How public and private sectors have impact on each other in tourism industry?
How public and private sectors have impact on each other in tourism industry?
Introduction
In the field of psychology, there is a new symptom investigated for tourism called "euphoria" indicating a kind of emotion, that is, the enthusiasm of the destination residents towards the tourists (Xie: 2001). As a matter of fact, nowadays tourism itself has become a kind of popular "disease" which spreads throughout the whole world just like the Europe Black Death in the Middle Ages. No one can escape from it, neither the poor nor the rich (Ryan: 1991). A cured disease will do good to new disease in the future, nevertheless, the ignorance of it will destroy the entire world. Similarly, tourism, viewed as fastest growing industry, would bring lots of significant economic and social values to the development of every country. Thus, this "modern disease" should be cautiously treated for sustainability and managed by every country so that maximum benefit can be derived and negative impacts can be minimized towards the "euphoria" local people, culture and environment from the tourism. It indicates that tourism related organizations including international, national, regional with both inter-governmental and non-governmental interests should pay attention to the development of sustainable tourism which trying to "coordinate the complex interactions between the tourism industry, visitors, the environment and the host communities." (Testoni: 2001). Therefore, this essay is designed to firstly discuss the roles all these kinds of organizations played into the sustainable tourism development and their impacts on each other. Moreover, with the roles and impacts of both public- and private-sectors clearly clarified, how these roles and impacts would have power in enhancing the growth of tourism, that is, the well-ordered plan strongly needed for achieving tourism goals has become the key problem of sustainable tourism development. Agreed by Testoni (2001), planning began to be more important in facilitating the development of tourism while minimizing negative impacts and realizing sustainability. Thus, the second aim of this essay tries to set up the argument of the specific content of government intervention into tourism marketing, policy-making and planning. However, these inter-governmental level organizations are criticized as inefficient and bureaucratic in tourism development project. Accordingly, a set of count arguments would be arisen to debate if these responsibilities were better handled by private sector.
Roles and Impacts of tourism organizations
Today's tourism has expanded to international level that residents begin to travel to and stay in places outside the host country with various kinds of purposes (as cited in WTO: 1991). Therefore, visitor, the key resource in tourism, is categorized as international visitor and domestic visitor. Those who "travels to a country other than that in which he/she usual residence and that is outside his/her usual environment, for a period not exceeding one year, and whose main purpose of visit is other than the exercise of an activity remunerated from within the country visited" are defined as international visitor by WTO (1991). Comparatively, domestic visitor is explained as "any person residing within a country, irrespective of nationality, traveling to a place within this country other than his usual residence for a period of not less than 24 hours or one night for a purpose other than the exercise of a remunerated activity in the place visited" by Mill (1990). On the basis of these kind of classifications, tourism related organizations also should be divided into diverse types according to different bases. They are viewed as international, national, regional, inter- and non-governmental organizations.
International Organisations
As the international and national dichotomy, international organizations concerned for more than one country as their members according to Collier (2003). World Tourism Organisation, sub-classified as an inter-governmental body on the basis of its membership, is the representative role of international organizations based in Madrid with 138 members states including New Zealand and 350 affiliate members such as Airlines and Tourism Associations known as the Business Council (Brackenbury: 2003). The aim of WTO is the promotion and development of tourism in relationship with other aspects such as economic development, environment and peace as Brackenbury (2003) noted. WTO intends to spread the awareness and knowledge of the best practices in sustainable development in tourism. Therefore, various roles are taken by WTO to influence its members as following:
. Representor-WTO supports tourism event to present the significance of the activities should be taken by tourism organsations and participated as exhibitor. For example, in February 2002 WTO supported the International Adventure Travel and Outdoor Sports Exhibition held in Chicago. (www.world-tourism.org/sustainable/IYE-Main-Menu.htm).
2. Advocator-WTO advocates lots of concepts and task forces to contribute to the development of tourism. For example, for the year 2002, WTO designated this year as the International Year of Ecotourism, and its Commission on Sustainable Development requested international agencies, governments and the private sector to undertake supportive activities. WTO and the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) have joined forces in the preparation and co-ordination of some activities to be undertaken at the international level during the Year. The impact of it is that the members of WTO then would take this direction into their tourism activities and set their tourism goals based on this main objective (Yunis: 2003).
3. Policy Guider-WTO sets different policy for diverse purposes to regularly operate the activities in tourism industry. It then will influence the regulations set by the regional level organizations and activities would be followed by these policies.
4. Disseminator-WTO will send tourism related information to its membership.
5. Supporter-WTO services rendered to national tourism administrations, local authorities and the private sector in the development and promotion of tourism. These services and activities range from "technical assistance in the form of short and long term projects, organization of seminars and conferences, education and training courses as well ...
