Collaborative Tourism Planning as Adaptive Experiments in Emergent Tourism Settings by Maureen G.Reed

"Life is terribly similar to Football. Football requires individual ability however in reality it's a collective game; a game people play in groups. Isn't life so? No matter how talented you are, if you don't have a good team you lose. Yes, you lose..!"

That's a quote from a favorite Turkish movie of mine where the coach explains his players about life and football. Collaboration. That seems to be the word for successful sustainable tourism development. It is good to see that people have realized that we have to work together if we want to have a succesful future. This is especially good in a time that individualism is at its peak. Due to tourism fragmented nature, the parties who have interest in the tourism industry can have different values. Some may already be successful at achieving their goals however in the long run if the whole is not doing well then it is likely that they will also be impacted. And the impacts of tourism also are not distributed evenly in between the all interested parties. That is a problem. If you want me to bear the impacts then I should be involved to have my say in the development as well. According to Reed, collaboration is not enough on its own to create sustainable tourism development either. The knowledge of local power relations as well as mechanisms to keep these relations under control is important in achieving a healthy collaborative effort. No single institution should hold the power to make decisions on the tourism product development in a region. Collaborative decision making is explained by Jamal & Getz (1995) as, "a process of joint decision making among autonomous, key stakeholders... to resolve planning problems... and/or to manage issues related to planning and development." (Reed)

In a constantly adaptive planning process, the checks and balances should be set in place for constant, periodic feedback. After agreeing to work towards a common vision according to common values, regular evaluation of where the process is at plays an crucial role in especially Tourism development because of the dynamics of the industry. Whether social, economic or environmental dynamics are concerned, Tourism's fragmented nature will always have rapid change and require quick adaptations in order for it to be succesful sustainably.