Dynamics of Managing a Visitor Destination - Essay Example

Abstract This is an article that covers the growth of tourism in a place by taking steps to increase the number of visitors. It has been seen that Sound tourism management is the most vital part and it is the process of appropriate visitor management. The growth of tourism visitors will be taken in such a way that the environment will not be damaged but will be harnessed. This will be the policy that will be followed in the social and biological issues. The role of the managers in harnessing the resource for tourism cannot be written off. . Fyall has stated that the expansion and improvement of the tertiary industry of tourist destinations heavily depends on visitors. Fyall has added that at the initial stage, visitors serve as an attraction to other visitors which increase the growth of business. At bigger horizon there are agents of change who operate on higher level by entertaining visitor through social and cultural exchange, political vehicles and also generate income and employment. Fyall has added that a destination is any ecological and geographical they area where the entire tourism experience takes place. Sound tourism management is the most vital part and it is the process of appropriate visitor management. Policies, expansion and setting up rules and regulations with respect to visitor’s activity all are indexed in visitor management which emphasizes on the guiding principle for visitors. Parallel, it aims to achieve enjoyable visitor experiences by enhancing the luxury associated with the value of the site. The management of such a visitor destination needs to take up an innovative and effective strategy which urges the visitors to adopt an apt behavior which should be in accordance with the environmental context of the tourist destination. (Fyall, 2003, 299) The trend globally in every region is that semi-public organizations are the most preferred and there are tourism organizations that are independent and having affiliation with private sectors and with regional and local authorities. This trend has been supported by WTO business council. Private sectors and governments have equal roles and responsibilities towards travel and tourism management. There are five principles for outstanding destination management , they include integrate, inform, innovate, invest and continuous improvement, moreover, there is a variety of other tourism management principles which contain ecological impact measurement, restrictions of suitable change, visitor impact management and visitor experience, understanding and resource management. These tools will not provide a magic portion for a good management they can support the managements' efforts in building sustainable tourism. Mihali has stated that WTO business council has raised the requirement for flexible, innovative and multi-disciplinary techniques for managing the visitors’ destination. Mihali has stated that even though public and national policies generally give confidence to tourism competitiveness, a well organized mutual partnership concerning key stakeholders is required to make the destination more appealing, and to enhance sustainability, marketability and service quality. (Mihali, 2000) Managers are charged to manage parks and natural resources with a twin mission. First responsibility is to look after natural resources for future generations; second responsibility is to provide appropriate public enjoyment and pleasure from these natural resources. Managers regularly pay attention on reducing impacts on these resources and at the same time, they provide premium outdoor amusement opportunities for visitors to get pleasure from. Managers put great efforts to evaluate and set benchmark for superior quality that protect the natural resources as well as offers an encouraging visitor experience. There are many themes which have emerged the current research on visitors' perceptions of impacts. All these themes emphasize on; to bring in awareness in management so that they should be aware of visitors' perceptions, how to implement, develop and manage these resources in a manner so these perceptions are taken into consideration. Research finding point out several strategies that manager can execute to appease visitor impacts by protecting campsites, wilderness areas, trails and other tourism destinations by the relevant officers. Some important among these are: Execute a systematic approach to determine and manage recreation impacts, considering some of the science-based recreation impact management frameworks that include Limits of Acceptable Change (LAC), Visitor Experience, Resource Protection (VERP) and Visitor Impact Management (VIM). These frameworks allow managers to elaborate that which kind of appropriate experience is required, the target segment of visitors to be catered and how to bring in environmental changes. (Warzecha, 2001, 1-14) A special attention should be given by managers to the method of understanding perceptions. Managers should start off with close ended questions. A closed-ended question is a type of question, which normally can be answered by a simple "yes or no". A manager should determine what actions or vibes his visitors concerned about and what do they feel. Does a visitor conceive your parks having physical, biological, or social impacts? What are what’s, how’s and why’s of a visitor’s experiences? Are you satisfied with the experience? Yes/No Do you feel the park has physical impact? Yes/No Do you feel the park has social impact? Yes/No Do you feel the park has biological impact? Yes/No To provide high quality visitor experiences a manager should Plan, design and manage natural areas in such ways