My new article has just been published in the Skyline Business Journal, called ‘Tourism Policy Research after the COVID-19 Pandemic: Reconsidering the Role of the State in Tourism’.
The article is open-access, meaning anyone can read it. I argue that the decisions that governments around the world have taken to intervene in their tourism industries means that we need to re-think the role of the state in tourism. You can read the abstract below and access the whole article here.
“Over the last thirty years of research into tourism policy, there has been a dominant assumption that the appropriate role of the state in tourism is mostly settled. The state has a legitimate role in the tourism industry, but it is essentially one of ‘steering and not rowing’. This assumption has developed against the backdrop of the neoliberal shift towards small states, powerful markets and light touch policy interventions in industry. This research note argues that the measures that have been taken by governments around the world in respect of their tourism industries, in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, are sufficiently significant and long-term to warrant a re-appraisal of the role of the state in tourism. Specifically, this note makes the case for a renewed focus on research into tourism policy in non-Western contexts, where the role of the state has not been as constrained by the neoliberal shift, and for an increase in international comparative policy research, which has been notably absent in the tourism policy field to date.”
“National tourism policy in Bangladesh is a relatively new development and this research is the first to focus on the implementation of tourism policy in Bangladesh. Taking a social constructivist perspective, interviews were carried out with 13 elite stakeholders, from the public and private sectors, who are associated with the creation and implementation of tourism policy in Bangladesh. The data were analysed qualitatively using a content analysis approach to examine perceptions of the policy implementation process, and its success. In the case of Bangladesh, it is the persistence of hierarchical governance structures that appears to be hindering the effective implementation of tourism policy. This can be seen in the selection of priority areas by the government, the preferred policy instruments, and in the ways in which the private sector is being incentivised to support national tourism development.”
One of our aims with this collection, was to add to the tourism governance literature, with research from developing countries and on using new methods and approaches. This special issue certainly does that, and you can read a summary of the contents in our editorial piece.
You can read the full call for papers here, and find out more about the journal here. If you are interested in submitting for this special issue, please just get in touch with any questions. The final deadline for manuscript submissions is 22nd February 2019.
Effective governance is a fundamental condition for the sustainable development of tourist destinations. The inherent complexity of tourism also requires that its development be accompanied by efficient planning and management processes based on the basic principles of sustainability.
Previous studies in tourism governance have identified the shift from government to governance in tourism policy; the emergence of new networked and postmodern forms of governance affecting tourism; the changing roles of destination management organizations and the complexities of tourism governance in a globalized world. However, much of this research has been carried out in the developed core countries of the international tourism industry. There is a need to bring together new research on this topic from more diverse geographical and socio-economic perspectives, as well as to re-examine the area of tourism governance in light of the many contemporary crises affecting the sustainability of tourism destinations.
“This report proposes the development of a strategic approach to the creation, programming and promotion of events in Greenwich, under the brand ‘Royal Borough of Greenwich Events’. The report identifies clear opportunities for Visit Greenwich to take a more strategic approach to events within the tourist and visitor offer of the destination. With its partners, Visit Greenwich should aim to use events to enhance the positive impacts of tourism and visitation in Greenwich.”
In our presentation, we present research where we tested the utility of the concept of punctuated equilibrium, for understanding recent changes in UK tourism policy. Punctuated Equilibrium draws our attention to two different groups of people and organisations in understanding change and continuity in tourism policy. Firstly, the policy community involved in framing, creating and implementing tourism policies in the UK. Secondly, the role of issue networks in attempting to shift the tourism policy agenda – broadly speaking, this would be activity by non-governmental interest groups, such as lobbying and campaigning.
In our presentation, we presented two brief case studies. Firstly, we explained how the conservative elements of the UK’s coalition government, which was elected in 2010, slowly worked to change the composition of the tourism policy community until they were able to achieve their ideological goal of significantly reducing public sector support for tourism, despite this having no real support from the broader tourism sector in the country.
We concluded that the perspective of punctuated equilibrium was helpful in explaining why a long period of stability in tourism policy and been broken by a series of quite dramatic changes in tourism governance in the UK. Punctuated Equilibrium suggests that we should be able to explain the evolution of tourism policy through analysing the tension between policy communities and issues networks – our initial investigations have led us to conclude that, in the case of the UK, the policy community is the dominant part of this equation. We plan to develop this further for a paper next year….
