Tourism Planning for Destination Development and Management

Hello, welcome back. In last class, we talked something about tourism development.

In this class, we will talk about a new concept: destination. Tourism planning is major for the purpose of building a new destination or improving the existed destination for some people, for international, domestic or local people. So what is the meaning of tourism destination. A destination is a very broad concept that could be very big, quite big or quite small. It could be as vast as a territory of a continent, several countries together, or a sub-region of cross border itinerary, or as big as a country a province, or as small as an independent attraction far from a center of population. So when we use the concept of destination, we should notice which level we work with.

Sometimes we make a planning for a sub-region for macro-region, including China, Thailand, Vietnam, and many southeast Asian country. Also, you know, in European countries when we talk about a country, like Germany, France, Switzerland or Italy, they all surround the Alps mountain, so we make a Alps tourism planning. That is the sub-region. Sometimes in China, we make a province planning, so it is the destination planning. But sometimes, we talk about the Jiuzhaigou a remote place, it is a national park far away from the city. We also could consider the Jiuzhaigou national park as a destination. For example, we also could consider Maldives as a destination. It consists of many small islands in the sea. So it’s different meaning.

But the major content of destination is the same one. What is it? We talk more about destination. A destination consists of the major or the significant component, like attraction. It is the core of the destination. Why people come here? Because we have some attractive things or we have some attractions, like national park, culture heritage or manner, people’s lifestyle, and also some special events, like Olympic Games or some World Expo, or winter games for the skiing expedition, something like that. So for a destination, the core thing is the attraction. But when we come here for some attraction, we need some facilities. So facility is also very important to make the destination successful one. What is the facility?

Facility is something including the transportation, facility, airport, railway station or the bus stop or taxi service. And also we want to build a very good facility for the tourist, like hotel, the lodging and accommodation system. The third thing is service. Service means not only the hard facility, but also soft service, like customs, the public security and the condition of the health care, something like that. So service is also very important. And when you make a decision to travel, you need to book a ticket online, so OTA or online travel agent is also something, like the service system. So when we want to make a destination or make a planning for the destination, those three things are very important.

That is attraction facility and service. Sometimes we called a city an international tourism city. Why it is called international tourism city. Because it has the potentiality to attract people coming from all over the world. It is the international destination. We also find some place that there are not too many people from other country, but it’s very happy with local people or people from neighbor province or neighbor city. We call it domestic destination. So a destination from the consumer side also could be categorized in different level.

When we make a master planning for a destination to build a better destination, all necessary components of destination are the three major elements, like facility, attraction and service. What are the three parts considered as important as each other or only to improve one of them or two of them, It depends. So the master planning is also quite different that depends on the situation. When we make master planning or destination planning for. like the capital city of China Beijing or the famous world recognized tourism city that’s the south terminal of the Grand Canal, Hangzhou. It is not necessary to make everything as an equal consideration.

We will define something that mostly wants to improve, like attracting more international visitors to Hangzhou or make a better service for the visitors in Beijing. So the concern or the important thing is quite different for master tourism planning or destination planning. When we make a planning for a destination, we have two different tasks. One task is new development for a destination. In the first class, we mentioned that where we need a planning for tourism for some new development, because the city is resource depended or resource exhausted city, we have no more coal to mine. And then we want to have a new industry, tourism industry is a new development for the destination.

So in many cases, we want to make a new planning for a destination that means we want to work with all the aspects for the resource assessment the target market, service and the best selecting of the development way, or the very important style or the full matter of the product or something like that, and also some support system for the region. So a new development planning for a destination is a huge task that means we want to organize a big team. The team maybe include many experts, experts of the resource, experts of market, experts of the infrastructure, designing our planning, or some experts or professional person that is on marketing. So everything. It is quite a big thing.

Compared to the new development, we also have the management planning or market planning. So it’s another story. We will talk sometime later. When we make a new development planning for the destination, the most important thing is to do something on resource, service, inventory or access. So when we make a survey on resource, we will talk some more in the future about the resource. So at least we concern about the landscape, the land ownership or availability or do we have investment or the money. And also whether those infrastructure, like airport, the railway or the public transportation could meet the demand of the market, something like that. So, I think we also have enough human resource for the tertiary industry development.

So resource assessment is quite important. But when we talk about the resource, for example, we have a rural area with many crops. There are very beautiful flowers. It is the crops for the farmer. But also it could be an attraction for the city the citizenship. So the recourse compatibility is quite important, when we do something on the new development for a destination. So the rural farmland the city open spaces, the blue green or the brown belt. Blue belt means some river lakes and green like the trees or forest, and brown something like the old industry that it is abundant for the manufacture, but it is good for creative industry.

So this thing is what we want to look to assess and, you know, to use compatible resource to other use. So it’s not a very complicated but very direct with other development resource. This is a new development story. Another side of tourism destination planning is for the management. Management and marketing planning majorly focus on those cities that have a quite long history of tourism development.

But they need someone to do some improvement or upgrade or to identify a new potential of the market, for example, for many historic attractions the senior people like going to visit, but the young people don’t like, and then they want to find something to make the cultural heritage with new creative things to attract young generation. So it is the new style of the planning for destination. That is called management or marketing planning. With the maturation of destination region or destination country, some places it’s very crowded in the summer season, but as for the skiing resort. It’s very busy in the winter.

So the seasonality or in different part of the year, the management is quite different, or in the natural resort the bird fly back in different months. So when the birds come back, we should be very careful to use the national park. But when the birds leave the national park, we could have more opportunity for the people. So this is something like management planning for a destination. What should the management planning be concerned? I think those things are very important, like current capacity control that how many people could go in in different seasons, and how to book a ticket in the national park, and what is the hospitality, the service quality is good or bad.

If the tourist is satisfied with our service and in many countries, in many national parks, in many attraction, the maintenance of facility is very important I think, in many country, it is very good, but in some other countries may be quite poor. And also we should concern with the security and safety of the international domestic tourist and also we want to concern that in different time the high season or off season, the management to the destination is quite different. The last but not least thing is marketing. A destination marketing planning is quite important, because, you know, as more cities, more countries come and join the club of tourism, the competition among the different destinations become stronger and stronger.

So we want to make a marketing plan for the destination. We want to very clearly identify where is your market? Where is the target market and what is the preference of the market changed? Or will change in the future. So we want to do some prediction and we want also to do something to select the best and the high output of the promotion, and also we want to organize some events, or to do the better interpretation to attract more tourists to your destination. So this is something we want to make in the destination marketing plan. So thank you very much for joining this class that is about the destination planning for both management and destination, a new development and management.

Thank you very much.