Pasquale Novak
Local tourism development: Economic, Social and Environmental Sustainability
1. Introduction; 2. Sustainable tourism; 3. Tourism and local economic development;
4. Open territory resources and tourist offer; 5. Some conclusive considerations.
Abstract
Tourism development can be a powerful tool for economic growth, poverty reduction, and for
the conservation of natural and cultural resources. While tourism represents an important
development opportunity for many countries and communities, it can also have very negative
impacts, such as disrupting social structures, harming the socio-cultural authenticity of host
communities, and threatening natural and cultural heritage. Wise planning and management of
tourism development is key to keeping it a force for good. There are vast numbers of stakeholders,
with their different and sometimes opposing interests and agendas. Political choices must reconcile
immediate returns and longer-term benefits, which requires a clear and well-defined vision.
Sustainable tourism development thus represents a very complex task. In a sustainable tourism
development scenario, the various stakeholders have not only the right to participate in the decisionmaking process, but have also the responsibility to adopt environmentally, socially and
economically sustainable behaviours and practices. Communication processes can build awareness
of this responsibility and persuade stakeholders that sustainable practices ultimately benefit their
long-term interests. A communication strategy, which should identify how information, awareness
creation, advocacy, network building, conflict mitigation, and communication platforms will be
supported, is essential for any successful sustainable tourism development activity. Many
developing countries are looking to growth of tourism to solve their economic problems. For many
of them, their natural and cultural heritage represents one of their few economic resources. Natural
and cultural heritage are, however, not renewable and tourism must be addressed in a sustainable
way to prevent irreversible degradation to the resources that draw tourists to a country.
Unfortunately, developing countries frequently experience some difficulty in planning and
promoting sustainable tourism policies. Politicians are often guided by the necessity to achieve
rapid and visible results during their tenure. Choices about tourism development policies and
strategies are too often dictated by the necessity to satisfy immediate needs: sustaining balance of
payments, creating new jobs to reduce unemployment, etc. However, tourism development projects
producing immediate benefits may turn out to be negative in the long term if they threaten natural
and cultural heritage.
Key Concepts: Local tourism development, sustainable development, territory resources, tourist
offer.
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1. Introduction
Over the past decades, the impacts of tourism have received increasing attention in discourses
and studies on related development. The industry has a tremendous capacity for generating growth
in destination areas. On the other hand, its increasing impacts have led to a range of evident and
potential problems and of environmental, social, cultural, economic, and political issues in
destinations and systems, creating a need for alternative and more environment- and host-friendly
practices in development, planning, and policies.
During the 90s, the issue of sustainability entered a discourse which started to direct the
economic and political structures that constitute the present larger context of the tourism system, the
industry and its development (Bramwell and Lane, 1993 and Mowforth and Munt, 1998). The major
academic concern over its negative effects dates back at least to the 60s, however, and to the
tradition of research into carrying capacity. Over two decades, this idea formed a basis for
approaching and managing negative impacts, but after the period of enthusiasm from the late 60s to
the early 80s, it was realized that carrying capacity could be problematic both in theory and in
practice (O’Reilly, 1986 and Wall, 1982). By the early 90s, this issue was largely replaced in
research and development discourses by the idea of sustainable tourism. Although the impacts of
the industry are increasingly global, the main focus of research, management, and policy activities
has been on local character and its consequences, which is the scale of analysis adopted here.
2. Sustainable tourism
The demand for more environmentally sensitive and sustainable practices in tourism grew
rapidly in the 80s, on the strength of several long-term, interrelated processes in Western societies
which were manifested during that decade. The term and idea of sustainability was transferred to
tourism from the ideology of sustainable development following the publication of the Brundtland
Commission’s report Our Common Future in 1987 (WCED 1987). There had been some academic
and policy discussions on sustainability and the limits of growth in tourism prior to the Brundtland
report (Gössling and Hall 2005a), but ever since the report sustainability has been the central theme
in discussions on tourism and policies for its management.
The commission’s report defines sustainable development as a process that meets the needs of
present generations without endangering the ability of future ones to meet their own needs (WCED
1987). Sustainability rests on three integrated elements: the ecological, socio-cultural, and
economic. In addition, there are three fundamental principles: futurity, equity, and holism (Redcliffe
and Woodgate 1997). After the United Nations “Earth Summit” in 1992, the need to enforce the
principles of sustainable development within wider economic and social processes highlighted the
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role of sustainability and tourism’s potential for advancing the goals of such development (Berry
and Ladkin, 1997and Pigram and Wahab, 1997).
The growing need for sustainability was also a result of increased knowledge and concern
about tourism impacts and environmental issues in general (Holden 2003:95–96). Many of these
issues date back to the 60s and 70s, reflecting concerns over the impacts of economic and
population development and discussions on the limits to growth (Meadows, Meadows, Randers and
Behrens III 1972). In addition, a north/south divide became evident in the environmental debate at
the time and was also mirrored in tourism discussions. Although these concerns regarding the limits
to growth were truly global in scale, they were mainly channeled to destination-level analysis of the
impacts and questions of how to define the limits of growth and prevent detrimental outcomes of
development in destinations (Gössling and Hall 2005a). Rather than stating “the limits to growth” in
tourism, the questions were more concerned with issues and processes limiting or affecting growth
and the industry’s future. The message was the same, however: a negative outcome (collapse) was
not inevitable if development actors could change their policies.
