Destination Management: London - Essay Example

? Destination Management: Case study of London and Destination development The has people from diverse backgrounds and cultures, and over 300 languages are used within its territories. It contains four global Heritage Sites including London Tower, Kew Gardens, and the historic Greenwich settlement; the side made up of (Westminster Abbey, Palace of Westminster, and St Margaret’s church). Other popular landmarks comprise of Buckingham Palace, the London Eye, Tower Bridge, St Paul’s Cathedral, the Shard, and Trafalgar Square. London has many galleries, museums, sporting events, libraries, and other cultural institutions, comprising the National gallery, British Museum, 40 West End theatres and British Library. The London underground is identified as the oldest underground railway existing throughout the world. London can be said to be in the consolidation of destination development. As mentioned it is rich in both natural and artificial attraction's sites. Besides that it has vigorous tourism advertisements and promotion activities that are part of destination management efforts. For instance, visitlondon.com outlines the lined-up activities' events within London that appeals to people around the world. Visitors continued to flock to London, and it is said to attract 27 million visitors who stay overnight annually (Beesley-De, 2013). 2. Approach to destination management Basically, destination management involves three main phases, including development planning, marketing and management. Development planning involves assessing the potential of the destination, consultation and investment. Marketing involves research, target market, mix and planning, and visits and yield. Management involves protecting resources, quality assurance and sustainable growth. Achieving these means competitive tourism to a destination. However, it must be underscored that destinations are dynamic and always evolving (Swrabook, 1999). This means that London is a continuously evolving destination that will have something new or rebrand itself to appeal to as many visitors as possible. As indicated above London boasts of some of the most visited tourism sites around the world. Besides it has the necessary facilities and amenities that support tourism. However, this success and sustainability of the same can only be achieved through consolidated efforts. There is a team responsible for development planning, marketing and management of London as a destination of tourism. This team comprises of appointees from the government of London and stakeholders in the tourism sector. This team is charged with identify what London can offer both naturally and artificially. The work of this team can be easily seen from the official visitor's guide identified as visitlondon.com. Here a visitor can discover London, know things to do, where they can stay, travel information and special offers. This makes London one of the most organized tourism destinations that receives a high number of visitors in Europe and worldwide. 3. System of governance London is home for two levels of government the local and national government. However, it is the local government that is responsible for administration. The local government administration is divided into two tiers-a local tier and a citywide, strategic tier. The great London Authority (GLA) coordinated the citywide administration whereas 33 smaller authorities coordinate local administration. The GLA is made up of two elected arms of government the Mayor, who occupies an executive office and London assembly check mayor’s decisions and can reject or accept the mayor’s proposals annually (Beesley-De, 2013). The command market system operates in London. The government owns and operates a significant portion of the factors of production. Infrastructure, including roads, airports, seaports and the underground railway system are owned and controlled by the government. At the same time, major tourism attraction sites as identified above are owned by the government (GLA Economics, 2011). The government also controls the amount and flow of capital. It ensures economic stability, access to capital and amount of money that can flow in and out of the London. Most of the benefits accrue to the government, and it decides the way such benefits are distributed by allocation among individuals. The essence of this is to ensure residents benefit from tourism activities that happen in London (Beesley-De, 2013). 4. Research undertakings/application of research Tourism research is important for both the destinations managers (providers of tourism products) and consumers of tourism products. Destinations managers will always research to know the potential markets for their products and find ways to reach out to the market so that they can increase their sales in any given time. On the other hand, consumers always look for information about destinations to aid in decision making. The more they get real and raw data about a destination the more the chances of picking that destination for holiday, business or other form of a visit. Things are not different for London as tourism research is done by various stakeholders, including the GLA, local authorities, hotel and restaurants, tourism agencies and organizations, and academic institutions among other independent information users. According to the recent research by GLA Economics London is among the most visited cities around the world. In 2010, London received more international visitor spend as compared o the rest of UK combined and visitor volumes in the city rose whereas they fall in the the rest of UK (Kyte, 2012). Domestic tourism provides the less spend per visitor in London than international per visitor spend. As the GLA economics report indicates London’s future as a destination of tourism is likely to emanate greatly from the emerging economies that show the highest per visitor expenditure. These are non-traditional markets such as Africa, Middle East, Eastern Europe and Asia. The report also acknowledges the need to differentiate products because what appeals to one market may deter the other. Hence, market research in London serves two main functions identifying potential markets and ways to attract visitors. 