G. Musa, 2002).

The economy of the Cayman Islands is really dependent on tourism, so restriction on dive tour numbers would result in political opposition from tour operators and travel agencies. Assuming that demand continues to rise, it is unlikely that they would be able to raise tour fees sufficiently to compensate for reductions in numbers. It makes sense, economic as well as conservation, to develop a sustainable management plan for the site. One of the potential solutions is to incorporate Stingray City into the protected area system, so a management mechanism will be provide to co-ordinate a systematic study of the population dynamics and reproductive behavior of the rays, plus the enforcement of feeding regulations. It is impossible to prevent overcrowding without a management structure that combines some quota-based restriction of access with appropriate ecological studies.

These days, deliberate damage to stingrays is minimal, largely due to the educational content of dive tour briefings. Important note of the study is that snorkeling is a far less intrusive activity than scuba diving and probably far better for the rays. (Shackley,1998).

In the case study of Thailand, the writers mentioned that there is a need to limit diver-induced stress on the coral reef system if the diving tourism industry is to sustain itself.

Various writers noted in the article of Worachananantet al (2008) that management and restoration efforts should be conducted on a site-by-site basis, because of the great variation in the amount of physical damage within and among different diving sites. As the study suggests that divers practice a low level of environmental care, but divers may be simply unaware that their actions can damage coral. A short pre-dive briefing on environmental protecting, the divers were likely to have fewer contacts with the corals and cause less damage. (Worachananant,Carter, Hockings & Reopanichkul, 2008).

Conclusion

It’s clear that some studies defines that impact of diving is minimal. Gross of the divers are conscious of their actions and they respect the environment. According to Ong and G. Musa (2011) divers are mostly highly responsible underwater and possess a positive attitude to the environment. The behavior of divers underwater has a direct relationship with both environmental concern and specific attitude.This specific scuba diving attitude means that divers scored the highest on knowledge of diving practices and awareness of consequences. This would also include behavior such as contributing money and committing time to marine conservation activities. Important for divers is the feeling of responsibility for non-contact diving behavior, followed by skill diving behavior and safety diving behavior.

According to the article of Rouphael and Hanafy (2007),researchers are convinced that scuba diving can even help support management of protected areas, for example through fees and even contribute substantially to the economies of countries by encouraging investment and employment opportunities.

Concluding remarks are that diving has impact on the environmentwithout doubt. The most important is that the intensity of diving should be controlled, by government and the diving industry. Take note of carrying capacity is important;the balance between how much can the environment handle and the satisfied experience of the divers. Dive tour operators have to focus on clear information about the diving spot, so divers will be more aware of the environment and fragile coral. In general divers respect the world underwater and they are well educated during the scuba diving course(s). Even for the government of the country the protection of the diving environment is necessary as the tourism industry is still growing and diving is becoming more popular.If the environment is damaged, the diving destination will not attract tourist anymore.Diving tourism could be valuable for a destination, because there will be more attention for the world underwater this way and there will be an increase of protection of vulnerable species of flora and fauna.

Unfortunately, there has not much research been done about examining the impact of dive tourism on the living species of the underwater world. As there is a lack of evidence if the influence of diving is good or bad, it will be difficult to criticize. More study hasto be done so they can compare and improve the situation. Beside it, a critical look on the tourism industry around the diving areas is necessary because this will affect the surrounding andnature as well. Increasing numbers in accommodations for example will disturb the environment. If it is not correctly done, the resources will be fatigue and this will eventually lead to the downfall of the diving destination.

General conclusion

As a general conclusion the question ‘To dive or not to dive?’ could be answered now. A restriction on diving is not necessary. Diving can make it possible that a destination will profit from the activities of dive centers and good conditions for theenvironment will be developed.For some destinations it is required that a limit of divers will be introduced by stakeholders as the government and in this way certain areas will be protected.

