Theory and Practice of Tourism Planning

Hi, welcome back. In last class, we talk something about the multidisciplinary involvement in tourism planning and major tourism planning model by some famous scholars. This time, we come to a big topic, tourism planning processes and practices mean that we will learn some real weapons to work in the future. Because there are too many things to share here. We divide this part of the lesson to different parts maybe five sections, I think. So, in this section we want to talk about who makes the tourism planning and what should planning do is the planning should be finished and also something like these things.

As you know, when we want to make a professional tourism planning, it is quite a difficult and quite complicated process. According to the history of two decades of tourism planning, we get help or get service of consulting from WTO, PATA or other NGOs. But also we have more professional tourism planning consulting companies to offer their service to government, to private sector. And also not very often but sometimes we could find some professors from university or from research academy, they come to the stage. And also in some countries like China, the government itself has its own research institute.

Those people also could write some planning like the Five Year Plan, every five year we want to renew the plan we call it Five Year Plan system. So the government makes the plan by themselves and some other bodies also make the planning.

We don’t mind who will mke the plan for us. We want to focus on the first thing that what is the client’s expectation and what they need. So, the first thing before we make a real tourism planning is to define the term of reference or in short TOR. TOR is a framework, something like a construct or major content in your contract from your client. Contract will tell you what we should complete in the work, research and when you will submit the report to your client and how many people, how many disciplines will be involved in the subject because different places or different cities need different academic people to be involved in the project.

So, TOR is a basic agreement between the client and the consulting service supply. So, we want to make it clear for the project vision, objectives, scope and deliverables. What has to be achieved in your research or in the contract onside and also we want to make it sure that how many people or how many departments from the government will support the planning research and how much money come from the budget and what is the quality we should reach. When the budget is too small, and then we should lower the quality of the plan. It depends on how much money you put into the project.

And also in the TOR, we should make it clear in the contract how many aspects of the stakeholders. what is the role coming from the local government, from tourism administration, from culture, from sports, from finance or even from the education or the central government policy something like that. So who will take part in the practice make it possible that make the goals of the project to be made in the future. And also because a planning for a city or a region is long term. It maybe needs as long as one year or at least six months to make an overall regional tourism planning.

So we want to make the work breakdown into different parts and in the first section we have a primary report and then we have a medium report and then we have the final report. So, when it should be achieved it should be made clear in the TOR. And also in the TOR, we should make a whole picture of the final report. What dose the regional or an overall or a master tourism planning look like?

It consists of many aspects of the policy, the exist planning and resource and market analysis and the major product we identify for the people, for the government and also the land location demonstration like space structure planning something like that and also many aspects of support system. So it looks very complicated. But I have a map or have a figure here to show you that it is very simple. What is tourism planning? It is an eagle. So there is a tourism planning eagle here. The eagle tells you the major part of the planning, for example, where the bird will fly to, its direction is oriented by the consumers’ demand. So the market thing is tilled in this part.

And the head, the bird head is very important we have eyes, and two brains hold the body of the bird to fly. So, head is attractions, tourism activities and modern events or something like that. So, it is very important I tell you that the most important thing is product. So it’s the head. Birds could fly because they have two wings to fly. The left wing is the infrastructure and many infrastructures like the transportation the information technology something like that. But the right wing is the accommodation, hotel and other tourist facilities, like shopping center. For ladies, no shopping center, I don’t like going there. So it’s very important. So two wings are facilities and services.

In order to get balanced or to make the flying more fluently for the tail, so it is community, the local people to support you. Don’t disturb or intervene the flying. The tail, it doesn’t mean that it’s least important but to make the bird fly very well. And all the surroundings like natural, cultural, social, economic atmosphere are the environment. So, it’s air. So, a tourism planning is made in this way. I think you get to sccessful or nearly the successful situation. So, in one word when you want to make a tourism planning, you should know who will make the planning for you and what should be made clear before you start your research planning for the research project.

And the final show or the demonstration of the planning is the planning eagle. Thank you.