5. Tourism Policy & Planning London recognizes tourism as part of its strengths that help it improve the economic, socio-cultural and political goals and aspirations. As a result, GLA has comprehensive policy tourism policy and planning. GLA plays its part by providing the necessary environment for tourism to thrive and maintaining a level playing field for all players on the field for the advantage of all stakeholders. Development planning and strategic planning involve the government, communities and private sector. It looks for the elements of supply and demand. Supply side factors comprise of transportation, infrastructure, water, electricity, sewerage disposal, attractions, accommodations, food services, facilities, services and industrial elements. The GLA owns and manages the factors of production and is assisted by the 33 local authorities in ensuring that there is a production of tourism products and the environment is clean, safe and attractive. The focus is directed towards attractions, facilities and services (Tourism & Travel Research Institute, 2007). Tourism planning in London aims at enhancing visitor satisfaction, developing infrastructure and offering recreation facilities for residents and visitors, improving economy and success; sustainable resources use, and community and area integration. It involves short-term plans to satisfy current visitors and maintain the attractions for the future. Strategic planning involves enhancing attractions for visitors and bringing on board emerging markets of visitors. London has day and overnight visits. Day visits are associated with international visitors and overnight are associated with local and national visitors. In essence, tourism development planning is done from destination, national (UK), regional (Europe) and international (the rest of the world) (GLA Economics, 2011). This takes into consideration issues such as distance, competition, cultural differences, and globalization. The GLA is determined to increase the number of visitors and make London the darling for visitors from various corners of the world, and these can be seen in the organizing of international events such as London Olympics. 6. Stakeholders Stakeholders in tourism industry are the GLA, private sector players and communities. Every stakeholder is charged with different but complementary duties and responsibilities in building and promoting London as a tourist destination. The GLA as identified above is charged with ensuring that tourism basics, and necessities are in the right shape and course that attract and satisfy visitors. It also carries out regulations on aspects-related architecture, water supply, sewerage disposal systems, solid waste disposal, cultural interactions (acceptable and unacceptable behavior) and conservation of attraction sites. The GLA government also promotes tourism through organizing local and international events such as the Olympics to attract many visitors. In addition, the GLA ensures that there is a good environment for private sectors to drive growth of tourism and the communities residing in London's benefits (ONS Tourism Intelligence united, 2011). The private sector on their own and in partnership with the public sector enhances tourism in London by creating the products and services required by visitors. The private sector runs hotels and Restaurants, bars, transport, tour guiding, and accommodation services among others. They include tour agencies and organizations, tourism associations and other private players. Communities residing in London participate in tourism activities both directly and indirectly. Direct participation involves offering labor to the tourism sector, social-cultural interactions, hosting visitors and safeguarding the attraction sites. Indirect participation involves indirect employment and improvement to the environment for tourism. The stakeholders complement each other to ensure mutual benefit and development London as a tourist destination. 7. Forms of Tourism There are different forms of tourism that can be associated with London. Broadly, tourists visiting the city are grouped into three: holiday, business and Friend and relatives. However, this can be broken down into formal forms of tourism, including cultural, Ecotourism, entertainment Tourism, village Tourism, Adventure Tourism, sports Tourism, theme and amusement park tourism, MICE tourism, shopping tourism, heritage and Nostalgia Tourism, family and Friends tourism, Yachting and Sailing tourism, health and wellness tourism, Medical tourism, Railway tourism, canal and river tourism, golf tourism and business tourism. Virtually, all the forms of tourism can be associated with London (VisitLondon corporation, 2013). Besides the rich historical, natural and artificial attraction sites associated with London, there are 300 languages spoken, 43 universities, arts (world-renowned renowned theatres) and rich cultural orientations promote and encourage cultural tourism. Through the association of London Theatres, London offers entertainment tourism through organizing entertainment events that feature renowned personalities and eye catching performances at renowned theatres that attract visitors. Some of the visitors just move to London to adventure where they get to discover for themselves other parts around the world. Sports tourism has also become common on London having hosted three recent Olympics. It is also home of most of the popular soccer clubs in English premier league. Participators and spectators always visit the city thereby supporting sports tourism. MICE tourism like in the Asian Tigers and the U.S, London offers an environment for ‘Meetings, Interactions, Conferences and Exhibitions where people gather for different business events. 