The Challenges And Opportunities of Tourism Development Essay

The Challenges And Opportunities of Tourism Development - Essay Example it relates to tourism development in areas of spiritual travel, community tourism, and the role of the marketing function to improve regionalised tourism attractiveness and economic sustainability. Opportunities and challenges in tourism development In order to create a quality and effective tourism model, stakeholders involved in the tourism development process must consider long-term sustainability as compared to the Destination Life Cycle Model proposed by Butler (1980), a model maintaining six stages that illustrate growth and eventual decline as related to a specific tourism destination or travel concept. Figure 1: Butler’s (1980) Destination Life Cycle Model Source: Butler (1980) As illustrated by Figure 1, stakeholders involved in tourism development must consider that without maintenance to existing tourism models or without effective marketing prowess, a tourism destination will eventually lose its appeal to multiple traveller demographics. In order to create efficacy within a specific tourism model, planners must consider existing market trends and make projections about future resource procurement and strategy development to extend the life cycle of the tourist destination. Globally, market trends indicate that experienced travellers, as one relevant example, are looking for new, off-the-beaten-path vacation destinations that is leading to considerable growth in ethnic and rural tourism (GIPC 2008). The Destination Life Cycle serves as an appropriate template to measure sustainability of a development strategy, taking into consideration existing market conditions and influences, to make stakeholder-relevant improvements to service quality, environmental biodiversity, or even tangible tourism infrastructure development. There are multiple opportunities... This paper stresses that the five case studies involving Brazil, China, Iran, Tuvalu and India clearly illustrate the complexities and opportunities for ensuring efficacy in a tourism development model. The influence of economic policy and oversight in providing government-sponsored opportunities for economic growth for multiple service providers is significant when attempting to build long-term sustainability. This report makes a conclusion that failure to recognise more than simply the tangible infrastructure in tourism development limits the competitive advantages of a host destination and can actually shorten the life cycle of the region by negating diversity, cultural sensitivity, and flexibility necessary to gain positive market assessment of the tourism experience. Successful tourism development blends quantitative analyses with qualitative knowledge of market preferences and cultural relevancy and then utilising consultation with important stakeholders along the entire tourism value chain in order to achieve long-term results and sustainability for the existing tourism service model. It is only through engagement with critical stakeholders ranging from government to the local tourism support agents in the host community that a successful tourism development model can be constructed and implemented.