Divetour operators and travel agencies have to be aware of the possible losses through diving activities and what this means for the future of a diving destination.If the agencies and divers are well educated and the dive centers will provide clear briefings before diving, the impact of diving will most probably not cause major damage on the environment. Coral will stay healthy and diversity of the sea life can even increase. At last, more research should be done on the impact of diving on the sea life and this is necessary to improve the diving industry.

References:

Hughes, G. (2002). “Environmental indicators”.Annals of Tourism

G. Musa (2002). “Sipadan: a SCUBA-diving paradise: an analysis of tourism impact, diver satisfaction and tourism management”.Tourism Geographies

M. Shackley (1998): “‘Stingray City’- Managing the Impact of Underwater Tourism in the Cayman Islands”. Journal of Sustainable Tourism

S. Worachananant, R. W. Carter, M. Hockings and P. Reopanichkul (2008). “Managing the Impacts of SCUBA Divers on Thailand’s Coral Reefs”.Journal of Sustainable Tourism

T.F. Ong and G. Musa (2011).“SCUBA divers’ underwater responsible behaviour: can environmental concern and divers’ attitude make a difference?”.Current issues in Tourism

T.F. Ong and G. Musa (2011).“An examination of recreational divers’ underwater behaviour by attitude–behaviour theories.”Current issues in Tourism

P. Stolk, K. Markwell and J.M. Jenkins (2009). “Artificial Reefs as Recreational Scuba Diving Resources: A Critical Review of Research”. Journal of Sustainable Tourism�%r w�� @� Barcelona: Atlas.

Ver Beek, K. (2006). The impact of short-term missions: a case study of house construction in Honduras after Hurricane Mitch. Missiology: An International Review 34(4): 477-496.

Wearing, S. (2001). Volunteer tourism: Experiences that make a difference. New York: CABI Publishing.

Wearing, S. (2002). Re-centering the self in volunteer tourism. The Tourist as a Methaphor of the Social World, Dann. G. (ed.) New York: Cabi Publishing; 237-262.

Wearing, S., Deville, A. & Lyons, K. (2008). The volunteer’s journey through leisure into the self. Journeys of Discovery in Volunteer Tourism, Lyon, K & Wearing, S. (eds). Cambridge: CABI Publishing; 195-209.

Impacts of diving: To dive or not to dive? is a post from: the weblog of the NHTV master's course in Tourism Destination Management

Volunteer tourism is a sector that can benefit both tourists and host communities (e.g. Wearing, 2001, 2002; Broad, 2003, Brown and Morrison, 2003, McGehee and Santos, 2005). However, existing research has primarily focused on the positive effects of volunteer tourism and the motivations of volunteers. Volunteer tourism is in general recognized as a form of alternative tourism (e.g. Wearing, 2001; Brown, 2005; Callanan and Thomas, 2005; McIntosh and Zahra, 2008; Matthews, 2008).

According to McGehee and Santos (2005, p. 760) volunteer tourism is “utilizing discretionary time and income to travel out of the sphere of regular activity to assist other in need.” Volunteer tourism is growing rapidly (Callanan & Thomas, 2005). However, it is not transparent what the effects of volunteer tourism are. According to Wearing (2001, p. 1) volunteer tourist are involved in “aiding or alleviating the material poverty of some groups in society, the restoration of certain environments, or research into aspects of society or environment.” In this way it is possible that volunteer tourists, take over the jobs and income of local people. This outcome has not been researched.

In this article the aim is to focus on creating awareness of possible negative impacts of volunteer tourism.

Only a small number of studies have oriented on host communities and found that volunteer tourism can be beneficial to them (e.g. Clifton and Benson, 2006; McIntosh and Zahra, 2008). The below mentioned authors have acknowledged potential risks of volunteer tourism.

