Destination Sydney Analysis - Case Study Example

Destination Sydney Analysis Name: Course: Professor: Institution: City and State: Date: Introduction Tourism is one of the largest revenue sources for not only world cities, but also individual nations. Tourism benefits local communities directly through employment and indirectly through auxiliary services. However, tourism can threaten the environment by destroying habitat, disturbing wildlife; threaten host communities by overdevelopment and disruption of local culture. Therefore, tourism negatively impacts on the resources it relies on. In this light, sustainable tourism is emphasized in order to protect the environment and host communities from adverse effects. Considering that tourism has grown to be a critical economic activity, sustainable tourism programs provide opportunities to experience the culture of host communities and experience natural areas. This paper analyses Sydney as sustainable tourist destination. Emergence of destination development The concept of destination development has gained prominence in the present century due to steady development of the tourism industry. It involves balance between demand and industry needs, visitors, community and the environment in order to attain sustainability. Destination development concerns management and support of integrated resources and activities through sustainable tourism activities. It is about managing visitors’ impact on local destinations, physical environment and social fabric in a way that benefits the residents, businesses and the community at large. Destination development as an expression of sustainable tourism The main aim of this concept is management of numerous components of tourism and reduction of environmental degradation. Destination development is considered an expression of sustainable or responsible tourism since it encourages the development of ‘green’ policies and procedures, environmentally friendly business events, world class venues among others. In addition, it encourages environmental conservation by suggesting adoption of green tourism and management of data relevant for sustainability of the industry. As tourism demands changes, products and services offered by different destination needs to change. According to Gooroochurn and Sugiyarto (2005), tourism products involve a set of goods, services and attractive products that motivates visitors to visit a given tourist destination. Destination development is critical for tourism growth. Nevertheless, destination development tries to overcome information barriers across the tourism industry with a view of putting in place performance indicators that can enhance environmental information disclosure. Stage of development The four common stages of destination development include introduction, growth, maturity and decline. The lifecycle model is used as a framework for understanding different environment for a destination as tourism sector expands. Introduction At this stage, a small number of visitors discover a destination after making individual travel arrangements. The number of people travelling is restricted by inadequate facilities that are owned by local people. This stage is characterized by regular and greater visitations. The locals begin to appreciate that tourism trade and thereby intensify advertising to attract more tourists (Waitt, 2003). Pressure mounts on public sector to improve infrastructure as seasonal patterns emerges. As a result, a destination adopts right strategies to forestall potential future problems. This includes introduction of new services and products. Growth Development of additional tourism infrastructure is evident as regular and well-defined market areas continue to emerge. This is as a result of vigorous advertising causing a number of tourists to overstretch available facilities. Sydney opened five new hotels in the past few decades. In addition, it enjoys successful and longstanding tourism products including Sydney Opera House, Bridge Climb, Sydney Harbour Ridge, harbour cruises, Wildlife Sydney among others. According to available statistics, there has been a shortage of hotel rooms since Sydney Olympics. The current shortage of three- star hotels indicates that more hotel rooms are required in order to meet the growing demand. Maturity At this stage, the number of tourists declines. The deteriorating facilities are abandoned leading to the emergence of alienated business space. Further, efforts are made to lengthen tourists stay by diversifying attraction facilities. It is at this stage that peak number of tourists is experienced. Capacity levels are exceeded leading to environmental, economic and social problems. Notably, at this point, the destination has built a well established and recognized image though it no longer appeals to many investors hence experiencing property turnover. At this stage, there is reduced establishment of new facilities due to depreciation in value and increased ownership by locals. Decline This stage comprises of two phases including decline and rejuvenation phases. At decline phase, tourism sector continues to wane with destination unable to compete effectively with other new attractions. However, the destination may be rejuvenated by exploiting untapped resources, developing artificial attractions or through renovations. Sydney has been rejuvenating obsolescent buildings in line with market dynamics. In addition, redevelopment of Sydney International Convention, Exhibition and Entertainment Precinct (SICEEP) and Barangaroo were found to raise Sydney profile as world class destination. Approach to destination management Destination management includes activities such as proper land use, issuance of business permits, formulating environmental policies among other techniques critical for daily operation of tourism activities (Go & Gover, 2011). Certainly, there is no single best approach to destination management. It is the responsibility of local communities in collaboration with other stakeholders to develop a comprehensive