8. Application of sustainability indicators (social, economic, & environmental) Sustainability requires that the present social, economic and environmental status is conserved for future generations. In other words, sustainable destination management as identified in London is tourism development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. Tourism planning and policy is a key London’s efforts to attain sustainability. The intention of planning is to ensure that the city make good use of the available tourism potential but does no compromise it for future generations to have an equal or even better share of the same. As noted above London is one of the leading tourism destinations around the world with many popular tourist attractions. As of 2011, it attracted 15.3 million of international visitors becoming the world’s most visited city in terms of international visitors. This demonstrates sustainability in terms of fulfilling current generation needs in terms of employment and market (Buccellato, Webber, White, Ritchie, & Begun, 2010). Other main indicators of sustainability include economics, notable attractions and museums. Tourism is part of the strengths of London as an economic pillar. In 2011, visitors to the city spent ?9.4 billion that are modestly greater than half the sum international visitors spent in the entire United Kingdom that year. Notable attractions such as London Eye, Shard, Westminster Abbey, Tower of London and other major tourism attractions have been identified and conserved as the city’s tourist attractions. Museums are many in the London area. They include British Museum, the Natural History Museum, and the Science Museum among others, which give London heritage and nostalgia. Parks and open spaces are many in London where tourists rest, stroll and relax in. Some of them are Regent’s park, Green Park, Greenwich Park, St. James’s Park and Hampstead health. The preservation of these components of tourism indicates social, economic and environmental sustainability efforts, plans and strategies have been implemented. 9. Competition and collaboration London collaborates with other tourist destinations in the UK such as the competitive south west UK. Their collaborations ensure that they share challenges, strengths, and opportunities. Under such collaborations, different destinations promote their products and services in a collaborative manner that ensures that a visitor can have a variety to sample and help consumers in decision making. 10. Destination Marketing Marketing of tourism destination is one of the core activities undertaken at destinations. The idea behind marketing is for a destination to get a comparative advantage and attract more visitors as compared to competitors and meet its capacity (Middleton, 2002). London uses several techniques of marketing to market its tourism products and services. These techniques include advertising through traditional media, social media, destination website, websites and channels of both local and international tourism agencies and organizations, government to government promotion, using prominent people around the world, as well as organizing popular events such as Olympic Games. Through different media locally, nationally, regionally and internationally London showcases the products it offers to the different categories of social media. One of the ways of doing this is organizing for events that are always covered by almost all media worldwide. The other is using tour agencies and organization within and outside UK that operates or collaborates with those that operate in London. Research indicates that a number of tourists trust their tour guide companies and agents to get information that aid in decision making. Therefore, such people will consult with such organization or their websites (Sanchez-Franco & Rondan-Catalufia, 2010). Destination websites are also consulted by many tourists because today most of them have adequate information that aid in decision making, although it is argued that some exaggerate or misrepresent facts concerning the destination. Apart from websites, social media has also proven its role in providing travel search information. Because of providing user-generated content and electronic word of mouth, users use it to get information from the experiences or share experiences on destinations with their network on social media (Yoo & Gretzel, 2011). Governments enter into bilateral agreements to enhance trade and tourism between them. This encourages and promotes tourism, an opportunity that the GLA does not spare for marketing London’s tourism richness. Last but not least, London is known for organizing and hosting popular events such as Olympics that bring on board participators and spectators of different sports. Therefore, marketing is an important component of the tourism activities within the city. 12. Tourism Trends Tourism trends provide London with information about the direction that tourism is going to be in the future. Research indicates that international visits are going to increase modestly by 3.3% by 2030 and even more