Under the New Labour government of 1997-2010, tourism policy in the United Kingdom was characterised by a high level of continuity between the policies of successive administrations. Since 2010, the United Kingdom has had two different new governments. Each of these governments has launched a new tourism policy. The Coalition government’s policy made fundamental changes to the funding and governance of tourism and the new Conservative government have enacted significant changes to the National Tourism Organisations (NTOs) for the United Kingdom and England.
This paper analyses the changes in the United Kingdom’s tourism policy between 1997-2015, using a combination of structural explanations based on exogenous factors and the perspective of punctuated equilibrium theory. Research was conducted through content analysis of key policy and strategy documents including national tourism policies, policies of the devolved administrations of the United Kingdom, and other key documents such as NTO strategy documents and consultation records. Although this study is based on the United Kingdom, the approach taken could be used to analyse periods of tourism policy change in other countries, especially those that have seen recent changes in government following the global economic crisis.
The paper concludes by showing that although structural explanations of tourism policy making are useful in examining the determinants of tourism policy at any given time, punctuated equilibrium theory helps to explain periods of change in tourism policy by drawing attention to the role of policy communities in setting policy problems and selecting potential solutions By utilising a theoretical approach that has not been applied widely in studies of tourism policy, but which has been used extensively in studies of other policy arenas, this paper shows the utility of incorporating theoretical perspectives from other parts of the policy studies literature when considering changes in tourism policy. Recommendations are made towards the end of the paper for how this could be applied in future studies, including for international comparative analysis of tourism policy.
The UK Government recently published their new ‘five point plan’ for the tourism industry. You can download it from here. In this post, I’m going to have a critical look at this new policy, which actually contains very little policy at all…
As Kurt Janson, the policy director of Tourism Alliance, has pointed out, it is a good sign for the sector that the Government is at least talking about tourism as a policy area in a time of public sector spending cuts. Despite the rumours that were circulating before the recent election about further cuts to public support for tourism and the gloomy future for the Department for Culture Media and Sport (where tourism sits in government policy), it seems as though this Government is continuing to say the right kinds of things about the UK tourism industry, which contributes around £60bn a year to the economy.
Click on the image to read the policy in fullDespite this optimistic view, it is worth considering the detail of this policy, to see what it offers to tourism businesses, local government and the nearly 10% of the workforce who are employed in tourism-related jobs. The problem is, there really isn’t much detail here to go on. With a colleague, Samantha Chaperon, I published this paper on the last UK Tourism Policy, and in this paper I reviewed the tourism policies of successive Labour Governments, from 1997-2010.
The lack of detail in this new policy document, which is only 6 pages long, makes it difficult to engage with in the same way. The policy sets out five key areas, and in this blog post, I’m going to say something about each of them.
Tourism Landscape
This first area of the policy is about the governance of Tourism in the UK, or, actually, in England. As we’ve pointed out before, tourism in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland is dealt with by their own, devolved governments. The last tourism policy seemed to ignore this fact, and it is good to see the Government acknowledge this issue in this new document.
This section starts from the premise that the governance of tourism in the UK is fragmented and confusing, and that the mix of relationships between DMOs, local government, national bodies and tourism businesses needs to be simplified. This seems-self evident. Certainly the industry will welcome a simplification in this area.
This is clearly an example of this new Government attempting to make up for some of the hasty mistakes of the last one. The cuts in public funding for tourism, including for the national tourism bodies, regional development agencies and for local government, directly contributed to the fragmentation that this policy aims to address. Hopefully this Government has learnt from its mistakes in this area as part of the 2010-2015 coalition.
2. Skills and Jobs
Again, after cutting funds for, or completely removing, specialist sources of support for the tourism sector in the UK, the government is now emphasizing the support that is available to tourism businesses. There is no new support announced in this policy, but the Government is right to point out that there are a wide range of business support services available to all businesses, and that it is important to communicate this effectively to the tourism sector. This is especially important for micro-businesses and SMEs, many of whom were previously able to access specialist support through Regional Development Agencies, local authorities or DMOs.
The policy then goes on to talk about jobs in the industry. There are no new initiatives mentioned, but the aspiration to help to create and support apprenticeships in tourism and to raise the status of jobs in tourism is a welcome one – organisations like the British Hospitality Association are already taking the lead in this area and should expect more support from the Government following this policy.