Volunteer tourism projects exist all over the world (Raymond and Hall, 2008). The small number of existing research with the focus on personal growth and motivations of volunteer tourists have been executed on volunteer tourists in for example Thailand, (Broad, 2003), Indonesia, (Galley and Clifton, 2004), South Africa (Stoddart and Rogerson, 2004), and Costa Rica (Campbell and Smith, 2006).

Possible positive effects of volunteer tourism all over the world include the work that the volunteers achieve, the personal growth that volunteers may undergo and foster a better understanding between cultures (intercultural experience) involving hosts and volunteers (Wearing, 2001, 2002; Ellis, 2003; Brown, 2005; McGehee and Santos, 2005; Wearing et al, 2008). Though, Raymond and Hall (2008) question the personal growth that volunteers supposedly experience and the value of the cross-cultural understanding. According to Callanan and Thomas (2005) in some projects, volunteers are  primarily interested in personal gain and the project benefits are questionable. Participants of volunteer tourism are often not motivated by altruism, but by personal reasons (Wearing, 2001; Galley and Clifton 2004; Brown, 2005). This is emphasized by that volunteers often seem to participate for less than one month. By this it seems that they are not really committed to achieve the goal of a project (Ellis, 2003; Callanan and Thomas, 2005; Fitzpatrick, 2007).

Thus, most volunteer tourists work a short time at a project and because of this they do not see the project fulfill. The outcome of a research by Ver Beek (2006) stated that in the two years following the volunteer trip only 25% of the participants had sent any direct donations to the agency. A project staff member surveyed by Coghlan (2008, p. 187) states: “The (volunteers) commitment is hard to gauge, as many were committed while on site but have shown little long-term interest since returning home.” This outcome emphasizes the judgment of Wearing (2001), Galley and Clifton (2004), and Brown (2005) that often volunteer workers volunteer for personal gain. So 75% of the participants of the research by Ver Beek (2006) were not really committed and engaged with the project.

Some authors question if benefits can be provided when volunteer tourists don’t have the necessary skills, are not familiar with the local culture and only will stay for a short period of time. Volunteer tourists may not only impede work progress at a project, even worse, they in fact may perform unsatisfactory work. At the end, it could even cost the project money to work with volunteer workers (Simpson, 2004; Callanan and Thomas, 2005).

Non-profit organizations still constitute the majority of the shares of the volunteer tourism sector. So, most volunteer workers will be assigned to a project by a non-profit organization. However, the commercial segment of large tourism operators are competing for a share in this market (Lyon and Wearing, 2008a, 2008b; Tourism Research and Marketing, 2008). These conditions are developing into a competition of shares, with the risk that volunteer tourism will be hugely commercialized.

Wearing (2001) states that if the volunteer tourism sector becomes too commercialized, it could end up endangering associated communities and environments. Resulting into a high risk of communities supposedly benefitting from volunteer tourism will be neglected (Guttentag, 2009). According to Fitzpatrick (2007) “The (volunteer tourism) market is increasingly geared toward profit rather than the needs of the communities.”

In this way the needs of the communities are neglected. One of the needs of local citizens is paid labor. To protect paid workers Pearce (1980) produced a list of criteria to identify jobs that were appropriate for volunteer workers. The first and most important requirement mentioned in the list was that the jobs of volunteers “do not fall within the domain of paid workers (Pearce, 1980, p. 448).” However, Pearce was talking from the perspective of non-tourist volunteers working in the tourism sector, like local volunteers. Nevertheless, in the opinion of Guttentag (2009) this requirement could easily  be applied at the volunteer tourism sector. Most volunteer projects are based on unskilled labor. As a result volunteer tourists often perform jobs that locals citizens could perform, too. However, the problem is that in general volunteers naturally work for free. More often volunteer workers even pay for the opportunity to perform volunteer work. In this way volunteer tourists may undercut competing local laborers (Guttentag, 2009; Raymond and Hall, 2008). This kind of environment ensures that it is more attractive for project managers to employ volunteer workers who work for free and sometimes even pay to be able to do volunteer work, than to employ paid workers.