that maintain the resource's ecological integrity. To achieve this, few management techniques are adopted and implementing that reduces the negative impacts most commonly observed by visitors which includes litter, tree and plant damage, campfire rings, trail extensions, trail widening and erosion. (Smith, Melanie K., 2007, 69) To communicate your objectives to visitors, a manager should have clear objectives backed by resources. There should be clear development and formulation of the rationale that will help to develop management decision and policy. All visitors are from different ethnic and professional backgrounds so training should be conducted to enrich the skills of professional managers, so that they can provide customer satisfaction and generate feedback. (Tom Baum, 2006, 231) Existing successful programs such as Leave no trace should be adopted. Focus on trainings and outreach to forestall visitor impacts on your natural resource. Collect their views about their experiences because it will defer from yours. A manager should attempt to understand the vista of diverse groups when choosing among different experiences to provide. Meeting Impacts which should be addressed and minimized with resource protection policies should be heavily emphasized because managers' perceptions of impacts often differ. Induce appropriate levels of visitor safety and minimize long-term management costs for their cost effectiveness. Support and stimulate further research focused on overall experiences incurred by a visitor through assessing their perceptions of impacts matching with reality. (Albrecht, Tourist Destination Management.) The benefits of conducting research are defined as the five “C’s” Credibility has been that demonstrate those who are supporting you that the resources and funds are being used successfully and proficiently, Customers has been that recognize to a great extent regarding your visitors and their needs, wants, requirements, desires and expectations, change has been that keep yourself updated with new issues and trends that influence destinations and visitors, competition has been that changes that take place in competitive destinations and different market segments and Confidence has been that more confident regarding making appropriate, accurate and substantive decisions. (Kolb, Bonita M, 2006," 157) There are several things to do when managing visitors’ destination. Starting from making destination strategies with respect to the changes occur, undertaking feasibility studies for destinations, Profile raising and viewers growth and development, maximize revenue and minimize costs by proper implementation of strategy, Proper supervision and execution, understand and satisfy visitors demand in leisure time, administration and development of ‘place’ and the visitor experience, tourism service provision, co-ordination of facilities for visitors, marketing, promotion and communication of tourism, provision and spreading of information, tourism product(accommodation, food and drink, amusement, attractions), infrastructure and transportation, skills, training and quality of welcome and look for the new sources for attraction development. (Kozak, 1998, 184-188) The destination management provides a structure and framework for investment in the most important and emerging sectors of the local nation. On every step of the visitor journey, the ‘visitor economy’ embraces the entire tourist experience. It’s just does not count individual experiences and businesses; however these are significantly critical and important. It is all about delivering excellent service, building and maintaining a sense of place or ambience, customer care or customer relationship, clear communication, pleasing messages regarding the place and staying ahead of challenging destinations. That requires the cooperation and joint effort from public and private sectors as well. It also needs a joined up approach to deliver a flourishing and improving economy. Tourist places that have been eye catching will be bringing bigger benefits to the local area public and the quality of life has been found to be improving. A place that has been found to be having a high quality of living condition plus a good ambience to visit will ensure that there will be investors to invest money. A flourishing and sustainable visitor economy has far reaching impacts on the monetary, economical and social welfare of local community and their surroundings; it is essential to make a sense of place. Local systems and authorities have a critical role to engage in recreation and in leading and coordinating destinations and building and maintaining secure and beautiful places for local citizens and tourist. Provincial and Regional Development Agencies and other national bodies play a vital role in also have in supporting the delivery of excellent and superb destination management. The role of the destination manager is that they will be managing the economy of visitor by maintaining affiliation with stakeholder .The other role of the destination manger is that they should have clear idea about the tasks ,roles and responsibility in marketing the product and developing the product. The development managers should have the ability to get the participation of the local industry, private sector and this can be done using strategic partnership that can be termed as local or the association can be done using sub regional or provincial tourism association. (Srinivas Hari, UNEP-DTIE - Sustainable Tourism Project) In order to understand the massive cross-cutting economic, profitable, environmental and societal benefits of a blooming visitor economy, it is necessary to focus on destination management, growth and