I have started a new blog and a new twitter account to record the progress of my PhD research into the cultural regeneration of seaside towns in the UK. I’ll be posting fairly regular updates on my research, which is now into its last 12 months, and also using them as a forum for discussion and dissemination of my results.
I’ve posted on here about tourism and the economic crisis, and have taught about it this year as well. One of the things that strikes me regularly about the crisis is the unsystematic way in which it tends be analysed – one day a report of bankrupt airline, another day stories of industrial action or falling visitor numbers.
I’m going to use this post to apply David Harvey’s ’seven moments’ model of the economic restructuring process that I heard him speak about here and that he has most recently outlined in an essay for the Monthly Review that you can read online here. I have adapted these seven moments to analyse the tourism industry in this period of restructuring; it will be interesting to see whether this adds some clarity or helps us to think about how the tourism industry will emerge from the crisis.
Some of these topics I’ve already written about, some have suggested new areas of investigation. Over the next few months I’m going to post on each of these topics and then, eventually, bring them all together to summarise this period of restructuring in the tourism industry.
1. The organisation and technological forms involved in producing tourism products and services
It is likely that technological changes within the tourism industry will accelerate during this period of restructuring. The effects of an increasingly competitive marketplace and problems of over-supply are combining to produce a favourable climate for innovations in the online packaging and knowledge-gathering aspects of the industry and price-concious customers are driving an increase in competition between web sites, which seems to be providing a stimulus for big providers to move into web 2.0 provision, so as not to lose their competitive advantage. Where the previous waves of web development have increased efficiencies for tourism businesses and helped to reduce prices for consumers, it is likely that this next wave of web 2.0-style developments will illuminate differences between providers and give new prominence to tourists as expert reviewers of tourism products.
Another aspect of tourism development that it might be interesting to focus on here will be the emergence of new destinations. This will be driven by three factors, as we have seen in previous crises:
2. The relationship to the environment
From the mid-1990s onwards, the concepts of sustainable development and eco-tourism have been central to debates about the future of tourism and have provided acres of newsprint for the broadsheets’ travel supplements as middle-class tourists have differentiated themselves from the masses by seeking our ‘responsible’, ‘ethical’, ’sustainable’, or ‘green’ holidays. With predicted declines in the market for organic food, ethical fashion and fairly-traded products – has this mode of tourism development also suffered and what is the future for this sector after the downturn?
3. Social relationships within tourism
Along with the rising importance of green perspectives on tourism, ethical concerns over the social relationships brought about through tourism have been a key element of tourism discourse since the 1990s.
This area has mainly been focused on the nature of the host-guest interaction within destinations, but has also included concerns over representation in and governance of tourism destinations, authenticity and exploitation. As with sustainable / eco-tourism, it remains to be seen how organisations that work in this area will fare during a depression. Recent problems at Tourism Concern are hopefully not indicative of a gradual lessening of support for ethical tourism initiatives from the public and the tourism industry.
4. Conceptions of tourism and its values
The core question to be answered here is ‘what is tourism for?’ Historically, tourism has been seen variously as a privelege, a human right, a leisure activity, a cultural form and as a social practice. I wrote here about contemporary developments in the relationship between tourism, social policy and regeneration. The current crisis provides two non-exclusive conceptions of tourism within the public sphere.
Firstly, and most likely to gain prominence quickly, is the assertion of the direct and indirect economic benefits of tourism. In a period of a weak national currency tourism can be a key export for the UK economy and a parallel rise in domestic tourism places tourism in a position of potential growth, even if that growth is relative rather than absolute. This potential could see tourism taking a stronger role in economic and regional development strategies, perhaps displacing retail and creative industries development in the development zeitgeist.
Secondly, it is possible that the new economics of tourism, if coupled with a sense of corporate social responsibility or development levies of some kind, could create a more favourable climate for social tourism in the UK. In many European countries, tourism plays an important role in social policy. Social tourism can take many forms: In France, subsidised tourism channels tourism spending to particular destinations whilst in many part of Scandanavia tourism is seen as a human right, creating obligations on the state to secure this right for its citizens. In the UK, organisations like the Family Holiday Association have a history of providing tourism opportunities for disadvantaged groups, but this approach has never been mainstreamed into public policy.