In the beginning of this article a few countries have been mentioned where research has been conducted with the focus on personal growth and motivations of the volunteer tourists.  The unemployment rates of these countries have been displayed in this paragraph.

During the last few years the unemployment rate in Thailand has been decreasing.  Only 1% of the Thai population is unemployed. In Indonesia the unemployment rate has been fluctuating for the last 10 years. In 2010, 7,1% of the Indonesian population was unemployed.  Costa Rica’s unemployment rate was low in 2007 (4,6%) and 2008 (4,9%). After 2008, due to the global financial crisis, the unemployment rate increased rapidly to 7,3%. However, due to the global financial crisis the unemployment rate in South Africa is extremely high, namely 24% of the South African population is unemployed. Youth unemployment in South Africa is even the worst, effected with 50% (2010 figures) (Asian Development Bank, 2010; Selassie, 2011; Index Mundi, 2010).

In my opinion sending organizations could be more strict about the minimal time frame that a volunteer  stays  working at a project. As mentioned above, the time frame that a volunteer worker is now working at a project is often a maximum of one month. So, at the moment  the volunteers are directly gone after the exposure time. Hence,  to improve the result of the work of the volunteer worker, a minimum stay of two months could be introduced. Furthermore, (additional) strict criteria could be set up which volunteer workers have to fulfill in order to increase the long-term commitment of a volunteer worker to a project and the local community. In this way, the 25% of long-term commitment in the two years following the volunteer trip  could be increased.

Questionable is, if the volunteer tourism sector has not been commercialized already? Large tour operators who offer volunteer tourism to their clients and  due to volunteer projects make a profit. In my opinion, they are profiting  from money that should go to the volunteer project itself. As a result, volunteer  tourism has been commercialized already by allowing companies to make a profit out of it. Indeed, volunteer tourism endangers associated communities and environments. If nothing changes, volunteer tourists will probably lean more to the tourist side, than the volunteer side and by this it is questionable if local communities will be able to preserve their culture.

Finally, according to McGehee and Santos (2005, p. 760) volunteer tourism is “utilizing discretionary time and income to travel out of the sphere of regular activity to assist other in need. ” However, sending organizations do not always research the needs of local citizens. One of the first questions in a project should be: Is the local community in need?

In my opinion volunteer workers should have the skills and knowledge to perform the work in the best possible way. The local citizens  should be educated by the volunteer workers in order to carry out the work that is now performed by volunteer workers. In this way, volunteer workers really help the local community and as a side effect the unemployment rate of a country can slowly decline. Of course, large tour operators that work and invest in the volunteer tourism sector will be against this. As this opportunity will cost them customers and more important it will cost them profit. This will not solve the unemployment rate for example in South Africa, but at least it is a step in the right direction.

As there is not enough data about the impacts of volunteer tourism on employment rates, this needs to be further researched.

References:

Asian Development Bank (2010a).Country Tables. Retrieved November 20, 2011 from https://sdbs.adb.org/sdbs/index.jsp

Broad, S. (2003). Living the Thai Life – a case study of volunteer tourism at the Gibbon Rehabilitation Project, Thailand. Tourism Recreation Research 28(3): 63-72.

Brown, S. (2005). Travelling with a purpose: understanding the motives and benefits of volunteer vacationers. Current Issues in Tourism 8(6): 479-496.

Brown, S. & Morrison, A. (2003). Expanding volunteer vacation participation: an exploratory study on the mini-mission concept. Tourism Recreation Research 28(3): 73-82.

Callanan, M., & Thomas, S. (2005).  Volunteer tourism: deconstructing volunteer activities within a dynamic environment. Niche Tourism: Contemporary Issues and Trends, Novelli, M. (ed.). New York: Elsevier; 183-200.

Campbell, L. & Smith, C. (2006). What makes them pay? Values of volunteer tourists working for sea turtle conservation. Environmental Management 38(1): 84-98.