development. It is the requirement for joined up opinion in the growth and accomplishment of state and regional policy. Destination management targets to move up aspirations and promote affirmative partnership with key organizations and stakeholders in a local region to craft these aspirations a reality. All areas, apart from of size, have exceptional challenges which have the need of local solutions. Recognizing this, the manager sets out a core set of principles that all significant stakeholders can contract to which can help recognize where principle deliverance responsibilities lie down in their regions. As a result of signing up to the contract an organization is well-disposed to champion tremendous destination management in their area and ensure key responsibilities are to be carried out by the organizations best able to execute. Dann has stated that a destination management will not function without public and private collaboration at the destination stage to ensure sensible, timely and appropriate development. Dann has also added that measurement of destination performance can be done through sustainability measures, economic measures, quality of supervision action measures, and visitor satisfaction measures. (Dann, G. 1977, 184–194) There are three main goals to be achieved by tourism development for the conception of sustainable tourism: Growing economic value of tourism, amelioration in the life quality of people and Protection and careful usage of natural resources. (Gianna Moscardo,2008,29) To ensure the sustainable development, sustainable running of a tourist area, the above principals and methods will be practiced by managers so that in the long run they may serve as guidelines. If the general principals and methods are followed there will be sustainability in every pattern because there are many assumptions and numerous variations with each different situation. Furthermore, an outline is seen in main tourism management principals and methods, which is analyzed in three central areas of concern, namely; Economical, Environmental and Socio-cultural impacts. Environment is one of the most important attractions in tourism business, so physical and cultural environment plays vital role in attracting tourists for destinations. (Melanie K. Smith,2007) It is one of the vital principal for tourism managers to use optimized methods to minimize environmental damages and ensure prosperity of future business. Protection of environment has endless ways but there are many methods which can be practiced by a tourism manager to reduce environmental erosions. There are limitless and uncountable ways and practices exercised by a manager which include from energy saving light bulbs, to water saving tabs and flushes. Some are environmentally friendly cleaning detergents and also creating public awareness programs for tourist and locals. The main objective is that environment protection by any means necessary. In some cases Utilities can serve as cost cut measures to increase profits. However, if there are no tourists or if visitor’s entry is limited to increase the business resulting in decreasing profits, even at that time it will an asset for the company because of clean environment that a country has for its tourists will become a word of mouth or future gains of tourism by not destroying the natural resources used to attract tourists. Wrapping up of this section is the involvement of government in this process because it ensures the vital principals of environmental policies are met and executed to protect the environment. The government should also implement laws on the usage of land and ensure destinations do not get over-built. It is also one of their responsibilities to ensure that appropriate infrastructure should be setup to deal with the volume of tourism; they should also take active part in social responsibility and welfare for the society by protecting the natural resources and heritages Some tourism management techniques which are used to optimize and maximize the impacts on tourism on the socio-culture are education and relevant training about tourism, promote and bring awareness in cross-cultural exchange, impose visitor codes of conduct and demand it necessary to abide as it is one of the core fundamentals, grant locals access to cultural facilities, preserve architecture locally, maintain legitimacy, catering cultural sensitive tourists, and limit tourist numbers in country. (Cumbria Tourism, 2008-2009) Carrying capacity assessment is something that’s holds significance importance in tourism industry. This method works so that there is an increase in pace of the development for existing methods of sustainable tourism as well as to heighten the probability of achieving new methods as well as introducing them.( David L. Edgell,2006,9) (Evaluation of tourism carrying capacity can be used functionally in various forms, for instance; it can be used for determining the tourism capacity in country. It is used to balance scales of economic targets compared with the physical facility carrying capacity of the tourist destination, the societal goals for the social carrying capacity of the destination and finally the environmental goals with the ecological carrying capacity for the tourism destination to achieve sustainability in tourism development. (Medlik S, 1997,71-89) Carrying Capacity is from the Conceptual models of tourism,( Lew ,Alan A.,2004,125) It has been shown that carrying capacity management has shown limited succession of its application because of the some main causes that are unrealistic expectation, irrelevant value judgment, unsound assumptions, and insufficient legal support systems. The up-and-coming side of stewardship which