Tourism and Hospitality Planning & Development Aims & Scope By: Prof. ENRIQUE I.

SARENO A Brief History of Tourism by Kevin Watson The tourism business is at least 2,000 years old. It began when wealthy citizens of ancient Rome, deciding they would rather spend their summers away from the city, took trips to the countryside and the coast. A tourist industry soon sprang up to cater for the Romans travel and accommodation needs, and for a while it thrived. But Roman tourism ended with its empire, and for hundreds of years the turbulent economic, social and military situation in Europe made frequent, safe travel out of the question. During the medieval era, however, tourism again appeared thanks to a growing interest in pilgrimages. The organizers arranged the tourism basics of itineraries and places to eat and sleep. And from records such as Chaucers Canterbury Tales, its evident that many pilgrims were keen to relax and enjoy themselves as well as visit a holy shrine. In fact its from the Old English word hligdg (holy day) that holiday derives. But it was two other factors hundreds of years later that encouraged the start of more widespread and regular tourism: health and culture. Those who could afford to do so began to visit the spa and seaside towns of eighteenth century Europe to benefit from the spring waters and fresh air. Others, most notably the English, took educational holidays to countries such as Italy with the intention of studying paintings, sculptures and architecture, and visiting historical sites. The industry was popular and steadily successful from the early nineteenth century. But for the most part, it was expensive and limited to a small number of locations. Then everything suddenly changed. In the 1960s, a growing number of people had disposable incomes, and with this extra money came a desire for a different lifestyle. At the same time, reasonably-priced commercial aircraft were able to carry passengers to and from any airport in the world.

Mass tourism had arrived, and with it there came an extraordinary growth in facilities. Fishing villages on the southern coast of Spain, for instance, became resorts that were household names. Elsewhere, business people capitalized on the demand for tourist attractions and constructed leisure and theme parks.

The driving force behind these rapid developments was cash. In 2006, the international tourism receipts for the three most popular destinations France, Spain and the United States totaled $179.7 billion. The number of visitors who contributed this sum was 188.7 million. With figures such as these, many countries around the globe work hard to encourage travelers to visit them. The result in recent years is the boom in long drag flights to destinations that can supply tourists with sun almost every week of the year. Unfortunately, its this scramble to grab a share of the tourist industry that is sometimes damaging environments unable to sustain large numbers of visitors. There are also concerns about the pollution generated by the ever-rising volume of tourist flights, cruise ships and road traffic. And on top of these problems are increasing fuel costs; the demise of established resorts that have over-expanded; fluctuating exchange rates for currencies; and the credit crunch. The tourism industry will no doubt adapt to new demands and circumstances. But despite some optimistic predictions from tourism agencies for its continued growth, this business may well find that its most successful era, for the time being anyway, is past. Given the importance of planning and development issues in the tourism and hospitality industry such as sustainability, capacity planning, strategic infrastructure planning and forecasting, structural activity re-alignments, the implications of advances in information technology and the globalization of tourism and hospitality enterprises, this journal focuses on bringing together researchers and practitioners, individuals and organizations interested in both the theoretical and the practical aspects of planning and development. Tourism and Hospitality Planning & Development aims to provide a forum for the publication and dissemination of new and original theoretical and applied research on tourism, hospitality, planning and development issues, through fully refereed research papers and to encourage international dialogue through viewpoint articles, short pieces designed to stimulate ideas, discussion and/or present work in progress that has not been developed to a stage suitable for publication as a fully refereed paper. The contextual scope for Tourism and Hospitality Planning & Development is considerable; planning and development issues extend from the macro to the micro level, from global concerns to those associated with the individual organizations and companies, while the conceptual scope encompasses issues and techniques from multivariate forecasting to the more creative endeavors of menu planning and property design/development. The unifying element of these two arenas is planning and development.