3. Common Sense Regulation
This area of the policy contains nothing new for the tourism industry, despite a brief mention of the sharing economy. The policy makes a commitment to reducing unnecessary regulation – which all governments say at the start of their terms – something that most businesses see as a priority. It is not clear which regulations they think are a problem, but it will be interesting to see whether European Working Time Directive is on the list when Britain attempts to renegotiate its membership of the European Union this year. It is hard to be against something that calls itself ‘common sense’, but not all regulations are a bad thing and it remains to be seen where this policy aim will lead.
4. Transport
The Davies Commission recently recommended that the Government builds a new runway at Heathrow. This is the big decision on travel that the tourism industry has been waiting for. This policy gets us no closer to finding out what the Government will do about that recommendation, and instead seems to concentrate on how the train network can better support tourism outside of London. This seems like an idea that is hard to disagree with – who doesn’t want faster, cheaper, cleaner and more dependable trains? Unfortunately,within the constraints of a privatised rail industry, it seems unlikely that Government has the right levers to pull to achieve any of these things.
5. A GREAT Welcome
The word GREAT in this area is a reference to the GREAT Britain destination marketing campaign that was launched following the last tourism policy, in 2011. The policy extends the concept to the welcome that is provided to tourists arriving in the UK. However, this area of the policy isn’t really about the welcome. It is about the visa application process for tourists. Of course, applying for a visa is an important part of the way that some tourists form their perceptions of the UK as a tourist destination. I’ve never heard of the Visa process being reported as a big problem by our most valuable tourist markets – the USA, France, Germany and Australia. It is a much bigger issue for emerging tourism markets, such as China. At the moment, China isn’t even in our top ten source markets -the new policy may go some way to addressing this.
The welcome provided to tourists in the UK has often been rated poorly, especially compared to many of our competitors. I don’t think that changing the visa process for some tourists will make a major contribution to solving this problem, which requires training, partnerships with industry, investment in facilities and a long term culture-change.
This new policy doesn’t really contain many policy initiatives. Compared to previous policies it is very light touch, which some parts of the industry will welcome. Many others however, will be concerned with the lack of any content on sustainability, the outbound sector, domestic tourism or the ongoing campaign to cut tourism VAT. As with the last policy, it is probable that the real action on tourism will come from the planning and actions of Visit England and Visit Britain.
We are getting closer and closer to the point where the UK Government doesn’t feel the need to publish its own policy on tourism any more. Some people would say that this is no bad thing. In a few year’s time, we will be able to see whether this non-policy has helped the tourism industry in the UK, or held it back.
As the 2015 general election in the UK draws nearer, the tourism industry will look with interest to the manifestos of the major parties to see whether tourism gets a mention. Despite none of the parties mentioning tourism in their manifestos for the election in 2010, tourism was the subject of one of the first policy statements by our Prime Minister, David Cameron, in August 2010.
I posted a series of blog posts in the run up to the publication of the 2011 UK Tourism Policy, which you can read here, here and here. In these posts, I suggested that the government needed to develop a serious industrial policy for tourism, cut VAT on tourism, invest in skills development and education for tourism professionals and create tourism enterprise zones. Over the last few years, I’ve written (mostly with my colleague Dr Samantha Chaperon) a few papers that evaluate the UK Government’s recent approach to the tourism industry along similar lines.
In 2010, we published this paper on the prospects for English Seaside Towns in the context of the closing down of the Regional Development Agencies and their replacement by new Local Enterprise Partnerships (LEPs). We concluded that the LEPs did not place sufficient emphasis on tourism and that they did not recognize the challenges to developing seaside towns associated with their peripheral locations.
In 2013, we published this paper critiquing the UK Government’s 2011 Tourism Policy. In the paper we outlined the major changes that had taken place in the governance and public funding of tourism following the publication of this policy and suggested that the policy did not offer a clear vision of how the government would support the industry in a period of public sector austerity.
Click on this image to read the current UK tourism policy
Also in 2013, I published this paper, which reviewed the tourism policies of successive UK Governments from 1997-2010 in terms of their relationship to local economic development. This paper shows that, although the current government’s tourism policy continues with many of the assumptions of previous policies about the links between tourism and economic development, it does introduce some new thinking that may create an environment in which the tourism industry can contribute to local economic development.
I think the chances of tourism making it into the published manifestos are pretty slim – tourism isn’t really a doorstep issue. However, we should expect to hear something like this statement from the Labour Party from all of their rivals over the next few months. As they do so, I’ll be reviewing them on this blog and trying to get a sense of what the post-election tourism landscape will look like.
The Chinese Government has launched a new tourism policy, with the aim of significantly enhancing tourism development in the country and establishing China’s tourism industry as a significant economic force in China’s domestic and international tourism markets.