has been enforced upon destinations is crisis management that requires maintaining protection and safety measures of destination visitors. The tourism management principle can be said as environmental impact assessment, limitations of acceptable change, tourism impact management, and visitor overall experience and resource management. Neither one of these determinants will provide the management with panacea but they can be helpful in building sustainable tourism efforts by the management. (Kusluvan, Salih 2003,441) The essential components of tourism are attractions and events; they draw visitors’ attention to the destination. To catch the attention of tourist good services, facilities, transportation, infrastructure, and hospitality resources are considered necessary in a supportive role. (Jamieson, 2006) The destination mix comprise of five basic elements: Attractions (including events), facilities, infrastructure, transportation and hospitality recourses (Hudman Lloyd E., Jackson Richard H.,2002) Attractions can be classified as either Primary or secondary destination. Primary destination is the one which is eye-catching and attractive enough to be the primary inspiration for tourism and targets at satisfying visitors for numerous days. Secondary or stopover destination is an attention-grabbing and necessary place for a visit and targets at pleasing visitors for one or two days. There are lot of attraction that can help the visitor like natural resource, climate of the place, the culture of the place, history of the place and the ethnicity of the place. That can help the visitor to come back to the place. ( Hudman Lloyd E,. Jackson Richard H,2002,31) There are several reasons for developing events and festivals, most important of them are: To earn money and gain profits,to enjoy vacations, seasons, and historical events, to offer cultural or educational experiences. and to inculcate a feeling of community pleasure (Bowdin,2006,239) Facilities include proper accommodation, delectable eatables, beverage, and supporting industries like shops. Visitors are far away from their homes so facilities are essential to serve visitors to provide them home-like comforts. Facilities support rather than induce tourism growth. After the development of attractions facilities need to be developed. The sector that has been growing fast globally is the tourism and it has been found to be cost effective also. In various countries, it occupies a major share in the GDP of the country and is seen as the finest economic and profitable sector for the growth of a wide range of export earnings, a significant generator of service and employment, as a major foreign exchange earner and a critical aspect in achieving more equal regional and provincial development. (http://www.industry.visitsoutheastengland.com/xsdbimgs/Place-Making.pdf) Gradually more destinations are promoting their visitor attraction advancement in a new proficient manner, leading to far greater completion. There should be reliable planning and a structure that can be termed as management that will help the development of tourism products. That should be kept in tune with the demands of market place. Tourism development must not go for demand. It should initiate with the continuous management and supervision of the foundation of tourism which includes nature, countryside, culture, ethnicity, and many more. There will be clear concern for the perception of quality by the tourist and this has to be the framework that gives the capabilities and competency of public stay service .This will form the base for administration of tourism destination and that can help to develop the incoming tour operators. This will make sure their capability to effectively promote and supervise the appeal of key destinations, and encourage a healthy development of the tourism segment. (IIR Middle East ,”Sustainable Tourism Destination Management Brochure introduction”,2009) The planning and development method abided by the tourism managers encompasses principals for instance: The formulation of tourism policy, procedures and its structure, identifying a gap between social, environmental and social aspect, briefing government policies and its role in the combining of public and private sector ,slow paced tourism originating in countries, constant and consistent marketing planning and efforts, planning should include a regional approach for tourism, group of tourism activities, Planning of natural and cultural resources that should be sustained ,ethical and Multi-disciplinary training and education, and easy of accessibility to resources.( Raina,2005,45) Conclusion There are limitless methods used to achieve sustainable tourism but the most important principal stays the same. All of them are targeted at the protection of the host destination, rather than deviating on the tourists demand. When designing a tourist product a manager should have clear vision to design the tourist product which revolves around determinants studied above in the literature rather than on tourist demands, also which holds significant value and it should not be ignored but it should not be primary. If all of the managers adhere to all main principals and metamorphose them in their methods, then with hope there is a sustainable future for tourism. Bibliography Albrecht, D. (n.d.). Tourist Destination Management. Retrieved April 14, 2009, from Swinburne: www.courses.swinburne.edu.au/Subjects/ViewSubject.aspx?mi=300&id=193 Cumbria Tourism. (2008-2009). Destination Management Plan. Fyall, A. (2003). Managing visitor attractions. Butterworth-Heinemann. Hari Srinivas. (n.d.). Tourism Destination Management. 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