STEPS IN THE PLANNING PROCESS Like any planning, tourism planning is goal-oriented, striving to achieve certain objectives by matching available resources and programs with the needs and wants of people. Comprehensive planning requires a systematic approach, usually involving a series of steps. The process is best viewed as an iterative and on-going one, with each step subject to modification and refinement at any stage of the planning process. There are six steps in the planning process:

1. Define goals and objectives. 2. Identify the tourism system. a) Resources b) Organizations c) Markets 3. Generate alternatives. 4. Evaluate alternatives. 5. Select and implement. 6. Monitor and evaluate. Innovation and New Service Development in Tourism Types of Innovation

INFLUENCE OF MEGATRENDS ON TOURISM Influences on Innovation

Firm innovation behavior varies by industry sector. Some industry sectors are capital intensive, making them cautious about innovations that require large capital investments

Type of innovation that firms pursue also depends on whether their industry is: emerging (radical innovation is more likely) or is mature (incremental innovation is more likely)

The hostility of the environment influences innovativeness Firms operating in highly competitive (hostile) markets - likely to be more successful innovators by increasing new product introductions through incremental innovation

Influences on Innovation The type of customers that firms serve also influences the type of innovation they undertake.

Firms that sell consumer products generally serve a larger number of customers directly or through distributors than firms that sell products or services directly to other businesses They also must devote more time and attention to market research and advertising and generally have more difficulty getting timely and accurate feedback from their customers

Importance of Life Cycle

Different types of innovation are important at different points in a products life cycle Differences between Products and Services Products Vs Services

Imitatability and opportunities for bundling Services can be combined into customized packages compared with product features

 Differentiates services from products making them more difficult to imitate by competitors increases competitive advantage. Integration of an external factor During preparation of a service, an external factor, an object or a subject will be involved in the process, e.g., car in a car rental contract Need for synchronous contact between customer and service supplier Often there is a simultaneous production and consumption of a service. Customers may participate in production because the service preparation and the service delivery are identical Products Vs Services Products and services can be viewed as layers because many products have services embedded in them and vice versa A single layer can be a physical product that is exchanged for payment. The relationship between buyer and seller starts and ends with the sale Multiple layers would be services that consist of dialogues between service providers and clients, e.g., consultation or travel information

Importance of Customers Customer needs are the most important driver of NSD An important reason for failure among firms focusing on developing new services is an inadequate assessment of customer needs and problems Organising Needs Understanding customer needs is only part of the problem Once the raw ideas are generated, it is important to categorize and assemble them based on their similarities. These needs must be organised and prioritized

Prioritising Needs Firm decides how important these needs are to the firms (current or potential) customers. This understanding will help the firm to select the needs that it will target If the customer base is small, interviews and focus groups will be best Otherwise, a quantitative approach (e.g., survey) is more appropriate.

Generating and Screening New Service Ideas Sometimes a product is the answer, sometimes a service, and sometimes a product/service combination Firms need an effective process to generate ideas and transform them into new services which replace or create activities up and down the value chain

An Open Culture The quality of idea generation and screening can be enhanced by inclusivity Innovation requires support by management, employee involvement, and open communication among different functional areas (e.g., production, process design, IT, service delivery and marketing)

Cultural Attributes of Successful Innovative firms

Special problems for tourism SMEs SME have smaller top management teams but less functional diversity in experience Owner-managed SME often favor placing family members in senior management positions over hiring outside professional manager poor management decisions generational transition problems SME also have less developed HRM practices disadvantage for reaching the labor pool leads to poor recruiting and less access to materials and financial resources SME may be weak in technical or marketing capability because of the number and quality of their professional personnel

 Question of senior managements motivation to invest resources in training, provision of research journals, travel to conferences, and giving them challenging assignments Limited financial resources to invest in innovations that are expensive to develop, require long development cycles, and long payback periods. Difficulty spreading R&D expenses over large sales volumes and spreading the risk of failure across multiple projects. This tends to make them more cautious about innovation than larger enterprises SME often have an inadequate knowledge of competitors and their products. Have little time to scan their environment regularly to monitor their competitors