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3. Policy Guider-WTO sets different policy for diverse purposes to regularly operate the activities in tourism industry. It then will influence the regulations set by the regional level organizations and activities would be followed by these policies.
4. Disseminator-WTO will send tourism related information to its membership.
5. Supporter-WTO services rendered to national tourism administrations, local authorities and the private sector in the development and promotion of tourism. These services and activities range from "technical assistance in the form of short and long term projects, organization of seminars and conferences, education and training courses as well as strategy issues at national and regional levels." (www.world-tourism.org).
New Zealand, not only as one of the WTO members but the country in the Asia and Pacific Rim which is one of the six areas divided by WTO, certainly will be influenced by the role acted by the both WTO and The Pacific Asia Travel Association (PATA) which is "a mixture of both governmental and non-governmental bodies that work together to further tourism industry professionalism in the Asia and Pacific region." (Collier: 2003). That is because when a task or policy is declared by these international organizations, all tourism related activities and policies set by the governments in the range of national level would correspond with these tasks and policies.
Obviously, National Tourism Organisations (NTO) and Regional Tourism Organisations (RTO) would process the tasks so as to cater to the goals and policies established by those international tourism organizations.
Regional Tourism Organisations
For the geographical scope of their interest in tourism, organizations could be subdivided into National, Regional and Local organizations. Regional Tourism Organisations on the national level are those with a general interest in tourism but only within a certain region of the country (Collier: 2003).
As Collier (2003) explained that the role the RTO undertook was the mirror of the extent of government intervention in tourism, because RTOs always plays their roles in terms of government departments and government agencies. These roles are performed to be planning which involves "planning for the development and promotion of the country's tourism industry" (Collier: 2003), organizing to ensure the development process is in progress, development which involves some investment, financial, information items, promotion for the tourism events and control of ensuring the plans are "implemented s intended and achieve stated objectives" (Collier: 2003).
For instance, the role of New Zealand Regional Tourism Organisations are taken as
. The New Zealand Tourism Board. It makes plans to set out its aims, activities, ways to achieve these aims, the resources and materials used and tools to measure the effectiveness and efficiency.
2. The Ministry of Tourism. It tries to give some suggestions and strategies to the local government of New Zealand so as to ensure the government would deal with tourism matters properly.
3. Other government departments and agencies such as Ministry for the Environment and New Zealand Customs Service.
(Collier: 2003).
As the clear relationship and impacts between government activities and the roles of RTO, it seems that how the role acted by RTO is intensively linked with how the local governments produce and implement the plans including marketing, planning process and policy-making for tourism development respecting to the policy and events claimed by International Tourism Orgnisations (WTO and PATA) and National Tourism Organisations so that the benefit of tourism would be achieved and the negative results would be minimized.
Plans for Sustainable Tourism
In order to keep the pace with the direction of international tourism organization, all sectors must pay attention to the plan for sustainable tourism because what World Tourism Organisation said was that during and after implementation, tourism development must be planned and monitored to ensure that it was accomplishing the objectives and achieving the recommended policies according to Pearce (2000). Additionally, "Planning can articulate future visions and assess individual projects with approval given to those proposals consistent with policies and plans" Testoni (2001) said. Without plans or planning systems, the development of tourism is promiscuous and without sufficient consideration given to its interaction with other sectors and its possible impacts (Testoni: 2001).
The impacts of unplanned tourism development will potentially result in three main consequences according to Mill (1990):
. Physical Impacts. It will damage the physical environment and cultural landmarks and resources. Besides, it will cause overcrowding, traffic problems, congestion and pollution.
2. Human Impacts. The accessibility of tourism industry will be poor, for example, the parking places are limited. It will lead to the lack of education of tourism employees in skills. That is, no professional teacher and courses are planned to help these employees to gain knowledge of tourism.
3. Organisational Impacts. The strategy of the marketing goals is unclear so that the target market and market segment are processed ineffectively. Failure to act upon important issues, problems, and opportunities of common interest to the community.
Therefore, the plan for tourism tasks should be implemented carefully and well organised by both public and private sectors.
Firstly, let's take a look at the details and depth of the content of government functions and activities into tourism plan.
Government Intervention in tourism developmental plans
Collier (2003) elucidated that local government was the major player within the tourism industry and took the responsibilities to provide different kinds of services and facilities required by tourists. Moreover, Testoni (2001) set his viewpoint similarly that the main way of the government influences on tourism plan is "determining development applications consistent with zoned uses, which could also include environmental impact assessment and performance-based assessment, which considers the suitability of particular proposed developments in the area."