5. Industrial relations within tourism
We have seen a sharpening of industrial relations within many sections of the economy over the last twelve months. Disputes at Visteon, Vestas, Lindsey and the Royal Mail appear to be the harbingers of a new period of renewed labour militancy in the UK, but the mixture of compromises and legalistic disputes that have postponed resolution of the BA strike and the Royal Mail strikes mean that it is unclear as yet whether unions are likely to become more or less powerful through the restrucuring currently underway in response to the economic crisis. The activities of unions in the travel and public sectors are likely to have the greatest impact on the tourism industry, but rising worker militancy generally could lead to changes in the way that non-unionised workers (the majority of tourism employees) react to threats of closures, job losses, pay cuts and work intensification, as the employees of Thomas Cook in Dublin show in the video below:
6. Tourism policy and politics
In the UK, most public agencies are in a state of paralysis at the moment as they wait for an election and the almost inevitable period of regime change that will follow it. The smart money seems to be on an early election in March, so until then it is going to be very difficult to get a feel for how tourism policy in the UK is going to develop. The incoming conservative party have let it be known through various outlets that they plan a ‘bonfire of the quangos’ and no doubt this will hit our tourism agencies. However, every incoming government since 1979 has promised exactly this and then, faced with the prospect of losing control over spending or developing truely accountable structures of governance, has tended to spend a lot of money on the restruturing and rebranding of the quangos instead.
7. The social reproduction of tourism
Within Harvey’s model, this seventh term relates to the social reproduction of labour within capitalism and the way in which systems of production are maintained and developed through social processes. Within this adaptation, I will develop the final category as a synthetic product of the preceding areas of analysis. Once the 6 areas above have been considered dialectically, it will be possible to draw some initial conclusions about the ways in which the tourism industry is being maintained and developed as the crisis progresses and the strategies of restructuring become more clear.
Each of these seven areas will provide material for blog posts throughout 2010, with a final article being produced towards the end of the year.
Three short films were commissioned as part of the Sea Change initiative, which have been produced by the very creative people at Animate Projects. Each of the films presents a perspective on a seaside town that is currently going through the regeneration process. If you click on the picture below, you will be taken to the wonderful film about Teignmouth - a small town on the south coast of Devon in the UK – made by Kayla Parker.
Smells like Teign Spirit
I’ve written about Teignmouth before on the Arcades / Promenades project blog, for those of you with an interest in finding out more about this quirky seaside town. On the Animate Projects website you can also watch films about Bridlington and Hastings – enjoy!
This looks to be an excellent event. Wesley Rykalski and I will probably be submitting a paper, based on some of our work on our arcades / promenades project.
Symposium
Liverpool John Moores University
1st July 2010
Convenors
Dr Hazel Andrews, (Tourism, Consumer and Food Studies, LJMU)
Dr Kevin Meethan, Department of Sociology, University of Plymouth
Dr Les Roberts (School of Architecture, University of Liverpool)
Ideas and concepts of liminality have long shaped debates around the uses and practices of space in tourism. Victor Turner’s writings on ritual and communitas, Graburn’s theory of tourism as a sacred journey, or Shield’s discussion of ‘places on the margin’ have secured a well-established foothold in the theoretical landscapes of travel and mobility. The unique qualities of liminal landscapes, as developed by these and other writers on the subject, are generally held to be those which play host to ideas of the ludic, consumption, carnivalesque, inversion or suspension of normative social and moral structures of everyday life, deterritorialisation and ‘becoming’, and so on. While these arguments and tropes remain pertinent, and their metaphorical appeal evermore attractive, the extent to which these spaces provoke counter ideas of social control, terror, surveillance, production and territorialisation, invites an urgent call to re-evaluate the meanings attached to ideas of the ‘liminal’ in tourism studies. The deaths of 21 Chinese migrant workers in Morecambe Bay in 2004 has prompted a sobering re-assessment of the coastal resort as a site of tourism, leisure and consumption. The shifting social geographies associated with these landscapes has meant that the example of the beach may equally be looked upon as a space of transnational labour, migrancy, racial tension, death, fear, uncertainty and disorientation. In this instance, the precarious and un-navigable natural landscape of Morecambe sands becomes a metonym for the increasingly de-stabilising landscapes of trans- or post-national capitalist mobility. Moreover, the settlement of asylum seekers and refugees in UK coastal resorts such as Margate has exposed the underlying tensions and social divisions between representations that play on the ludic, touristic heritage of these resorts and those which address the marginality and exclusion that characterises the other set of mobilities and meanings evoked by these spaces. In addition, the appropriation of liminal landscapes by, for example, local authorities, commercial bodies and marketeers constructs an increasingly mediated or textualised space of performance that re-fashions the embodied (and embedded) spaces as lived by those who make up their diverse social fabric.
We invite contributions from across a broad interdisciplinary field, including scholars and practitioners working in tourism and mobility studies, anthropology, geography, film and cultural studies. We also invite multimedia submissions on the topic of liminal landscapes.