Clifton, J. & Benson, A. (2006). Planning for sustainable ecotourism: the case for research ecotourism in developing country destinations. Journal of Sustainable Tourism 14(3): 238-254.

Coghlan, A. (2008). Exploring the role of expedition staff in volunteer tourism. International Journal of Tourism Research 10: 183-191.

Ellis, C. (2003). Participatory environmental research in tourism: a global view. Tourism Recreation Research 28(3): 45-55.

Fitzpatrick, L. (2007, July 26). Vacationing like Brangelina. Time. Retrieved November 18, 2011 from http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1647457,00.html

Galley, G. & Clifton, J. (2004). The motivational and demographic characteristics of research ecotourists: Operation Wallacea volunteers in Southeast Sulawesi, Indonesia. Journal of Ecotourism 3(1): 69-82.

Guttentag, D. (2009). The Possible Negative Impacts of Volunteer Tourism. International Journal of Tourism Research 11: 537-551.

Index Mundi (2010). Unemployment Rate Costa Rica. Retrieved November 20, 2011 from http://www.indexmundi.com/g/g.aspx?c=cs&v=74

Lyon, K. & Wearing, S. (2008a). All for a good cause? The blurred boundaries of volunteering and tourism. Journeys of Discovery in Volunteer Tourism, Lyon, K. Wearing, S. (eds). Cambridge: CABI Publishing: 86-100.

Lyon, K. & Wearing, S. (2008b). Volunteer tourism as alternative tourism: journeys beyond otherness. Journeys of Discovery in Volunteer Tourism, Lyon, K. Wearing, S. (eds). Cambridge: CABI Publishing: 3-11.

Matthews, A. (2008). Negotiated selves: exploring the impact of local-global interactions on young volunteer travelers.  Journeys of Discovery in Volunteer Tourism, Lyon, K. and Wearing, S. (eds). Cambridge: CABI Publishing; 101-117.

McGehee, N., & Santos, C. (2005). Social change, discourse, and volunteer tourism. Annals of Tourism Research, 32(3): 760-779.

McIntosh, A. and Zahra, A. (2008). Journeys for experience:  The experiences of volunteer tourists in an indigenous community in a developed nation – a case study of New Zealand.  Journeys of Discovery in Volunteer Tourism, Lyon, K. & Wearing, S. (eds). Cambridge: CABI Publishing.

Pearce, J. (1980). A volunteer worker placement model for business. Annals of Tourism Research 2(3): 443-454.

Raymond, E. & Hall, C. (2008). The development of cross-cultural (mis)understanding through volunteer tourism. Journal of Sustainable Tourism 16(5): 530-543.

Selassie, A. (2011, April 4). South Africa’s Unemployment. Blog IMF Direct. Retrieved November 20, 2011 from http://blog-imfdirect.imf.org/2011/04/04/south-african-unemployment/

Simpson, K. (2004). ‘Doing Development’: the gap year: volunteer-tourists and a popular practice of development. Journal of International Development 16: 681-692.

Stoddart, H. & Rogerson, C. (2004). Volunteer tourism: the case of Habitat for Humanity South Africa. GeoJournal 60: 311-318.

Tourism Research and Marketing (2008). Volunteer Tourism: A Global Analysis. Barcelona: Atlas.

Ver Beek, K. (2006). The impact of short-term missions: a case study of house construction in Honduras after Hurricane Mitch. Missiology: An International Review 34(4): 477-496.

Wearing, S. (2001). Volunteer tourism: Experiences that make a difference. New York: CABI Publishing.

Wearing, S. (2002). Re-centering the self in volunteer tourism. The Tourist as a Methaphor of the Social World, Dann. G. (ed.) New York: Cabi Publishing; 237-262.

