Organizing Resources for Rural Tourism Development: The Importance of Leadership, Planning and Technical Assistance by Long & Nuckolls

In our age, especially in the last decade Tourism has been seen as a 'saviour' for many of the rural communities. This was due primarily to the low investment requirements of the industry. Tourism gave communities a chance to grow, mainly economically, with what they already have and hopefully increase their general quality of life. Saying that, we should mention that QofL has no one definitive explanation as to what it is since it differs from community to community, even from an individual to another. However, in most cases in the past more than the recent, QofL has been associated with the economic well being of the subjects. This led inevitably to the opening up of communities to the outside investors and entrepreneurs in the hope for a growing economic wheel. The more tourists(visitors), the more money coming in, which was great news. Or so they thought. Many communities and regions started to copy each other and borrow economic growth models from each other.

While the economic impacts of the industry were more visible, especially in tourism literature, other impacts started to surface gradually at first and then rapidly. Socio-cultural and environmental impacts became threatening to communities and its people to the point that due to this erosion, some also lost their economic benefits as well. One of the things Long and Nuckolls point out in their article is that tourism is the most intimate of all industries. It requires the residents to play 'host' to the 'guests' (visitors), even if they want to or not. Same idea was put forward in Reid et al (2001), "In rural communities, all residents are part of the tourism product, whether or not they want to be, simply by virtue of living there."

By the threat of losing communities, the industry has tended to finding approaches for sustainable growth. Various models for planning for tourism development has been drafted, created and sometimes implemented, such as I have discussed in the previous post, to turn this tourism machine, working at the expense of the community (McLaughlin, et al., 1991), into operating in more of a community-minded state. Reading both Long & Nuckolls(1994) and also Reid et al. (2001), two similar ideas stuck in my mind on rural community development that both the articles articulated on.

The idea, of 'a' Leader and the idea, of having a broader cross section of community involvement.

In Long & Nucksoll's paper, the authors immediately talk about the importance of the emergence of 'one single individual'. This is necessary to even start the cause. Such importance has been also given by Reid et al (2001) by calling that one person the 'Catalyst'. In order for anything to happen there should be a catalyst who is to going to 'champion' the cause as Dave Robinson says (2011 and many years before that.) However one difference in writing was very intriguing for me. In Reid et al (2001), there is over emphasizing of 'having the community as the priority in your mind' as if they have suffered so much from this 'personal interest first' attitude. It is almost a warning, a caution signal appearing in many pages of the Manual (Reid et al. 2001).

Both articles also explain how increasing the representation of the general public from all diverse areas of the community is very crucial to effective community planning. In the end, they are the owners of the estate and most impacted by its impacts, especially negative ones. In order to gather more information, all parties who are going to be impacted should be better known. More information means that planners and the planning committee can calculate the consequences of any step in furthering the tourism product. So they can make better choices that will affect most of the community if not all. (never all).

The aim of having a community minded leader and a higher representation of the general public is to create a more overall, all round,  better sustained community growth. Otherwise it is a few entrepreneurial leaders pulling the economy towards their own business sector, which is creating an unhealthy imbalance in the community. This can also drive people out of their traditional occupations in order to get a job that is making them more money. 'Social change follows. Economy, once seemed getting stronger, gets weaker and weaker because the growth that made traditional jobs come to a halt has now met the demand and itself came to a halt and is working over the capacity. Wages drop, people are laid off and they become poorer. They do not have their culture to hold on to anymore. One by one they fall into the bottles of alcohol and drown.' This is one theory that can come true with inadequate or one sided community planning.

Strategies for development: the role of planning in tourism

Due to the dynamic nature of the Tourism industry, flexibility and being able to make incremental and rapid adjustments becomes very important in planning process. As we can see in the planning model below, (Williams, 1998) almost in every stage of the process there is a chance to evaluate and make the necessary change.  As Williams puts it, this is a quality that is especially important in tourism planning.

Moving on from this general planning model, there are 3 main approaches to tourism planning. These are Master plan, incremental plan and systematic plan. They differ from each other on the emphasis they put on different levels of the general planning model above. To give a brief idea about each one: Master plans are usually framed around a certain time period, like 5 years, and set out definite goals at the beginning. They are usually not interfered during this period and allowed to run their course. It is after this period that they are evaluated and a new master plan is set in motion. As you can see, this is the least suitable approach for a dynamic, constantly changing industry such as Tourism.

On the other hand incremental plans differ from the master plans in that they allow for the constant adjustment. As Williams explains, where master plans focus on the stages 1 & 2 of the general planning model, incremental planning is focused on the stages 8, 9 and 10. This gives the planners and everybody involved in the planning process the flexibility to adjust policies matching the fluctuations in the demand. This gives planners room and the ability to stay on top of their programs.

Lastly, systems approach has been thrown out there as a more in-depth and suitable approach to planning, especially in tourism where the industry has many linkages with other industries around. According to Williams systems approach simply means that a change in one factor will produce consequential and predictable change in other parts of the system. Thus it requires extensive knowledge of the structure and the workings of the system, which means money. That is why systems approach is not preferred or used by many of the tourism and planning professionals.

So why is planning important? For many things. To quote Arthur Schopenhauer here, “As the biggest library if it is in disorder is not as useful as a small but well-arranged one, so you may accumulate a vast amount of knowledge but it will be of far less value than a much smaller amount if you have not thought it over for yourself.” So is tourism growth just like that. If it is disorganized it can lead to no good or even the destruction of the surroundings, however, when planned carefully it can grow and sustain a region. As I have mentioned in earlier posts, if we want to be successful in Tourism we have to be on top of the this beast making sure it goes where we want it to go.