by 2050 (United nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO), 2011). The boost in this case is emerging economies where individual incomes are going up thereby encouraging travelling to different destination for various reasons such as visiting friends and relatives, holiday, and business. London is currently facing competition on the list of most visited cities around the world where it exchanges top positions with Bangkok, Hong Kong, Singapore and Macau. This means that the city needs to re-examine its strategy and create a comparative advantage over its competitors. Domestic tourism is yet to achieve its potential. Even though, it represents the highest number of overnight stay tourist, it’s spending per tourist is very low as compared to international visitors. Globalization and advancement in technology present another dimension in tourism that is both an opportunity and challenge for tourism (PWC, 2011). The world is becoming a global village, and it’s upon a destination such as London to prove itself attractive to tourists in both artificial and natural attraction. Tourism has become a major source of foreign exchange and is ranked only second to oil in world trade. This means that tourism is there to shape social, economic, environmental and political directions of destinations (Casssar & Creaco, 2012). However, London is keenly following the different trends in tourism through tourism, and market researches as well as adoption of current aspects of tourism. 11. Sustainable responsible destination development As discussed above tourism has become part of the strengths of destinations. It is contributing to the economics of the destinations in various ways, including the provision of employment and generation of revenue (foreign exchange) in form of visitors spends. Essentially, sustainable tourism development also goes milestones in reducing poverty, fostering economic development and promoting natural resources conservation. This brings in a new dimension or set of activities that have to be considered in destination management and development (Cooper, Fletcher, David, & Wahill, 2008). It is upon various stakeholders to work in compliment to each other to deliver tourism experience that will be more beneficial to everyone currently without compromising the potential for future generations. Traditional western destinations, which have high tourism strength operate in a very competitive context. Therefore, the focus in both research and academic teaching in the area of destination management is focusing on strategic approaches to management, including lobbying, planning, marketing, and functions of developing supply to make sure long-term success is achieved on a worldwide market. However, the background of tourism destinations may differ a lot depending on the target spot’s stage of development, its political or historical context and socio-cultural, economic and ecological environments. As such different destinations have different priorities and challenges facing them. For instance, London enjoys a high number of international visits that contribute very much on its day visit, and visit spends. However, it faces a challenge from the traditional high-potential American market because inadequacy in terms of natural sites where the Americans would prefer their own natural attraction's sites to London’s and only considers London for its rich historical sites. This forces the city to rethink on the strategy to bring such a market fully on board and venture into new markets (Beesley-De, 2013). Over the last decade, tourism has seen new dimension, especially in terms of recreation, leisure, holiday, business, events, and sports, a development that has been prioritized by the GLA government and the city agency of Tourism, therefore, on highest level. This development together with the rethinking amongst international tourism players as part of sustainable development caused various activities of international collaboration and competition for the field. Such interventions have, in principle, two dimensions: some were successfully lending support to operations and structures for recently emerging specialized tourism segments whereas others are helping the government and its city institutions planning strategically for the entire destination (Tourism & Travel Research Institute, 2007). Although in historical or political context public and private partnerships have proven a challenge always elements of cooperation in some niches and instances have contributed to destination management achieving viable outcomes. Thus, governments, the private sector and communities have to join hands and embrace sustainable development that assures both the current generation and future generation benefit from tourism potential of a destination through good destination management practices (Beesley-De, 2013). 12. Conclusion Sustainable destination management, in principle, is better placed in helping a tourism destination or tourism to attain several development objectives; however, the complexity to the idea may push multi-sectoral development agencies and organizations to their know-how limits. Independently, from the political and historical context of the destination, it is a prerequisite to have a willingness to cooperate as well as joint understanding among private and public partners of what destination management is all about (Casssar & Creaco, 2012). Integration of both resources and efforts in implementing tourism-related activities is therefore, important for financial independence and ease implementation of development activities towards specific and priority areas in a destination. 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