Wearing, S., Deville, A. & Lyons, K. (2008). The volunteer’s journey through leisure into the self. Journeys of Discovery in Volunteer Tourism, Lyon, K & Wearing, S. (eds). Cambridge: CABI Publishing; 195-209.

Give me a Job and I will Volunteer! is a post from: the weblog of the NHTV master's course in Tourism Destination Management

Urban tourism has become one of main stream in tourism research since more and more urban areas promoted themselves as the most “charming”, ”sparkling” or ”touching” place on earth. In Asia, since so-called ‘tiger’ cities rose, city promotion combined with urban tourism has been view as a stage on which the state exhibits the success of economic success and modernized (Ward, 2005).Southeast Asia became a popular tourism destination to international visitors around 1970.From the beginning, tourism in Asia which consists of beach, sex, drugs, food and shopping has been based on urban. After two decades of development, in 1990s, East Asia pacific region received 16 percent of international tourists and 46 percent of them travelled to Southeast Asia (Mullins, 1999). According to UNWTO (2011), the average annual growth of international tourist arrivals in Southeast from 1995 to 2010 is 6.8 percent, second to Middle East.Hong Kong and Singapore, with spectacular growth, has been the best model for other Asian city states to imitate.In addition, Bangkok is also a good example to explain how being as a tourist gateway bring rapid growth to a city.The instant and obvious economic benefits and glory of “modern” have already driven more and more city authorities in Asia to develop tourism enthusiastically as the priority of policy. However, what if every city tries to attract tourists by using similar strategies and elements, like shopping, food and Skyscrapers (Leiper& Park, 2010). Furthermore these cities are all located in Asia, possibly modernized to different degree, but move to the same direction which early successful tourism Asian cities once went on.How do these cities make themselves to be more recognized? And do their efforts work? Is there any stakeholder without or within power but in urgency due to fast growth of urban tourism? Environmental issues about tourism in rural area have been discussed a lot, how about urban tourism? What kind of environmental impact could urban tourism cause?The ignored danger of urban tourism is the core of this literature review concerns about.

Unlike popular Europeantouristcities that attract holidaymakers with unique recreational and cultural experience, tourism products providedby newly modernized Asian cities are very similar, such as food, shopping and skyscrapers. The authorityalso tried to locate the destination in an unoccupied tourism market position by applying certain general elements, such as culture, sports and special events (Ward, 2005).Therefore, marketing strategies plays a more important role on urban tourism in Asia. For some Asian governments, the statistics of international tourist arrivals represents the extent of successful internationalization. In pursuit of increasing number, marketing and promotion hasbecome the core of tourism policy rather than quality improvement. Similar terms can easily be found in every Asian tourism brochures and campaigns.The government keeps searching for the most special description to make its cities more recognized. Unfortunately, this kind of efforts make new marketing themes tends to be mere rhetorical fancy(Ward, 2005).City branding sounds to be a possible solution to this confusion.However a city which Once branding concept is applied to a tourist destination “which are multi-faced entities serving various groups of users who each have their owen sets of motivations, expectations and experience”( Henderson, J ,2000, pp. 209). In addition,the images of destination branding are in high risk of fostering an unachievable perfection, far removed from real life. Better campaign quality result in greater danger with more beguiling imagery (Ward, 2005). Worst of all, residents in Asian cities has seldom been consulted about the form of picture.

Because developing tourism in development stage needs more facilities and accommodation to meet tourist demands, so the ministry of tourism encourages much new construction in city centers.However, the first problem is that the price or rent of land is always high in cities centers. Therefore the authority would provide tax holiday or sell the land owned by the government to appeal foreign investment. International-chained hotels are especially welcome to be open in Asian cities because the amount of five-star hotel is one of important tourism development indicators published on UNWTO facts book annually. It is careless whether the true situation of deal is fair or not is careless. In Asia, this kind of ‘partnership’ between politics and business lack supervision. What extent could citizen tolerate consent?Unfortunately, city marketing is a commodification of place and even more metaphorical than actual (Ward, 2005). Moreover, in the other hand, for the same reason mentioned in last paragraph, a global brand or transnational corporationis very welcome. Therefore, urban tourism in Asia depends on external and highly mobile capital rather than local business involvement.