For enquiries and further details contact Dr Hazel Andrews H.J.Andrews@ljmu.ac.uk.
Please submit proposals for papers (300 words maximum) by e-mail to H.J.Andrews@ljmu.ac.uk. We also welcome proposals for panels and exhibits.
Deadline for proposals: 30 September 2009
Notification of acceptance: November 2009
Date for Registration: March 2010
Final submission deadline for full papers: 7 January 2010
Papers selected from the conference proceedings will be published in Journal of Tourism Consumption and Practice (www.tourismconsumption.org.).
Faculty of
Education, Community and Leisure
Dr Hazel Andrews PhD, MA, BSc
Senior Lecturer Tourism, Culture and Society
Centre for Tourism, Consumer and Food Studies
IM Marsh, Barkhill Road, Aigburth, Liverpool, L17 6BD
t: 0151 231 5234 e: H.J.Andrews@ljmu.ac.uk
w: www.ljmu.ac.uk
Symposium
Liverpool John Moores University
1st July 2010
Convenors
Dr Hazel Andrews, (Tourism, Consumer and Food Studies, LJMU)
Dr Kevin Meethan, Department of Sociology, University of Plymouth
Dr Les Roberts (School of Architecture, University of Liverpool)
Ideas and concepts of liminality have long shaped debates around the uses and practices of space in tourism. Victor Turner’s writings on ritual and communitas, Graburn’s theory of tourism as a sacred journey, or Shield’s discussion of ‘places on the margin’ have secured a well-established foothold in the theoretical landscapes of travel and mobility. The unique qualities of liminal landscapes, as developed by these and other writers on the subject, are generally held to be those which play host to ideas of the ludic, consumption, carnivalesque, inversion or suspension of normative social and moral structures of everyday life, deterritorialisation and ‘becoming’, and so on. While these arguments and tropes remain pertinent, and their metaphorical appeal evermore attractive, the extent to which these spaces provoke counter ideas of social control, terror, surveillance, production and territorialisation, invites an urgent call to re-evaluate the meanings attached to ideas of the ‘liminal’ in tourism studies. The deaths of 21 Chinese migrant workers in Morecambe Bay in 2004 has prompted a sobering re-assessment of the coastal resort as a site of tourism, leisure and consumption. The shifting social geographies associated with these landscapes has meant that the example of the beach may equally be looked upon as a space of transnational labour, migrancy, racial tension, death, fear, uncertainty and disorientation. In this instance, the precarious and un-navigable natural landscape of Morecambe sands becomes a metonym for the increasingly de-stabilising landscapes of trans- or post-national capitalist mobility. Moreover, the settlement of asylum seekers and refugees in UK coastal resorts such as Margate has exposed the underlying tensions and social divisions between representations that play on the ludic, touristic heritage of these resorts and those which address the marginality and exclusion that characterises the other set of mobilities and meanings evoked by these spaces. In addition, the appropriation of liminal landscapes by, for example, local authorities, commercial bodies and marketeers constructs an increasingly mediated or textualised space of performance that re-fashions the embodied (and embedded) spaces as lived by those who make up their diverse social fabric.
We invite contributions from across a broad interdisciplinary field, including scholars and practitioners working in tourism and mobility studies, anthropology, geography, film and cultural studies. We also invite multimedia submissions on the topic of liminal landscapes.
For enquiries and further details contact Dr Hazel Andrews H.J.Andrews@ljmu.ac.uk.
Please submit proposals for papers (300 words maximum) by e-mail to H.J.Andrews@ljmu.ac.uk. We also welcome proposals for panels and exhibits.
Deadline for proposals: 30 September 2009
Notification of acceptance: November 2009
Date for Registration: March 2010
Final submission deadline for full papers: 7 January 2010
Papers selected from the conference proceedings will be published in Journal of Tourism Consumption and Practice (www.tourismconsumption.org.).
Faculty of
Education, Community and Leisure
Dr Hazel Andrews PhD, MA, BSc
Senior Lecturer Tourism, Culture and Society
Centre for Tourism, Consumer and Food Studies
IM Marsh, Barkhill Road, Aigburth, Liverpool, L17 6BD
t: 0151 231 5234 e: H.J.Andrews@ljmu.ac.uk
w: www.ljmu.ac.uk
I think this conference looks very interesting….the timing isn’t great for those of us with big teaching loads, but the setting alone is tempting!
