preservation of cultural communities around the world is becoming harder. So what do countries need to do to stop the negative effects? … Well, let me give you a hint. Do the words destination planning mean anything to you now? Destination planning should be a national, regional or local community effort to plan tourism activities. It can make sure that the negative effects on a community or country are minimized.
By the way, I saw last week that some of you are using the Cornell note-taking system. That’s very good. Do you all know about this? No? Right, well, if you want to know more about it, I suggest you look at How to Study in College by Walter Pauk, P- A-U-K, the 8th edition, published in 2004. It’s very good, and it should be in the University Library. I’m sure that you all know the importance of taking good notes – and this system is particularly useful.
So, to get back to the topic: destination planning.
Let’s look at this idea in a bit more detail. Trying to make economic progress in traditional communities is essential but it’s also very difficult. The problem is that people are using culture as the main tourist attraction. So they must create sustainable development to prevent the destruction of the community’s identity. After all, not everybody is charmed by six-lane highways, global fast-food restaurants, high-rise hotels and coffee bars on every street corner.
But what exactly is culture then? Is it the beliefs of people in an area? Is it architecture? Is it nature? Is it the activities organized for tourists? Is it the regional or national cuisine? Is it a political system? Is it all of these? It’s important that a destination planner takes into account the diversity of culture just because the term is very subjective. Even though the development of tourism is often about satisfying tourists’ interests such as landscapes, seascapes, art, nature, traditions and ways of life, there is much more to a culture than meets the eye. One definition of culture given by
thefreedictionary.com on the Web is: ‘The totality of socially transmitted behaviour patterns, arts, beliefs, institutions, and all other products of human work and thought.’
What I’m going to say next may sound strange. When we look at tourism and culture, I believe that the quality of tourism depends on the cultural environment of the present, not on the cultural heritage of the past. What do I mean by that? I mean to say that tourism is developed and practised by people here and now, with present-
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day infrastructure, under present-day laws, with present-day means of transport, and so on. Therefore, I believe that to make sure that tourism operators develop responsible activities, policies need to be developed in cooperation with the community. There should, for instance, be strict regulation on the protection of the natural resources in a community.
Tourism operators and government should ensure that resources are conserved, and not abused. For example, tours to primitive communities in a certain area cannot be run by an endless number of operators, because the pressure on the environment and the community would become too large. Numbers of tourists in an area should be closely monitored, because if numbers are too high they put pressure on infrastructure such as roads, and on the natural environment.
OK, now, when I see you in tutorials, we’ll look in more detail at all these issues. In the meantime, I’m going to set you a research task. Right, now listen carefully ... your task is to find out about a particular tourism destination and the impact the development of the area has had, or is having, on the culture of the place. I’d like you to work in groups of four. Each group should report back on its findings.
Unit 9, Lesson 3, Exercise D 2.6
Extract 1 Tourism can have a negative effect on their way of life. Large numbers of tourists can undermine traditional beliefs, values and customs. In fact there is a real risk of commercializing the very culture that they find so interesting. And where tourists are not sensitive to local traditions their behaviour can cause great offence. To quote Professor Neil Leiper in his book Tourism Management (one of your core texts), ‘relationships between tourists and locals are often shaped and damaged by stereotyped images that each part holds’.
Extract 2
In fact, as Macleod points out in his article ‘Cultural Commodification and Tourism: A very special relationship’, in volume 6 of Tourism, Culture and Communication, published in 2006, it may be that policymakers and others are missing aspects of culture that could give advantage to certain regions and their local population.
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