Increasing facilities thriving in urban areas have changed the surface of the city. Huge amount of new high-rise buildings has been constructed and originallow-rise onesdisappeared. One new-built skyscraper brings more skyscrapers and leads the surrounding old buildings to the way of destruction (Leipera, N. & Park, S., 2010).Cities look much more crowded and make not only visitors but also residents feel depressed with the growth of urban tourism. ”Tourists may be more affected by this sort of urban environment than locals,because locals accept it as part of their normal environment but for tourists it isantagonistic to the leisure that underlies recreational and cultural activities intourism.”(Leipera, N., & Park, S., 2010, pp. 346)Asian cities are losing their characteristic and ethnic style. For example, one grand fancy hotel in modernist style designed and constructed by international architect team can easily find the similitude to another one in Asia.

The urbanization is growing, by 2030, approximate 60 % of people on earth willlive in cities.People keep moving from country to city looking for opportunities. Most significant growth is predicted to occur in less developed regions, and themajority of sustained and rapid increase attributes to the poor who concentrateinto urban slums (Mowforth&Munt, 2009).However poor migrants are unable to afford high room rent in city center, then, the scale and quantity of slum grew. The truth is slum is the inevitable outcome of urbanization.But of course no Asian city government would like to give a shot to the poverty on promotional advertisement. From Western point of view poor people living in countryside sometimes could be romantic or culture-rich (Mowforth&Munt, 2009), but once if they appears in cities, the poverty should be eliminated as soon as possible. For Asian governments, in pursuit of tourism, the poor should be kicked off cities to improve the ‘appearance’ of cities.The state or enterprise can easily evict the urban poor because of their lackof property ownership by tourism-related development and infrastructureprojects, large international eventsand urban renewal.

Under the guidance of the authority, successful urban tourism equals to the badge of progress and achievement. While citizens, as main users of the space and participants of activities in cities, are rarely taken into consider. (Coles, 2008) In fact, citizens are asked to support tourism and educated not only to be friendly to visitors, but also agree with controversy polices including urban renewal, driving tramp away from streets and slum clearance schemes. Under the protective umbrella of urban tourism, the secret collusive relation between politicians and businessman were ignored and free from supervision.

The gap between the intensions of the marketers and understandings of localsis not rare.Take Singapore for example, both visitors and locals did not approve the description used for tourism promotion. “Societies cannot engineered or places manufactured for tourist consumption without a loss of authenticity which is ultimately by the visitor who will move on to seek it elsewhere. ”(Henderson, 2002, pp. 215) Comparing to the involvement of European citizenships in the project of city development, Asian people used to obey orders, silent urban residents create no criticize or debate on public events and cultural identification. Moreover, governments had no vision of refining cultural context but only objectives emphasized on marketing. Eventually, if the city authorities fail to realize the importance of long-term strategies to urban tourism, here is a prediction, the similar path taken by some older beach tourist destinations, less visitors and no more new jobs (Shaw, G.& Williams, A., 2002).

Now in certain Third World cities, there is a new form of urban tourism which diverged far from the definition of urban tourism called slum or reality tourism. Does direct contact with a city’s poor could improve the life of poorer communities or work in the opposite way? The question still waits for answers. However, slum tourism could give Asian cities a chance to examine the nature of its urban tourism.

