Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
responsible for employees in frontline establishments need to ensure that this message
is conveyed to its customers
• Gap 5 by the major gap between the perceived service and delivered service being
reduced through progressive improvements in the appropriate image which is
marketed to visitors, and the private sector's ability to deliver the expected service in
an efficient and professional manner.
Such an approach to service quality can be applied to urban tourism, as it emphasises the
importance of the marketing process in communicating and dealing with tourists. To
obtain a better understanding of the service quality issues associated with the urban
tourist's experience of urban tourism, Haywood and Muller (1988) identify a
methodology for evaluating the quality of the urban tourism experience. This involves
collecting data on visitors' expectations prior to and after their city-visit by examining a
range of variables (see Page 1995a for a fuller discussion). Such an approach may be
costly to operate, but it does provide a better appreciation of the visiting process, and they
argue that cameras may also provide the day-to-day monitoring of city experiences. At a
city-wide level, North American and European cities have responded to the problem of
large visitor numbers and the consequences of mass tourism for the tourist experience by
introducing Town Centre Management Schemes (see Page 1994a for further details of
this issue) and Visitor Management Schemes (see Page and Hardyman 1996 for more
detail on the developments and application of such schemes).
While there is insufficient space here to review these new management tools to
combat the unwieldy and damaging effect of mass tourism on key tourist centres in
developed and developing countries, it is notable that many small historic cities in Europe
are taking steps to manage, modify and in some cases deter tourist activities. A range of
potential visitor management strategies utilised in urban destinations is outlined in Table
5.8. Yet before such measures can be taken to improve the tourist experience of urban
tourism in different localities, Graefe and Vaske (1987) argue that the development of a
management strategy is necessary to
• deal with problem conditions which may impact on the tourist experience
• identify the causes of such problems
• select appropriate management strategies to deal with these problems.
(See Graefe and Vaske (1987) for more detail on the use of this approach to improve the
tourist experience.)
SIGNIFICANCE OF URBAN TOURISM
Tourism's development in urban areas is not a new phenomenon. But its recognition as a
significant activity to study in its own right is only belatedly gaining the recognition it
deserves within tourism studies. The reasons why tourists visit urban environments, to
consume a bundle of tourism products, continues to be overlooked by the private sector,
which often neglects the fundamental issue—cities are multifunctional places. Despite
the growing interest in urban tourism research, the failure of many large and small cities
which promote tourism to understand the reasons why people visit, the links between the
various motivations, and the deeper reasons why people are attracted to cities, remains a
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