Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
least oppressive governments within the USSR.
After regaining independence in 1991, they
faced a double challenge: loss of traditional mar-
kets in the former Soviet Union, and difficult
political relations with the Russian government,
not least over the Baltic states' large Russian
populations. These minorities, their use of the
Russian language and the Cyrillic script, now
present a distinctive cultural identity within the
enlarged EU.
Although the CEE candidate countries
were subject to relatively similar challenges in
the 1990s - global competition, the loss of for-
mer markets and the re-orientation of trade to
Western Europe, privatization, and the con-
struction of democratic institutions and prac-
tices - their responses to these and the
outcomes were different. In general, economic
recession was experienced in the early 1990s,
followed by strong economic growth from
around 1993/4. Yet in most of these countries
1989 GDP levels were not attained until the late
1990s. Recovery was stronger in Poland and
Slovenia, while Baltic and Balkan countries
faced more severe difficulties in shaking off their
economic and political legacies. In aggregate,
by the late 1990s the average per capita GDP in
the candidate countries represented only 37%
of the EU average, but ranged from 68% in
Slovenia to 23% in Bulgaria (Williams and
Balá
y
, 2000).
and to share experiences of change, to better
inform conceptualization of tourism and its
relationship with macro-economic events
(Coles and Hall, 2004). Cyclical models of tour-
ism change may have been superseded by the
application of chaos theory to tourism develop-
ment (e.g. Faulkner and Russell, 1997;
McKercher, 1999; Faulkner, 2001). Yet Farrell
and Twining-Ward (2004, 2005) claim that
most tourism researchers, and implicitly practi-
tioners, have been schooled in a tradition of
linear, specialized, predictable and deterministic
cause-and-effect science. As such, they (we?)
have not been conceptually equipped to appre-
ciate that 'all natural and social systems are
interdependent, nonlinear, complex adaptive
systems' which are 'generally unpredictable,
qualitative and characterized by causes giving
rise to multiple outcomes' (Farrell and Twining-
Ward, 2004). There is a need, they contend, for
new collective thinking - an 'epistemic commu-
nity' (Haas, 1992; Cinquegrani, 2002) - to
respond to global challenges. Currently there is
a propensity among tourism practitioners to
react to events rather than to anticipate and plan
for them (Coles, 2003), to search for understand-
ing in steady state conceptions (WTO, 1998;
Bierman, 2003), when economic, political,
social and environmental disruptions are in fact
more commonplace (Sönmez, 1998; Gössling,
2002; Hall and Brown, 2006).
European tourism needs to be managed
with foresight, proactively rather than retrospec-
tively responding to change. Its managers need
to be more keenly sensitized to the regularity of
enlargement events, adjustments in EU gover-
nance, economic and social reorganizations in
existing and new member states, and the poten-
tial restructuring of markets (Coles and Hall,
2004; Hall
et al
., 2004).
This is particularly important given that
preparations for each enlargement have been in
train for several years prior to the event. In the
case of the 2004 enlargement, pre-accession
funding, especially since 2000 and through
PHARE, ISPA and SAPARD (Hall and Danta,
2000), helped the accession states to meet their
formal and legal membership requirements
(Bradley Dunbar, 2003). Special interest groups
and their members have also been active in
contingency planning (e.g. HOTREC, 2003).
The 2004 entrants are both destinations and
Significance for Tourism
There are no specific chapters in the
acquis
communautaire
(EU law) which specifically deal
with the tourism industry. There are, however, a
number of chapters that have a great influence
on tourism, including those relating to the envi-
ronment, transport, agriculture and consumer
affairs. Closer integration clearly offers the
opportunity to harmonize standards and prac-
tices throughout the growing 'European club',
and for the first time to recognize the impor-
tance of tourism to economy, society, culture
and environment across Europe. Enlargement,
coupled with the liberalization of air transport
operation, is encouraging significant new and
modified tourist flows.
What emerges from an analysis of succes-
sive EU enlargements, is a need to learn from,