References

Coles, T. (2008). Citizenship and the state: hidden features in the internationalization of tourism. In Coles T. & Hall C. (Ed.),International business and tourism: global issues , contemporary interactions (pp. 55-69). New York: Routledge.
Henderson, J (2000). Selling places: the new Asia-Singapore brand.In M. Robinson, N. Evans, P. Long, R. Sharpley& J. Swarbrooke (Ed.),Reflections on international tourism: management, marketing and the political economy of travel and tourism(pp. 207-218).Sunderland: Business Education Publishers Ltd.
Mowforth, M. & Munt, I. (2009).Tourism and Sustainability : Development, Globalisation and New Tourism in the Third World(pp. 268-292). New York: Routledge.
Mullins, P. (1999). International tourism and the cities of southeast Asia. In Judd, D. &Fainstein, S. (Ed.), The tourist City (pp. 245-260). New Haven: Yale University Press
Leipera, N.& Park, S. (2010). Skyscrapers ‘influence on cities’ roles as tourist destinations. Current Issues in Tourism, 13(4), 333-349.
Selby, M. (2004). Consuming the city: Conceptualizing and researching urban tourist knowledge. Tourism Geographies, 6(2), 186-207.
Shaw, G.& Williams, A. (2002).Critical issues in tourism: a geographical perspective(2nd ed.). Cambridge: Blackwell Publishers.
Ward, S. (2005).Selling places: the marketing and promotion of towns and cities 1850-2000. New York :Routledge.
Tourism Highlights Edition 2011. (2011) Retrieved November 21, 2011, from http://www.e-unwto.org

Danger of Urban Tourism in Asia is a post from: the weblog of the NHTV master's course in Tourism Destination Management

Julio Benedetti

Master in Tourism Destination Management graduation thesis by TDM student Julio Benedetti on destination competitiveness (November 2010)

Why ‘the competitiveness of Brazil as a Dutch holiday destination’?

Destination competitiveness is a very recent topic that has been gaining attention due to the increasing competitive environment that tourism destinations have been facing, but so far it has been investigated mainly on a generic basis and more situation-specific studies are needed. Moreover, there is still insufficient academic research on Brazil as a tourism destination.

Brazil is an emerging country undergoing through enormous economical and social changes. It is predicted to become the 5^th largest global economy by 2025 and it was recently announced as host for both the World Cup 2014 and the Olympic Games 2016, which puts the country’s tourism and travel industry in the world spotlight.

Netherlands is the world’s 15^th most important long-haul outbound market, and over 80% trips undertaken by Dutch international travellers were for holiday purposes, a number which is forecasted to reach 40 million by 2015. It is the 15^th most important source market to Brazil, but number of arrivals have been dropping since 2005. 40% Dutch travelers to Brazil visit the country for holiday purposes;

Goal:  to analyse the competitiveness of Brazil as a tourism destination for the Dutch outbound holiday market

• Who are the competitor destinations?   • What are the factors of competitiveness?  • How important are these factors? • What is the performance of Brazil and its competitors in each factor?   • And its practical implications?

Research design & methodology

• Phase 1: Defining a set of factors & competitors: literature review and qualitative survey with 63 Dutch travel industry members during an event of the Brazilian Tourism Board in Amsterdam;

• Phase 2: Defining the importance of factors & performance of Brazil and competitors: online survey with 48 Dutch travel agents and tour operators, who rated importance-performance through a Likert scale from 1 to 5;

Main conclusions

• The main competitors of Brazil in the Dutch holiday market are Mexico, Cuba, Thailand. South Africa is as competitive as Brazil; the least competitive destination is Costa Rica;

• Thailand was never considered as a competitor of Brazil by previous researches: interestingly, the results goes in accordance to the new competitive position of Brazil: its competitive set is expanding from regional to worldwide destinations;

• The five most important factors that influence the competitiveness of a long-haul destination in the Dutch holiday market are climate, cost-value, tourism attitude, nature and safety;

• Some pratical implications: Brazil should focus more on cost-value and safety, for instance, and less in climate, when designing its destination strategies and marketing actitivies;

The competitiveness of Brazil as a Dutch holiday destination (master’s thesis) is a post from: the weblog of the NHTV master's course in Tourism Destination Management