Heritage Tourism UK - Essay Example

Special Interest Tourism - Heritage Tourism UK In some countries, tourism is one of the major economic activities. Special interest tourism is the provision of customized leisure and recreational experiences following certain expressed interests of either individual or group. People falling under this category of tourists those with Specific interests. For example, those interested in birds or even sea creatures. Mostly small tourism enterprises handle this kind of tourists. Heritage tourism is one of the various forms of special interest tourism. Heritage tourism can be said to be, the practice of attracting tourists to a place based on the unique characteristics of that locale’s history, landscape, and culture. Heritage tourism is probably one of the most popular forms of special interest tourism. The small tourism enterprises happen to be among the major stakeholders in heritage tourism. There are several management issues that range from decision making, knowledge management and transfer that affect their participation in heritage tourism. The survival of such enterprises highly depends on the awareness of their potential clients on the availability of their services (Moutinho, 2009:265). If knowledge management is to be applied at the destination, then focus on the organization, which dominates the thinking, needs to be expanded to accommodate knowledge stocks and flows within networks of organizations at the destination. This is a similar issue to that faced by network and creation. The needs, expectations and anticipated benefits of tourism differ from one destination to another. There is certainly no possibility of a single approach to destination management. As the people living in regions with tourism potential initiate a plan for what kind of tourism they want to develop, a comprehensive planning framework is useful and should be put to use more often. Promoting sustainable tourism within Local Agenda processes is a way to strengthen local stewardship of the environment. The heritage tourism’s main product issues include knowledge management and transfer, The danger of over-supply, Geographical concentration, Product standardization, competition, Dead, Changes in education, Forgotten and ignored themes, Soft heritage and hard heritage, The medium in relation to the message, Quality and customer satisfaction, Commercialization or conservation, Changing nature of the market, competition. The need for partnerships, popular culture and heritage, and Making the past relevant to the present and future (Sethi, P. 1999:213). The small tourism enterprises highly depend on knowledge manipulation (Nagle, G. 2002:128). A good number of willing clients will not visit the various heritage tourism sites unless they have information of its existence. The product role of marketing in tourism is to make the potential clients aware of the services that the company is offering. The product for tourism may include a bus tour, a hotel stay, a cruise and many others. The management therefore, has a huge responsibility of making sure that the information gets to their clients. They attain this by creating awareness campaigns to lure the potential clients. They create awareness either through mass media or internet. However the as the small scale tourism enterprises venture in to creating awareness, there is an alarm on over supply which might lead to congestion of the sites (Timothy, 2011:214). The UK is rich in heritage, and the wide variety of its heritage attractions proves it. As time goes on, the mode in which heritage is presented to the visitors is becoming ever more predictable. A tourist could for example, walk into a museum and correctly predict what to expect. This has highly affected the small tourism enterprises as it reduces the number of potential clients. Quality and customer satisfaction are important in management in all industries. The quality of the services that the enterprises render to their clients plays a very big role in improving the industry (Graham, & Howard, 2008: 148). This is because it will determine the satisfaction or dissatisfaction of the client. The management can accomplish this by receiving feedbacks from their clients and working on them. This can also be attained by applying technology and employing qualified staff. The unfair competition factors talks about political decisions that distort the attractions market. The differences can be noted between the public and private tourism sectors. In the case where the government has offered subsidies on certain products, the products end up costing less in the public facilities as compared to the private ones (Great Britain. 2010:64). This gives the management of the private tourism enterprises in competing with their public counterparts. The School-level education syllabus has changed in the UK in recent years. The current syllabus emphases more on mathematics and literature. This is a problem for heritage tourism as it highly affects the number of local tourists. If students are not covering their history and culture in details, they are unlikely to be enthusiastic heritage tourists. Heritage tourism may benefit from the fact that history is now taught in a more involving, interesting way as opposed to previously. Art-related heritage tourism in the UK will still be a minority market, given the lack of emphasis in the school curriculum these days of art history (Hoffman, 2006:167). In heritage tourism, there is always a tension between commercialization and conservation. Because of the more and more commercialization of heritage resources, there is a danger that the resource will suffer physical damage as a result of its popularity with tourists (Shepherd, & Yu, 2013). On the other hand, there is no doubt that the commercialization of heritage generates revenue that helps conserve heritage resources. However due do mismanagement, too often, income from publicly owned heritage simply disappears into general budgets, rather than reinvesting back into the improvement of the heritage. The future of heritage tourism in the UK relies on meeting the wants of the changing market. This would include factors like the want of many tourists not to just spectate but also participate (Ivanovic, 2008:83). There is also the clients’ hunger for new information apart from the ones they are familiar with. United Kingdom has been the leading in heritage tourism for decades. However, currently they face more and more competition as more heritage tourist destination continues entering the market. Heritage themes such as food and drink, sport, and nature are some of the areas that the UK heritage tourism were reluctant to venture in. Some of their recent competitors have highly exploited these areas. Other tourists’ destinations have also been using traditional festivals and major heritage-based events to attract tourists. Harlem heritage tours is one of the operators in the special interest tourism in the United Kingdom. There are many steps that they have taken toward encounters the issues mentioned above. In terms of knowledge transfer, they have launched a campaign aimed at creating awareness of the heritage sites. They have achieved this through their website www.harlemtours.com. They have also effectively dealt with the possibility of a visit by a large number of tourists (Burns, & Novelli, 2008). They have re-organized the scheduling of their program in such a manner that it will enable them to handle a group of tourists a time thus taking care of the possibility of the high number of tourists. They have also made accommodation arrangement with various accommodation firms around to make sure foreign visitors all get accommodated. The company ensures that their tour guides get adequate education to counter the possibility of monotonous mode of presentation to the tourists. This also increases the quality of their services to their client. Their insistence on feedback from their clients has contributed majorly in the improvement of their services (Pender, & Sharpley, 2004:86). The company also ensures high quality of services through monitoring of the whole tour process. The company also emphasizes a lot on the security of their client through scrutiny of their detail and uses of computerized tracking mechanism in any the case any of their clients goes missing. The company has also ventured in the emerging trend in special interests tourism. They attain this by the introduction of themes such as food and drink, and nature (Mccool, & Moisey, 2008:139). They achieve this through their cooperation with the local food producing firms like restaurants and hotels. They encourage them to introduce more cultural meals and drinks in their menus. This improves the foods and drinks aspect of heritage tourism. They have also encouraged active participation of their clients during the period they interact. The heritage tourism in the United Kingdom is so far the biggest. This is because of their numerous and diverse heritage tourist attraction. However over the past few years, they have been facing threats from newly emerging markets globally. There are also many other factors as discussed above that pose a challenge to the industry. Bibliography 1. Top of Form Bhatia, A. K. (2006). The business of tourism: concepts and strategies. New Delhi: Sterling. 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