Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
business interests and international tour opera-
tors, have revealed coastal tourism destinations
to be exceeding their carrying capacity, to be
architecturally polluted, and to be losing their
competitiveness in the international market. If
Turkey wants the tourism industry to continue
to contribute to her economy by generating
employment for her increasing unemployed
young population and foreign currency earnings
desperately needed for the finance of industrial-
ization,
account new trends in the international tourism
market and impacts of global change, Turkish
decision-makers should pursue a careful evolu-
tionary development approach to tourism policy,
destination marketing, environmental planning,
and the public administration of tourism in
order to best utilize opportunities emerging from
EU accession processes.
Finally, it is evident that tourism seems to
have widened the developmental gaps between
regions in Turkey and elsewhere in many coun-
tries. For example, studies in many developing
countries in the Mediterranean basin, such as
the former Yugoslavia, Turkey, Egypt, Tunisia,
Morocco and Algeria, suggest that tourism has
been playing a significant role in industrialization
and economic growth at the cost of regional,
class, and inter-/intra-generation inequality since
the 1970s (Allcock, 1986; Lea, 1988; Poirier,
2001; Tosun, 2001; Var and Imam, 2001).
Polarization of tourism investment in the rela-
tively developed regions of these countries may
be partly explained by comparative advantage
theory and the endowments accruing from that.
In this context, Turkey's western regions have
experienced more growth because they are
better endowed with mass tourism resources
(Tosun
et al
., 2003, p. 150). However, wider
factors, such as political-social stability, interest
of power groups, and preferences of central
governments and international tour operators
may also have played an important role in
the regional allocation of tourism investment.
For example, Tosun
et al
. (2003, p. 157) argue
that
a
balanced
product
diversification
strategy should be adopted.
The following steps are recommended:
different steering committees involving rele-
vant experts from a wide range of interests
should be established to plan, develop
and manage relevant forms of tourism and
design operational strategies for sustainable
development;
●
local communities should be encouraged
to participate in the development process
including key decision-making processes;
●
while the steering committees in collabora-
tion with local people prepare plans and
strategies to develop 'niche' tourism, care-
ful market segmentation for each form of
tourism should be made - for example, the
requirements and profile of demand for
sport tourism will be different to those of
religious tourism;
●
new forms of tourism should be developed
within an incremental tourism planning
approach. Past experience of coastal tourism
development has shown that rapid devel-
opment is difficult to control and manage.
Thus, necessary measures should be taken
to prevent further rapid tourism growth in
environmentally and socially fragile destina-
tions. Encouraging small-scale investment
and identifying an anticipated threshold for
each local destination may be used as a
policy instrument for incremental tourism
development.
●
the political dimension of regional tourism
development should also be considered. . . .
the political and social unrest ushered in by the
Kurdish Workers Party's (PKK) violence and
terror activities have discouraged local, national
and international investors from investing in the
east and south-east regions of Turkey.
Consequently, an unplanned spatial dicho-
tomy has evolved in Turkish tourism between a
privileged space in the relatively developed
regions along the coast and an underprivileged
space in relatively less developed regions in the
interior of the country.
Lessons from a number of countries sug-
gest that unless special measures are taken,
tourism may magnify development gaps between
Turkey's accession to, and the further
enlargement of, the EU present opportunities
and pitfalls for both the Turkish and European
tourism industries. It appears that the profile of
tourism demand generated in the EU is tending
to change towards 'alternative' forms including
cultural and heritage tourism. By taking into