Quality Issues in Heritage Visitor Attractions - Research Paper Example

Visitor Attraction Management: critical analysis of operational management issues of the attraction Globalization not only resulted in free cultural and economic transaction across the globe but at the same time it also resulted in opening up of several avenues and business transaction process that the human civilization has never witnessed before. Emergence of the tourism industry is an instance of one such phenomenon that not only became center of a great deal of monetary circulation but at the same time it has also become one of the most important sectors that determines lives of many people. Due to globalization it has become easy for people of different nations to communicate and know each other better and this aspect can be regarded as one of the most important reasons that the tourism industry has undergone such a huge boom in the last few years. Every nation has certain places of attraction that have either been made by them or offered by the nature. Since time immemorial human beings have always felt indomitable attraction to satisfy their visual and emotional pleasure. Rise of population and increase of average income of the common people have played important roles in the development of this sector. In this context, it also becomes important for the tourism departments of the respective countries to preserve their main attractions. Unfortunately, these are several such instances that such things are not properly performed and due to this reason several attractions are wasted due to sheer negligence. Consequently, all such acts of negligence often create negative impact over tourism sector of the nation and in correspondence it also affects the total economy of that region as well as of the whole nation. Thus, with the intent to preserve the centers of tourist attractions of a nation it has given birth to a new discipline of management: visitor attraction management. This new discipline of management, with the intention to successfully accomplish its job, has classified the places of visitor attraction in two categories namely, natural visitor attraction and purpose built visitor attraction or “human-made attractions”. (Swarbrooke, chap. 2, 2) Such segmentation of the centers of visitor attraction has made it easy for visitor attraction management identify, protect, preserve and maintain the major centers of tourist attraction across the world easy and at the same time it has also become easy for people related with such management to identify and provide protection to the tourist attraction that is in demand. Natural Visitor Attraction The places of natural visitor attraction are perhaps those sites that are attracting perhaps the largest number of visitors every year. Most of the tourism boards and natural tourism departments earn a great deal of revenue every year from these places of natural attraction. However, there are several factors that are creating problems in the context of natural visitor attractions. Increasing rate of global pollution is one of the main reasons that most of the places of natural visitor attractions are suffering to a great extent and at the same, as due to such effect the whole situation is going down, these places are also losing huge number of visitors. These aspects are not proved to be much encouraging for economy of all those nations, economic structure of which depends to a great extent over the tourism. At the same time there are several such regions where broad spectrum of natural beauty exists but at the same time due to lack of sincerity, those regions have not been identified properly. Consequently “sustainable marketing” of these places have not been done properly and people do not get the information to visit to those places. (Swarbrooke) John Swarbrooke observes that in the context of natural visitor attraction the concerned tourism department must be “trying to market the attraction so that seasonality of demand is reduced and to lower visitor numbers at peak times, so reducing the overuse of attractions that many occur at the height of the season.”(Swarbrooke) This observation seems to be very strategic and practical from a theoretical perspective but at the same time there is no denial of the fact that there are several other factors which are integrally associated with marketing of such aspects. Geographical barrier is one of the main reasons that often act as barriers to such things and proper strategic implementation of such aspects is often restricted due to lack of proper human resource that is required for execution of such marketing strategies. Since the post globalization era human resource management concept has undergone remarkable change across the world. It is widely known that work culture, commitment of employees towards an organization and employee-organizational relationship vary in different cultural and national context. As globalization has resulted in cultural intercourse to a greater extent compared to the past and it also created huge impact over existing work culture of a particular nation, (Warr, 2007, p. 287) several changes have also occurred at the International human resource management context. Now days, elements of culture and tradition are not sole determining factors for identifying human resource management of a company but at the same time several other factors, including, socio-economic conditions, political and legal aspects have also become important factors that play a great role in determining human resource management of an organization or take a leading part when it comes to launching certain policies by the HRM department of an organization. (Poole, 1999, p. xxv) Linda Holbeche, in her book, Aligning Human Resources and Business Strategy has rightly observed, “… corporate strategies tend not to be made in isolation – they should take into account the changing need of external stakeholders such as customers, the changing business environment, including markets and the critical resources needed to carry out the strategic aims. These critical resources include such factors as capital and technology, and increasingly rely on people – their brain power, access to information and ability to learn new approaches.” (Holbeche, 2001, p. 83) While implementing strategies “Differentiation and customer service” have also been main points of focus of HRM department of an organization. (Grundy and Brown, 2003, 36) However, when it comes to utilization of human resource in the context of natural tourism attraction management, proper implementation of the policies have not always been successful. One of the main reasons has been that