In detail, these activities of plans including:
. Formulating policy. What Testoni (2001) said was that local government implement measures and decisions as well as providing national policy guidance. The specific event taken by the governments is they provide a baseline of data as a means by which they can test "whether local implementation of their policies and initiatives is possible and permit a basis for allowing new activities in an area" (Testoni: 2001).
2. Investment in tourism facilities. Local governments would state their plans of constructing major amenities thanks to the importance of high quality of amenities. As Collier explained that the relative quality and availability of amenities including infrastructure and superstructure might be the cause of the choice of destination of tourists. Government usually investing in the establishment of infrastructure, comprised of roads, electricity and water supplies, sewerage and waste disposal, communication facilities, airports and harbours, transportation networks, healthy care facilities and security systems (Mill: 1990), because the "development of infrastructure should precede the development of superstructure" (Collier: 2003). Besides, they try to strength the quality of tourism facilities so as to meet the needs of tourists.
3. Environmental management. Governments adopt a lots of measures to protect the local environment and prevent the pollution.
4. Promotion of the country or a certain region as a tourist destination and research. Advertisements, marketing methods such as marketing segment that is divide tourist into different areas of target markets, pricing tools, holding activities and events as attractions are various promotional tools used by government to develop a certain destination to attract consumers. For example, government would support an event of attraction as entertainment such as American Cup in New Zealand.
5. Training and educating the tourism employees.
With the understanding of the significance of plans for tourism development and the degree of government intervention into the plans, the case of how New Zealand government reacts to the guidance of International Tourism Organisation would be specifically lucubrated.
First of all, a main strategy that could maximize the benefit of tourism and minimize the negative impact would be decided. Tourism has been viewed as the main economic source of the GDP of a country. As Simpson (2002) noted, New Zealand has recently produced its 10-year tourism strategy to accentuate a positivist attitude towards further tourism development, which particularly takes the "economic" approach to treat tourism as an economically based and industry-oriented concept. More important, this approach is the reflection of the reaction to the Ecotourism concept suggested by WTO, because the Ecotourism is trying to "support the protection of natural areas by generating economic benefits for host communities, organisations and authorities managing natural areas with conservation purposes."
Secondly, specific steps and approaches would be considered and taken into action due to the requirement of the dominant service provision responsibilities of governments to combine planning and regulatory roles (Simpson: 2002). New Zealand governments are clearly conscious of the significant economic force of international tourism in external trade and view it as the export industry. Consequently, the governments begin to put emphasis on the financial and job creation benefits within this level of tourism development according to Simpson (2002). Besides, a special political power called "three-tier system of national, regional, and local government" is arranged to ensure that "New Zealand is developed and marketed as a competitive tourism destination to maximize the long-term benefits to New Zealand." In addition, the appropriate responsibility allocations are made by the governments in order to make proper agencies in charge of their allocated tasks efficiently and effectively (Simpson: 2002).
Thirdly, some tools are used to promote and carry out the activities by governments. In addition to the directly investment in infrastructure constructions such as road rehabilitation and control the pollution, New Zealand governments permit a regional council to promote the welfare of the host community according to Simpson (2002).
Fourthly, specific policies are made to protect the local environment and culture. Because the development would increase the negative impacts on the local communities, for example, the increasing pollution and crime.
However, the weaknesses of the government involvement in tourism development are also exposed.
On one hand, government intervention may only particularly suit to only large projects, and is often reactive which means governments lack the experience and professional knowledge of dealing with some small but important aspects of the plans. This can be explained by the case of Canada tourism development. As Thibault & Frisby (1999) noted, in Canada tourism industries, more problem are arisen such as economic restraints, increasing demands for accountability and pressure for public involvement in the decision making process. Therefore, in order to meet these requirements, government officials have to develop new skills to contribute themselves effectively into tourism development plans. However, employees in government always contain different educational backgrounds, professional languages and values, which covered a wide range of subjects. That is, they cannot deal with specific tourism areas efficiently and effectively thanks to their lack of specific knowledge even low level of education of a certain area such as airline or accommodation sectors. What's more, a survey of Italy and Spain tourism industry pointed out the key problem that the lack of educational qualifications among the staff in public sector according to Marino (2001).
Education level of Italian and Spanish public sector managers in Tourism
Italian public managers Spanish public managers
University 12% University 16%
Secondary high school 28% Secondary high school 33%
Junior high school 26% Junior high school 21%
No education level 34% No education level 30%
Total 100% (77% male) Total 100% (80% male)
Clearly, the data in this table displays that the public managers in Italian and Spanish government involved in tourism contain a low level of education background. Both Italian and Spanish public managers gain the least proportion of those who have the university education level. Meanwhile, there are a lot of public managers has low even no education level in Italian and Spanish public sectors. With the agreement of what Guest & Taylor (1999) said, leisure managers in local governments only took account of what is going on inside the organization, not outside. These entire viewpoints show the weakness of the operation in government planning process with the lack in human resource.