framework that fosters tourism within their locality. There is an increased demand for sustainable tourism and customers continue to demand improved environmental performance from tourism accommodation providers. Similarly, the locals are pressing tourism service providers to satisfy their corporate social responsibility goals. Nevertheless, to grow in this lucrative tourism markets, service providers’ needs to deliver sustainable tourism options that emphasize on ‘green tourism’ and one that offers accommodation options that are consistent with sustainable tourism. Approaches to managing the city environment It is the duty of the city council to maintain clean the city environment, maintenance of street lights in order to enhance high quality visitor experience. Further to enhance safety, CCTV cameras are installed in all appropriate areas with the city council continuing working closely with NSW police force to monitor footage in high spot areas. They also work in collaboration with accommodation providers, licensed venue operators and other concerned institutions to sensitize visitors on how to access public transport and enhance personal safety. The city management is working hard to widen the range of public transport and also enhance the ease in which to access them. This includes, formulating NSW long-term transport master plan that not only seeks to improve visitors’ transportation, but also their experience (Lee, Lee & Lee, 2005). Plans are also underway to implement city centre access plan. In addition, there is increased advocacy for NSW government to reduce ticket prices in order to encourage both domestic and international visitors access the city. There are also plans to implement the goal of open Sydney that seeks to increase the number of people visiting night clubs. This open Sydney plan will enhance security, availability of means of transport at night, multi-hiring and improved information systems. System of governance As a local government organization, the city of Sydney is governed by the requirements of the local government Act (1993) and regulations. In addition, the city of Sydney Act (1988) together with other legislative provisions is also applied to govern the city. Local government Act comprises a charter that identifies issues that the council needs to take into account when discharging their responsibilities. Nevertheless, going by this charter, the council has a range of roles including providing services, leadership, advocacy, activities regulation and facilitation and also to educate. It is the responsibility of the city council to pursue community’s ideas and vision, provide civic leadership, express local concerns and deliver concerns to other levels of government. The council provides some services directly while others such as transport, education and health services are provided by different federal government agencies. City council roles go beyond the provision of services to advocating equitable allocation of national resources and demonstrating leadership in the journey towards a more sustainable city. Research undertakings/application of research Research activities have been instrumental in development of Sydney as a tourist destination. Through research, the city council has been able to understand visitors’ needs, aspirations and behaviour. In addition, research on visitors experience has been helpful in development of infrastructure and also enhances city management. Other facets where research has been found important includes in understanding visitor preference, activities and changing trends. Through research, the city council has also been able to understand the role played by different modes of communication in enhancing visitors’ satisfaction and potential partnerships that are helpful in achieving destination goals and visitors experience. Tourism Policy & Planning Sydney’s strategic master plan seeks to enhance tourism in the city. The master plan seeks to achieve its future goals by having a clear understanding of the present. The master plan adopts sustainable approach to counter issues likely to face the city. Policy and planning roles play a significant role in growth and development of the city as a tourist destination. Certainly, population growth and urbanization has been the core challenges facing the city. To enhance the city’s performance as a destination, the city council plans to take into account visitor numbers and movement patterns. As we approach year 2020, experts argue that tourist flows will be more important in designing infrastructure and land usage. Increased visitor numbers are expected to intensify demand for protected areas leading to environmental management issues. As such, handling such demand properly can lead to culture-based and nature-based tourism jobs as well as expansion of related businesses and employment opportunities. Stakeholders The success of Sydney as a tourist destination is attributable to various stakeholders including the city council, local businesses, employees, general community, federal government, tourists, competitors, activity groups among many others. Each of these groups performs a special role towards success of this great city. Every stakeholder has a specific interest in the city in respect to accrued benefits. In this respect, they are expected to adopt responsibilities and roles key to development and success of the city. Therefore, effective management and integration of different perspectives of these stakeholders becomes essential for the city. Forms of Tourism Tourism in Sydney is of special interest type. Notably, the city is admired for its expansive harbour, beautiful foreshores and coastline, pleasant and warm climate, bay side gardens and parks, diverse wildlife, art gallery cosmopolitan culture among others. Further, the city is packed with world class cafes and restaurants, cathedrals, museums, convention and conference facilities, pubs, markets, clubs, shopping malls and arcades, garden and rich colonial history. Other notable facilities include Circular