it is quite tough to get the right kind of employees that would devote themselves for execution of such jobs. Apart from that when it comes to promotion of a new place of natural visitors attraction, the companies or the tourism agencies do not tend to offer much remuneration and this aspect also becomes one of the crucial negative factors in the execution of marketing decisions or implementations. Visitor management is an important concept in the area of natural visitor attractions. Natural visitor attractions can be categorized as service operation and an integral part of the network of these operations is visitor management in the tourist spots. One major objective of visitor management is to control visitor demand in such a way that demand always matches with the visitor capacity of the attractions. Management requires to adopt certain strategies which are capable enough of shifting visitor demand in the tourist spots from peak season to off-peak season. Very often management use pricing strategies in order to adjust demand. For example, in peak seasons, prices are set at higher level to control the flow of visitors, whereas in off peak season various discounts are offered to attract visitors. (Fyall, Garros, Leask, pp. 139) Demand management is very crucial to increase the efficiency level of the service operation. A number of techniques can be implemented by the managers in order to control the number of visitors in the tourist spots as well as to control the behaviors of the tourists also. Unless the number of visitors in a particular tourist sports at a particular time is properly controls it may result in over crowding which in turn causes deterioration in the quality of the service provided by the tourist organizations to the visitors which results in nothing but unsatisfactory travel experience for the visitors. In order to maintain appropriate standard of the services provided to the tourists as well as to provide then with good travel experience, appropriate visitor management is essential. Some of the techniques that the managers can undertake to control the number and behaviors of tourist in tourist spots are as follows (Fyall, Garros, Leask, pp. 133-135): Provision of several price incentives: During peak seasons, one of the influential pricing strategies to control overall demand would the use of elevated admission prices. This pricing technique is quite efficient to address a number of problems like overcrowding, various infrastructural damages, congestion of traffic etc. The implementation of an elevated admission price by management has also the potential of according the users to pay for any damages to the resources that they have used at the time of their traveling by the application of the principle of ‘user pays’. The strategy of elevated admission prices is also quite helpful in increasing adequate revenue to fund the other strategic goals of the attractions including conservation of the attractions, provision of required information regarding the sites to the tourists and so on. Certain objections have, however, raised regarding the efficiency if this pricing strategy in controlling visitors. Very often it is argues that the demand for natural visitor attractions is price elastic only at low prices. Therefore, any increase in the admission prices above a certain token level is expected to generate not so significant impact on demand as after the token level demand starts to become price inelastic. Hence, frequently the strategy of elevated admission prices is regarded as a blunt instrument for controlling demand, particularly in peak times. Not only that, but among managers this instrument is quite unpopular also. This strategy, however, still considered to be useful for visitor management. For example, variation in price levels can be used to encourage visitor demand in off-peak seasons and discourage it in peak times. Management can also offer some special prices to some particular types of visitor, such as school groups. There are some important elements in the marketing mix at the hand of management, which can be used to manage visitors. For example, demand during of off-peak seasons can be enhanced by advertising or providing special arrangement for joint ticketing etc. if a nation wants to distribute total flow of tourists evenly among all its attractive sites, the government can adopt the strategy of de-marketing the heavily crowded sites and marketing sites which are used less intensively. Apart from controlling number and behaviors of visitors, another integral part of visitor management in natural visitor attractions is to ensure high standard of the services that are provided to the visitors. In order to provide enriching experience to the visitors, the most important task at the hands of the management of tourism organizations is to utilize its human resources such a way that services provided by the staffs of the organization to the visitors are of high standards. Hence, human resource management is very crucial in the management of natural visitor attractions. (Swarbrooke, 2002, pp. 259-260) One of the important tasks at the hand of the managers of a tourism organization is to utilize the human resources of the firm appropriately. In a business like tourism, where sufficient attention is required to be paid on providing adequate level of comfort to the visitors so that they gain satisfactory experience from their tours which are mainly a way of spending leisure hours, particularly in case of natural visitor attractions, it is very essential that the staffs which are providing required services to the visitors are highly motivated in doing their jobs, otherwise it would not be possible to maintain high standards. Therefore, an important role of the managers is to motivate their staffs and keep their enthusiasms at high level. Managers also requite to adopt various types of strategies to enhance job satisfaction of their staffs. (Swarbrooke, 2002, pp. 260) Purpose Built Visitor Attraction Purpose built visitor attraction is another important category of attractions. Purpose built attractions can be defined as human made buildings, different sorts of structures and sites that have been made only to attract visitors. Some examples of purpose built visitors attractions are amusement parks, theme parks, etc. These sites are purpose built in the sense that all these sites have been built in such a way that they can accommodate the needs of the visitors. Often purpose built visitors attractions are confused with those human made structures or sites which were also built initially for particular purpose other than attracting visitors towards it, but now