Researching Coastal and Resort Destination Management: Cultures and Histories of Tourism
19th – 20th October 2009
Girona, Catalonia, Spain
2009 marks the hundredth anniversary of the formal designation of the Costa Brava, a title and destination region that has become synonomous with the emergence and growth of ‘mass’ tourism over the past century. The region today faces many challenges including maintaining tourist markets against competing destinations alongside environmental concerns.
This conference is therefore extremely timely in its aim of bringing together researchers who share interests in coastal and resort destination policy, planning and management in relation to culture(s) and histories of tourism.
These research areas are also clearly relevant to professionals and policy makers in destination management and the conference will provide a unique opportunity for researchers to share leading edge ideas, innovations and critical thinking with the professional destination manager participants at the European Union of Tourist Officers (EUTO) Study Visit to Catalunya which coincides with the conference. There will also be opportunities for delegates to participate in parts of the EUTO programme.
Conference Themes
The conference welcomes proposals for papers that address the development of tourism in coastal regions and resorts. Proposals might, for example address:
Creative uses of cultural, historical and heritage resources for tourism in coastal settings
Cultural events and festivals as animators of coastal resorts
Transnational approaches to and conceptions of destination policy and planning in coastal contexts
Community participation in coastal resort development
Building sustainable partnerships and stakeholder relationships between tourism, culture and heritage in coastal destinations
Competitive (dis)advantage, new tourist markets and coastal destinations
New and emerging technologies in coastal destination representation and marketing
Coastal destination image and branding
The conference organisers also welcome proposals for papers that address theoretical and applied issues and themes relating to destination management in the coastal contexts of Catalonia and the Costa Brava in particular
If you wish to submit a paper proposal, please send a 300-word abstract with full address and institutional affiliation details as an electronic file to Dr. Philip Long p.e.long@leedsmet.ac.uk
The deadline for the reception of abstracts is 31st of July 2009.
Please find regularly updated information regarding this conference, registration procedures and (at a later stage) a full programme at
http://www.udg.edu/jornades/EUTO2009/tabid/12969/Default.aspx
or email to euto2009@udg.edu
Click on the image below to read a short article I have written for the British Urban Regeneration Association. In it, I question whether the tourism industry, conceived solely in economic terms, is an appropriate partner for regeneration or whether we need to develop an understanding of tourism as a social force before we turn to it as an income stream during the economic crisis.
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BBC1 show ‘The Apprentice’ is taking on the re-branding of Margate in Kent as one of the tasks for it’s contestants in the latest series, which started last night. Contestants will be tasked with designing a brand for the seaside town that can capture the town’s aspirations as a 21st century seaside destination.
You can view the report on the BBC Politics Show South East about tourism and the economic crisis by clicking here. The link will open up theshow in the BBC iPlayer. The whole article starts 30 minutes in and I am interviewed along with two other contributors from 38 minutes.
I’ll be appearing on the BBC’s Politics Show, in the south-east section this Sunday. I’ll be talking about the impact of the economic crisis on tourism in the south-east region of the UK. For those of you not able to watch it between 12.30 and 12.50 on Sunday, you can view it on the BBC iPlayer by clicking here on the day or for seven days after.
The World Travel and Tourism Council (WTTC) has just published its annual economic analysis, looking forward to 2009. After four years or strong growth, the WTTC are predicting that the global tourism economy will contract by 3.9% in 2009 and that will only expand by 0.3% in 2010. Long term, the WTTC still forecasts strong growth, with tourism’s contribution to world GDP rising to 19% ($10.5bn) by 2019.
These are sobering figures, reflecting the macro economic crisis and a clear indicator of the global nature of this structural shift in the world economy. The last great structural recession heralded the start of this era of capitalist globalisation, as governments and corporations grappled with how to respond to a period of falling profits and industrial change. For the tourism industry this involved the decline of many of the traditional mass tourism destinations and their replacement by new ones – we can see this in the emergence of the Mediterranean resorts – but the fallout from this period also saw the emergence of new forms of tourism such as urban tourism and eco-tourism.
This recession will be truely global, with no significant economies operating outside of the prevailing neo-liberal structures, meaning that every economy will feel the effects of the restructuring process. As with previous recessions however, these effects will not be spread evenly and there will be winners and loser in the tourism industry at the global level. The emerging tourism generating countries such as Brazil, Russia, India and China (BRIC) will become more important as the global balance of economic power shifts, prompting the world’s main tourism destinations to restructure to meet their needs. This is a process that has been going on for some time, slowly, but that will probably accelerate now. We may see currently popular destinations decline, especially those with a dependence on Western tourists. Conversely we should see new destinations emerge along with, potentially, new forms of tourist experience as the BRIC countries flex their tourist muscles in the long term.
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My delicious Currently on my bookshelf