Quay, Darling Harbour, Elizabeth Bay, The Rocks and King Cross. There are also excellent beaches to the north and south of Darling Harbour that are ideal for surfing, swimming and sun baking during the summer season. Royal botanic gardens are also a delight to explore due to the collection of both international and Australian statues, fountains, monuments and plants. A visit to Sydney is not considered complete without visiting Sydney Harbour Bridge. The 134 metres bridge weighs 60,000 tonnes, and it took nine years to construct. The bridge offers a scenic view of the entire city of Sydney. Application of sustainability indicators According to Jarari’s model, emergence of sustainable development led to convergence of environmental sustainability and economic development. This model stipulates that sustainable development involves convergence of economic, social-cultural and environmental factors. The model is characterized by four platforms including advocacy, adoption, caution and knowledge based. Advocacy platform is concerned the economic benefits of tourism and its potential to generate foreign exchange. On the other hand, cautionary platform highlights the need for interventions following adverse effects of tourism activities. Adoption articulates the need to adopt green tourism that is environmentally friendly. Lastly, knowledge based platform helps the communities to understand tourism activities in such as a way to negate unfavourable impacts. A favourable balance must be established for the three elements in order to guarantee long-term sustainability. According to Dwyer, Forsyth and Spurr (2004), sustainable tourism should support viable long-term operations that provide socio-economic benefits to every stakeholder. Further, such operations should be fairly distributed to enhance stable employment and social services to host communities thus playing a pivotal role in poverty reduction. On social cultural front, tourism activities should respect the authenticity of host communities by conserving traditional values and their living and built cultural heritage. This will encourage inter-cultural tolerance and understanding. Tourism activities should also utilize the available environmental resources prudently in order to maintain ecological processes, preserve biodiversity and natural resources. Vivid Sydney event is an illustration to the Sydney’s compliance with these indicators. In 2010, Sydney Opera House offset carbon emission with Destination NSW offsetting the remaining components by utilizing carbon compliant policies. Vivid Sydney has since 2009 advocated for use of low energy. In this vein, it uses light art projections that require very little amount of energy in order to influence public think creatively on sustainable urban light solutions. The city council of Sydney is working towards securing Sydney’s future. These efforts are guided by Brundtland Report of 1987 that advocate the need to meet economic, social and environmental needs without compromising the opportunities for future generations. More importantly, the city follows a balanced approach that takes into account its economy, social cultural and ecological interests. On the front of economic orientation, the city is globally linked to many global tourist sources. As a requirement for environmental compliance, the city has minimal adverse impact as evidenced by a wide coverage of green cover across the city, flower gardens, healthy ecosystem with clean air and waterways. Sydney continues to explore better means of achieving energy efficiency from alternative sources such as renewable sources. However, addressing the problem of global climate change still remains a significant problem. Competition and collaboration Sydney attracts high competition for conference and convention facilities from Melbourne. SICEEP is poised to lose its status as the premier convention venue in Australia to Melbourne Exhibition and Convention Centre (MCEC) which is presently undergoing expansion and renovation to a tune of $ 370 million. In addition, emergence of other cities such as Victoria and Queensland is also offering stiff competition for exhibition events. Internationally, a new casino opened at Macau coupled with improvements and expansion of existing venues in Singapore increases competition for tradeshows and conventions in Asian-Pacific region. Different communities live and work in Sydney. This is because the city values and respects diverse traditions and multicultural society. Interestingly, the city believes that diversity strengthens Sydney and appreciates efforts made by all people towards its success. In this light, Sidney council works in collaboration with the entire community, corporate, non-governmental organization, federal government and also international community in promoting the city as a preferred destination. Destination Marketing Sydney like other destination cities is competing in the global marketplace for the discerning tourists. However, that factors that influence visitors to choose a destination over the other are determined by attractiveness, diverse and interesting cultures, accommodative people, weather, ease of accessibility, favourable exchange rate among others. According to Visser and Njuguna (2002), these features draw tourists to Sydney. The city appeals to first time visitors through traditionally marketed images. On the other hand, return visitors are appealed by previous experience and things they have previously experienced within the city together with new attractions. The city council continues to work closely with producers of major events and festivals to promote both retail opportunities and tourism within the city. With the increased use of technology, the city has created ‘what on’ website that advertises unique experiences and attractive events to would be visitors. Nevertheless, the city management continues to not only market, but also develop marketing materials that promote Sydney’s unique villages and other forms of experiences. Tourism Trends Sydney is Australia’s