You can download the policy document, in English, by clicking here. In this post, I give an outline of the document and offer some brief analyses of it’s key aims. In our new book, we’ll be looking at this policy in more detail in a case study.
The policy begins by stating some guiding principles. As with all Chinese policies, it is aligned with the key political ideas that drive the modern(ising) Chinese state -‘Deng Xiaoping Theory‘. Dengism, as it is also known, is (amongst other things) an attempt to develop the Chinese economy and society in line with its guiding revolutionary and communist principles, but in a way that allows the country to engage constructively with the neoliberal world economy. This policy exemplifies Dengist policy, emphasising the Chinese national and socialist aims of the policy whilst also promoting individual livelihoods, sustainable development, SME growth and economic development.
The policy goes on to list ‘Major Tasks and Measures’ – these are the key aims of the policy:
‘Sufficient time for national tourism and leisure’
This is a demand-side measure to develop the market for China’s tourism industry by enforcing regulations on statutory paid annual leave entitlements for Chinese workers. By increasing the number of ‘rest days’ available to the population,this should (in theory) lead to people wanting to spend their time and money on products and services offered by the domestic tourism industry. Also, this should help China’s outbound industry to grow. In addition, schools and universities are to be asked to consider both extending and changing their holiday periods.
‘Better environment for national tourism and leisure’
This measure aims to increase the availability and accessibility of key tourism destinations and attractions. ‘Public museums, memorial halls and sites for patriotic education will gradually open to the public for free’. Local government is asked to improve the quality of tourism transport and businesses are encouraged to give favourable treatment to tourists.
‘Improved infrastructure for national tourism and leisure’
The Chinese government intends to increase the supply of tourism facilities including new parks, ‘tourism villages’, family and budget hotels, cruise terminals, marinas and tourism zones. This aim also highlights the need to improve access to tourism for those with additional needs.
‘Product development and activity organisation of national tourism and leisure’
This is a supply-side measure that has the intention of diversifying and developing the Chinese tourism industry through the creation of new tourism sub-sectors such as sport tourism, medical tourism, bicycle tourism and others. The policy also mentions the development of ‘red tourism’, which is a form of political tourism that celebrates the Chinese state and its recent revolutionary history, and aims to promote ‘fine traditional culture’. This measure also includes a commitment to developing the knowledge base for tourism development, increasing R&D in tourism and supporting technological developments in the tourism industry.
‘Red tourists’ experience a historical gun battle.
‘Well developed public services for national tourism and leisure’
This section of the policy is the least novel, and the most comparable to other national tourism policies. It sets out the ambition to create new tourist information services, including TICs, road signage and websites. Along with this, the policy gives priority to staff training and higher education and vocational education in tourism management.
‘Enhanced service quality in national tourism and leisure’
The final measure is an aim to develop service and quality standards for the tourism industry in China, including a quality guarantee system for tourism and leisure.
The section of the policy document that covers the governance of tourism and the implementation of the policy is very short. Given the top-down nature of the Chinese political system, it is likely that the governance arrangements are fairly established and that there won’t be a set of tourism-specific institutional arrangements. The policy refers to ‘development and reform commissions, tourism departments, trade unions, communist youth league organisations, women’s federations and relevant industrial associations’ as all having a role to play in implementing the policy.
This new policy document gives an insight into the modernisation and development of China’s tourism industry. In common with many national tourism policies, including the latest UK Tourism Policy, it makes no mention of China’s outbound tourism sector, and focuses wholly on the development of the national tourism product. Despite the widely held perception that China does things differently to the rest of the world, this is actually a very orthodox form of tourism policy. It concentrates on product diversification and development and contains some standard aims to increase education and training and to improve tourist information.
The size of the Chinese domestic tourism market is huge, with some estimates suggesting that there may be as many as 1.7bn domestic tourist trips taken each year. As the Chinese government attempts to develop their domestic markets and rebalance away from being an export-oriented economy, to one that is less-reliant on overseas economies, especially the USA, the tourism and leisure sectors offer an opportunity to develop both domestic consumption and new employment sectors.
This policy takes a very broad overview of the Chinese tourism industry, aiming to increase quality and diversity in all of its aspects. The lack of a clear set of targets or implementation plans in the policy document means that it will be difficult to evaluate it’s success, but the strength of the central Chinese state suggest that the many of the aspirational aims of the policy will be funded and delivered and that this will be carried out on an immense scale.