are treated famous travel destinations which attract huge visitors who mainly come to these sites not to fulfill the purposes for which these were built initially but to use them purely as the amenities for leisure. These sites are also purpose built, but they were not built for the purpose of attracting visitors to it, hence these sites do not fall under the category of purpose built visitors attractions. Like natural visitors attractions, purpose built visitors attractions are also permanent in nature. A major difference between natural visitor attractions and purpose built visitors attractions, however, is that tourism is very often considered to be risky and a threat to natural visitor attractions, while in case of purpose-built visitor attractions tourism is considered to be beneficial for the sites. Actually natural visitor attractions were not built to attract visitors and hence they were not designed to accommodate visitors need. Consequently natural visitor attractions are vulnerable to damages caused by visitors. Tourism may result in environmental degradation of these sites through intensive use of these areas by visitors if proper care is not taken. Purpose-built attractions, on the other hand, are built with the purpose of attracting substantial resources towards it and therefore they are designed in such a way that they can accommodate all possible needs of visitors. Hence they are far less vulnerable to the damages caused by visitors. (Swarbrooke, 2002, pp. 5) The number of visitor attractions has dramatically multiplied since the end of the Second World War. Different types of package tours, substantial development in air travel have made the travel spots in distant places easily accessible to a far more large number of people than ever before. not only that increase in ownership of cars has also made it possible for a large number of people to various isolated travel destinations within their own countries which were earlier completely inaccessible through public transport systems of those countries. Although natural visitor attractions have got significant attention well before the Second World War, purpose built visitor attraction have started to gather immense recognition since 1950. Recognition of immense economic benefits through tourism has led to substantial growth in purpose built attractions. Purpose-built attractions are designed in such a way that they encourage people to spend their money on these leisure amenities. Some of the factors that have played significant role in increasing the amount of purpose-built visitor attractions include significant changes in life styles, substantial increase in disposable income and leisure time, huge development in technological front, and changes in the tastes of visitors. Earlier people want to spend their leisure time in the lap of the nature, but over their preferences have become tilted towards man made attractions like different kinds of malls, amusement parks, and so on. Purpose built attractions can very well be recognized within the concept of post-modernism. (Sharpley, 2002, pp.1-2) Unlike other man made tourist attractions which were not initially built with an intention to attract tourists, such as religious places like Cathedrals, purpose-built attractions always put their emphasis on attracting more and more tourists as without tourism they would not exist. Hence, operational management strategies applied by the managers in case of purpose built attractions are quite different in a number of aspects from the strategies that are adopted to manage other attractions. In case of other types visitor attractions prime focus was placed on controlling the number of visitors so that over crowding, traffic congestion can be avoided by moderating the flow of visitors in peak season hours. One of the important objectives behind undertaking several visitor management strategies is to protect the infrastructure of visitor attractions which are immensely vulnerable to damages from over crowding. In case of purpose built attractions, however, prime focus is placed on attracting increasing number of visitors to the sites and maximizing economic impacts. In most of the cases purpose built attractions are made in order to earn huge revenues and in order to maximize revenues all possible efforts are taken to minimize environmental impacts to ensure the sustainability of the sites. Economic benefits will be maximized if management is capable enough to attract substantial tourists to purpose built travel destinations. (Leask and Yeoman, 1999; pp 22) Since major objectives of the management in case of purpose-built attractions is to maximizing economic benefits through increasing the number of tourists to the sites, the first and foremost thing that management needs to consider is to provide easy physical access to the sites to wider range of people. Very often site managers try to improve accessibility of the sites to people by adopting a very unique strategy. Very often managers improve facilities for those people who are disabled. It is assumed that if facilities of disable visitors increase, then it would automatically benefits all types of visitors. This kind of strategy is very often employed by the managers of heritage sites. Among several forms of disability, the most common form is sight impairment, particularly in case of those who visits heritage sites. In order to increase visibility of architectures, site managers often use targeted lighting which not only helps partially visually disabled people have a clear view of those architectures, but also these who are not visually disabled. Similarly, site managers arrange for provisions of seating so that the entire site can be visited comfortably without putting much stress on legs. These kinds of seating arrangements are not only beneficial for those have difficulties in walking, but also for everybody. Thus by undertaking special efforts to increase physical accessibility of the sites to physically disabled, the managers of purpose built attractions not only enhances the attractiveness of the sites to physically disabled people but also to normal visitors. (Shackley, 2000, pp. 70-72) However, the issue of providing easy physical access of purpose built site is not as simple as just providing a number of facilities for physically disabled so that along with normal people, disabled people also find it worth spending their money on these sites. Managers of purpose-built sites also needs to take into account a number of other factors in order to increase visitor flow to the sites so that these sites could provide sufficient amount of economic benefits to the countries. Apart