premier destination and a gateway to New South Wales (NSW). In 2012, it attracted 10.5 million international visitors with 4.3million of these tourists residing directly in Sydney’s Local Government Area (LGA). In 2012, 20.3 million domestic day trip visitors visited Sydney spending about $ 2.3 billion. Globally, Sydney receives 30% of international visitors to hence exemplifying it status as a global city. In this respect, the visitors contributed over $5 billion to the city’s economy in 2012. Considering the city’s 24/7 tourism industry, the city operates roughly 10,000 businesses providing employment to about 26,700 people (UNWTO, 2012). Interestingly, Tourism Forecasting Committee predicts that Sydney will host about 105 million visitors by the year 2020-21. Notably, cruise ship arrivals are considered the fastest growing component in the tourism industry with 265 cruise ships visited Sydney harbour in 2012-2013. According to statistics, both crew and passengers spent approximately $350 million which is projected to rise to $ 1.1 billion by 2019-2020. According to WTO (2012), the tourism revenues increased in 2011-2012 by 2.1% translating to $ 26 billion. Despite, the nominal decline in share of global tourists by 0.7%, Sydney share of international arrivals was at 30% in 2011. Nevertheless, the city strives to overtake other global cities such as Beijing and Seoul as a premier convention and conference destination. In this regard, it plans to build a 3,500 seat convention centre that will attract large business conferences. The construction of 4,000 seat star city, a multi-purpose venue and redevelopment of SICEEP with a capacity of hosting 12,000 delegates also exemplifies Sydney as business, convention and conference hub. Summary Opportunities Despite the existence of the fore mentioned challenges, the city has a number of opportunities. WTO (2012) observes that realisation of these opportunities will reinforce the city’s position as a premier tourist destination. The identified opportunities include; positioning Sydney in both new and emerging markets such as China, India and Korea, refurbishment and improvement of SICEEP. Moreover, expansion of Sydney attraction facilities, events and other experiences will enable the city to continue ranking amongst the best worldwide. Having the ability to meet increasing accommodation demands, presence of high quality infrastructure and with its world class tourist attraction facilities, Sydney will remain a preferred destination worldwide. Constraints Even though Sidney ranks as a premier destination in Australia, it must continue securing its place on the international market as a destination for business, leisure, education and employment. Evidently, tourism sector in Sidney and Australia as a whole is facing numerous challenges. Some of these challenges include; Australians choice to travel internationally, the high value of Australian dollar, shortage in accommodation facilities, devastating effects of global economic crisis, increased competition and reduction in business and leisure trips among others. This is echoed by (Ko, 2005) who argues that about 5,000- 9,000 additional hotel rooms are required to meet the growing number of tourists. This raises the issue of eco and green tourism that is necessary in meeting sustainability targets. The other notable challenge is the increased need to deliver unique experiences that will continue attracting not only fist time visitors, but also subsequent return visits. Processes of overcoming challenges The city council and other stakeholders have an important role to play in retaining the city’s position as a preferred destination. Similar views were given by Gursoy, Kim and Uysal (2004) who suggested that the city council should work hand in hand with the federal government and other industry players to develop grow and diversify the city tourism attractions. Further, the city council should develop modern tourist attractions, engage in partnership and increase marketing campaigns particularly in the emerging markets in order to attract many tourists. Conclusion Based on this study, it is evident that tourism causes devastating effects on the environment. In this regard effective measures have to be devised in order to counter such negative effects. Surprisingly, tourism is ranked amongst other top revenue generation activities. The concept of sustainable tourism presents a perfect solution to challenges that come with increased tourism activities. This is because it supports the promotion of tourism as an economic generating activity while at the same time ensuring that negative social-cultural and environmental effects are checked. References Dwyer, L., Forsyth, P. and Spurr, R. (2004). Evaluating tourism’s economic effects: new and old approaches. Tourism Management, 25 (6), 307-317. Go, F. M., Gover, R. (2011). Integrated quality management for tourist destinations: a European perspective on achieving competitiveness. Tourism Management, 21 (5), 79-98. Gooroochurn, N. and Sugiyarto, G. (2005). Competitiveness Indicators in the Travel and Tourism Industry. Tourism Economics, 11(1), 25-43. Gursoy, D., Kim, K., & Uysal, M. (2004). Perceived Impacts of Festivals and Special Events by Ko, T.G., (2005). Development of a tourism sustainability assessment procedure: a conceptual approach. Tourism Management, 26(3), 431-445. Lee, C. K.., Lee, Y.K., & Lee B. K.. (2005). Korea’s Destination Image Formed by the 2002 World Cup. Annals of Tourism Research, 32(4), 839-858. Organizers: An Extension and Validation. Tourism Management, 25(2), 171-181. UNWTO (2012). A practical Guide to Destination Management. Madrid: UNWTO. Visser, N. and Njuguna, S. (2002). Environmental Impacts of Tourism on the Kenya Coast. In UNEP ed. Industry and Environment. Paris: UNEP. Waitt, G. (2003). Social Impacts of the Sydney Olympics. Annals of Tourism Research, 30(1), 194-215. World Tourism Organization (WTO). (2012). Performance indicators for tourism destinations in Asia and the Pacific Region. Madrid: WTO. Read More