On another hand, governments have no clear directions when they do the marketing for the tourism development plan. There exists a lot of problems. Local governments provide tourism related products and services might not actually meet the needs of consumers because they may not think what the tourists really want. It seems that the market planning of governments is not consumer-driven. Just as Guest & Taylor (1999) noted, local authorities appeared to know less about their customers, outside voting habits. Additionally, "poor marketing and understanding, no systematic attempts to identification of local needs turns to be the key problem of governments' plans" (Guest & Taylor: 1999).
In short, governments can not make their efforts into every industries of tourism development because according to the definition of one-industry concept that tourism industry is "made up of various sectors or sub-industries such as accommodation, transportation, sales and leisure and the tourism products in nature and the experience perceived by tourists." (Collier: 2003). It means that tourists will treat all these sectors and sub-industries as a whole industry although various tourism products and services are only portions of the total product. Upon that, every sector should make their roles in the tourism development properly and effectively.
Since the shortcomings of government involvement in some aspects of tourism development and plans, those responsibilities may better be handled by private sectors.
Secondly, let's see the roles of private sector organizations and their activities into tourism development.
Private Sector Intervention in tourism developmental plans
According to Collier (2003), private sector involvement in tourism development is mainly in the form of business organizations "aligned with a particular sector of the tourism industry". As the Linking Concept pointed out organizations can be categorized as direct providers (i.e. transport operators, accommodation providers, attraction and activity operators, sales agents and ancillary service), support services (i.e. petroleum distribution companies, construction firms and etc.) or developmental organizations (i.e. finance institution and industry training organizations). (Collier: 2003). For the example of New Zealand private sector organizations, the support services organization is like Travel Agents Association of New Zealand and developmental organization is for instance, Hospitality Standards Institute which involves in chef training, housekeeping, portering skills and etc. (Collier: 2003).
With these kinds of roles played by private sectors, it is obviously some responsibility would be taken by private sectors superiorly and strongly. Because,
Firstly, compared with the lack of professional knowledge and skills of governmental level employees, private sectors would train and educate tourism employees more effectively and efficiently because every specific area of sub-industry will manipulate the training and education system to access to the employees and has expertise in a certain field of subject. For instance, as Roehl & Swerdlow (2001) elucidated, in western united states, accommodation industry in tourism carry out the vertical and horizontal job segregation approach to train employees for the gender problem. Analogously, as a private sector in tourism industry, New Zealand Industry Training Organisations specifically provide training and developing the skills and knowledge of tourism employees to ensure their qualifications.
Secondly, private sectors have more experience in managing the marketing problems. They tend to know what consumers expected and need due to their well-arranged marketing tools and approaches. For example, individual sector, accommodation organizations could do the surveys to get the exact information about the requirements of their target market. In addition, private sectors would provide the personal products and services and do promotion events to cater the different kinds of tourists by market segmentation. They would construct the superstructures on the basis of the taste of the target consumers.
Thirdly, in allusion to the neglect to details in tourism plans of governments, private sectors could concentrate themselves in doing the small projects obey the direction of international tourism organizations so that the objectives can be accomplished effectively and efficiently. According to Font (2002), the case of "Green Global", the event of environmental certification of tourism and hospitality operations, is developed by the idea of "Ecotourism" of WTO. On the level of private sector, Tourism Industry Association of New Zealand singles out environmental management systems to protect the environment of the host country led by the Asia-Pacific tourism organizations.
Above all, at realising the increasing need to focus on tourism, Jagmohan (2003) union minister for tourism, mentioned, it is imperative that not only the states but also the industry plays an active role to boost tourism. "Therefore, it is necessary as I have stated earlier, that the private sector has a key role to play in the growth of tourism both domestic and international," asserted Jagmohan (2003).
For the Canada case, Thibault & Frisby (1999) said that Canada local government need to rationalize government services under the consideration of privatization and decentralization so as to meet the increasing problems and challenges. It is because many research results revealed that local governments are becoming more and more relying on partnerships to acquire important resources, information and knowledge into tourism development Thibault & Frisby (1999). Similarly, the policy of Italy and Spain tourism development is trying to reduce government involvement in the public tourist sector (Marino: 2001).
Conclusion
As a matter of fact, in spite of the advantages existing in private sectors processing the tourism development plans, private sector also has problems in doing tourism plans. Thus, it seems that it may be better for the combination of contributions of both public and private sector in the sustainable tourism development. It is evident that the task to make more profit from the tourism and prevent the rot of the aspects created by the tourism development should be paid attention to not only by international and national level organizations but many private ownership organizations.
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