from undertaking strategies to attract disabled population along with normal people, managers should undertake the following strategies to order to enhance physical access of the sites (Drummond, 2000, pp.103-105; Leask and Yeoman, 1999; pp 39): Availability of sufficient transport facilities and appropriate parking arrangements: While developing new purpose built sites, managers should take into account public and private transport facilities available to the potential visitors. Apart from this, the means by which visitors are anticipated to come to a proposed site should be taken into account at the time designing the site. If it is found that the location of the site is such that most of the people can avail the site through public transport, then it would not be necessary to built huge parking area within the site. But if availability of public transport seems to be not so good, then most of the visitors have to come to the sites through private transports. In this case, it is necessary to built large parking area with the site to avoid traffic congestion. If appropriate parking arrangement is missing in any purpose built attraction site then it would loose its attraction to the visitors. Easy access to all parts of the sites: People spend their money on leisure amenities to have good time. Everybody wants maximum utilization of their money. Now in case of a purpose built site, utility of visitors will be maximized when they will have easy access to all parts of the site. If some parts remain unvisited, then it would leave visitors unsatisfied. Hence, managers have to ensure that visitors can easily avail every parts of the site. Apart from all these management issues to attract more visitors to the sites and maximize economic benefits, another important task at the hands of managers is to ensure high service quality of its staffs. To increase the number of visitors, it is necessary to deliver the service in such a way that it provides visitors with highly satisfying experience so that the site becomes popular and more and more new visitors come and old visitors make their repeat visits. Here comes the issue of human resource management. (Swarbrooke, 2002, pp. 259-260) Managers of purpose built sites employ several motivational strategies to motivate staff so that they deliver high quality services to the visitors. Since, the main objective of any purpose built visitor sites is to increase the number of visitors managers need to motivate their staff by the best possible way so that they can do their allotted works with full enthusiasm. Management also needs to ensure that staffs have no grievances because if staffs are not by themselves are satisfied with their jobs it would not be possible for them to offer their services with high standards. Therefore, in case of purpose built visitors attractions also, management has to ensure job satisfaction of the employees in order to extract high level of performances from them which would in turn translate into higher number of visitors to the sites. (Swarbrooke, 2002, pp. 260) Conclusion Operational management of attractions are very crucial for efficient management of the sites, be it natural visitor attractions or purpose-built attractions. However, operational strategies are different in certain respects between the two types of attractions that have been discussed here. In case of natural visitor attractions prime motive of management is to ensure sustainability of the sites on a long term basis as these sites are immensely vulnerable to visitors’ impact, particularly environmental and infrastructural damages that are caused by the use of these sites by visitors. Hence, operational management strategy puts its major focus on controlling the number and behaviors of visitors so that adverse visitor impacts on the sites can be minimized. Operational management strategy in case of purpose built visitor attractions however focus on increasing the number of visitors to the sites so that economic benefits can be maximized through substantial increase in revenue generation. In one management issue, however, these two types of visitor attractions have great similarities – the issue of human resource management. It is as important to natural visitor management as it is to purpose built visitor attractions. The issues relating to human resource management are also quite similar in both of these cases. In each of these two types of visitor attractions, managers want to motivate their staffs in the highest possible manner and to provide their employees with sufficient amount of job satisfaction. Some important steps that a manager can take to highly motivate their staffs are as follows: Applying sensitive way to manage people in such a way that staffs can feel that their managers take efforts to understand them. Praising staffs on occasions of their good performances and criticizing their mistakes in a constructive way so that they can learn from their mistakes and lending their helping hands towards them in troubles situations. Apart form all these, managers can also provide some financial incentives in the form of bonus or commissions to motivate them in their work. Non financial incentives can also be provided in terms of gifts, awards, trips etc. To improve job satisfaction of staffs, on the other hand, managers can take the following steps: Providing individual staff with more power in the process of making decisions in their everyday works. Implementing rotational system of job assignment in order to prevent boredom from doing monotonous tasks every time. Promoting staff on the basis of their merit rather than on the basis of the length of service period. (Swarbrooke, 2002, pp. 259-260) Managers need to implement all their strategies quite intelligently and efficiently to ensure optimum utilization of the attractions and have to deal with human resources very carefully so that visitors are provided with high quality services during their visits to the sites. Works Cited 1. Yeoman, Ian and Drummond, Siobhan. Quality Issues in Heritage Visitor Attractions, Cassell. 2000. 2. Evans, Nigel, Campbell, Davis, and Stonehouse, George. Strategic Management for Travel and Tourism, Butterworth Heinemann. 2003. 3. Leask, Anna and Yeoman, Ian. Heritage Visitor Attractions, Cassell. 1999. 4. Shackley, Myra L., Visitor Management, Butterworth Heinemann. 2000. 5. Sharpley, R., (2002) The Tourism Business, an Introduction, BEP. 6. Swarbrooke, John. The Development and Management of Visitor Attractions, Butterworth Heinemann. 2002. 7. Fyall, Anna, Garrod, Brian, and Leask, Anna. Managing visitor attractions: new directions. Butterworth-Heinemann, 2003. Read More