Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
likelihood of 'ownership' of the plan and, hence, effective implementation will be
dramatically increased (Heath and Wall 1992; Hall and McArthur 1996).
A strategic planning process may be initiated for a number of reasons (Hall and
McArthur 1998):
•
Stakeholder demands
Demand for the undertaking of a strategic plan may come from
the pressure of stakeholders (e.g. environmental conservation groups or government).
•
Perceived need
The lack of appropriate information by which to make decisions or an
appropriate framework with which to implement legislative requirements may give
rise to a perception that new management and planning approaches are required.
•
Response to crisis
The undertaking of strategic planning exercises is often the result of a
crisis in the sense that the management and planning system has failed to adapt to
aspects of the management environment (e.g. failure to conserve the values of an
environmentally significant site from visitor pressures).
•
Best practice
Visitor managers can be proactive with respect to the adoption of new
ideas and techniques. Therefore, a strategic planning process can become a way of
doing things better.
•
Adaptation, innovation and the diffusion of ideas
Individuals within an organisation can
encourage strategic planning processes as part of the diffusion of ideas within and
between responsible management agencies.
Strategic planning is rarely initiated for a single reason. However, it is important to
understand as much as possible why a particular planning process is being initiated, as
this helps the participants understand the expectations which have been created. Once
underway, strategic planning is designed to be iterative. In other words, planning systems
are meant to be able to adapt and change; they learn how to be effective in terms of the
most appropriate set of goals, objectives, actions, indicators, institutional arrangements
and practices. In this sense, strategic planning from the perspective of sustainable tourism
seeks to reflect in an organisational context the principles of appropriate adaptation and
change which exist in the ecological relationships they are so often attempting to
maintain. In addition, strategic approaches place great store on understanding the policy
environment within which tourism planning operates, and it is to this that we will now
briefly turn.
INSIGHT: Singapore:
Tourism 21
Why should anybody come to Singapore to begin with? What did we
have?…We only had a name, then Raffles Hotel, and what? A few quaint
habits and customs and the mediums and the temples, and the Indian with
his
kavadi
walking over heated charcoal…that is not going to bring in six
million [tourists]. [Instead], we
created the attraction
. We created the
interest that brought the six million tourists. We developed a marketing
strategy… [and] made ourselves useful to the world.
(Senior Minister Lee Kuan Yew, cited in
The Straits Times Weekly Edition,
16 June
1993, quoted in Teo and Chang 2000:117)