At destinations, the growth and impacts of mass tourism in particular were seen to be
problematic for the environment, and also for the industry’s future. The negative impacts became
evident fairly early in the mass destinations on the Mediterranean coast, for example. During the
80s at the latest, these changes also seemed threatening for the industry’s viability and image
(Robinson, 1996). In addition to the ideology of sustainable development and increased impacts, the
transformation in modes of production and consumption in Western societies towards post-Fordist
production supported alternative trends and resulted in a number of new forms and terms such as
ecotourism (Mowforth and Munt 1998). This created markets for more individual, hybrid,
“environmentally consciousness” products (Hughes, 2004). In the industry and its marketing, the
arguments for new, alternative forms were strongly supported by the rhetoric of sustainability
(Cohen, 2002).
The idea of sustainability in tourism has emerged as a new paradigm. The definition of
sustainable development has been described as complex, normative, imprecise, and not operational,
but it is not only the obvious vagueness of the WCED’s (1987) suggestion or numerous later
definitions, which create a fuzzy picture of the idea as well as the conflict of interests (Duffy, 2002).
The concept is ideologically and politically contested, and needs to cover a broad range of interests
which have no easily identifiable common denominator (Spangenberg 2005). Although the concept
is problematic and has analytical weaknesses, it has provided a platform on which different
stakeholders in tourism can interact, negotiate, and reflect on their actions’ consequences for the
environment.
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The basic ideas and principles of sustainable development have been applied to tourism, but
perhaps as a result of conceptual problems, disagreements, and the multidimensionality of both
concepts (Sharpley, 2000), many commentators have stated that no exact definitions of sustainable
tourism exist. Consequently, the notion has sometimes been understood as an ideology and point of
view rather than an exact operational definition, and has been defined broadly as “tourism which is
economically viable but does not destroy the resources on which the future of tourism will depend,
notably the physical environment and the social fabric of the host community”. Definitions like this
emphasize the needs of the industry and sustainable use of its resources (Hardy, Beeton and Pearson
2002). By contrast, some researchers prefer to use the term sustainable development in tourism,
which involves the ethical aspects of the ideology of sustainability and does not necessarily refer to
a tourism-centric approach in development discussions and practices in which the evaluation is
focused on the needs of the industry.
The idea of sustainable tourism has both fascinated and irritated academics and developers,
and the concept in particular has aroused harsh criticism. Indeed, many interpretational and
practical problems involved in the concept and in its relation to sustainable development are widely
discussed in the existing literature. One of the key problems is tied to the holistic nature of
sustainability, especially its spatial and temporal scales. Tourism is a broad system based on the
movement of people, goods, capital, and ideas, among many other things, between home regions
and destinations that are linked by means of routes and transit regions and associated with many
other societal processes. Tourism is also increasingly becoming a part of the global economy and
culture, but the focus of sustainability has nevertheless been mainly on destinations and tourism
practices in those areas, grasping the most visible processes and impacts related to the industry, but
only the fragment of the total (Gössling 2000).
In sustainable development, the issues of scale and the global-local nexus play an important
role (Duffy, 2002), but in sustainable tourism the focus of analysis has been mainly on the local,
destination level. As suggested by Inskeep, “the sustainable development approach can be applied
to any scale of tourism development from larger resorts to limited size special interest
tourism…”(1991:xviii). Thus, tourism has focused in practice on contributing to sustainable
development mainly on a local scale, but notably it may also fail to maximize benefits and
minimize negative local impacts.
In spite of the contested nature and narrow focus in practice, the political argumentation and
justification of sustainable tourism are often derived implicitly or explicitly from the idea and
rhetoric of sustainable development as a holistic, future-oriented, and socially equal global-scale
process.
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The tourism role in throwing again the increase possibilities of a territory does not make
forget that this industry uses non-renewable resources. It is therefore necessary to avoid damages, to
emphasize some aspects of the phenomenon to hold present in the definition of the guide lines
management of the development process.
Although the economic activity connected to the tourist services offer it is not so dangerous as
industrial offer, it is however necessary to emphasize that the tourism, from the demand side
(wastes, congestion) and the offer side (construction) it introduces modifications in the natural
environment that can lower the quality. But tourism uses particular resources (climate, nature,
traditions, historical and artistic resources), often characterized from absolute insufficiency because
are object of consumption more than production. The conservation of these resources can be
threatened by an excessive and/or uncontrolled development of the tourism activity.
The Manila declaration (1980) was based on the acknowledgment of the environment
damages that tourist presences can provoke. From such considerations it emerged the following
definition of sustainable tourism: a local tourism development is sustainable if the demand
expressed by an increasing number of tourists it can be satisfied in such way from being able to
continue to attract the tourist flows in time and to respect the local community needs, safeguarding
its nature and its culture.
The definition take into consideration that tourism represents an economic field that, like the
other fields, in order to produce profit it demands limited and perishable resources as landscape,
culture, folklore. By now it is wide recognized that the increase of the tourist flows generates a not
negligible impact on the environment. If this is true, and if the forecasts of the World Tourism
Organization will be confirmed, is easy to preview that such increase will cause important social,
economic and environmental consequences. In order to avoid that this increase is endured passively
it is necessary to invest in infrastructures and in protection systems of the environment. The
management is the only one instrument that we have in order to avoid, on one side, that the
resources from which the tourist flows are activated (art, culture, nature) become the main victims
of the same tourist flows and, from the other side, that tourism becomes itself victim.
Tourism has in itself an auto-destructive force, which can determinate its progressive
exhaustion. If its is not managed in an adapted way, beyond causing environmental degradations it
can carry to a levelling of the cultural diversities which stimulate the tourism. In a world of “equal”,
tourism would not exist. Who travel in order to visit an identical place? Only an inspired qualitative
and quantitative management of the tourist flows can guarantee that this source of profit lasts in
time.
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The three constituent elements of “tourism” system: local community, local environment and
tourists interact and it is not possible to imagine one without the other. As an example, the
environment is the resource of both residents and tourists; this could not survive without the local
community constant cure and management. Local community can be dedicated to a single activity if
exists contemporary capitalization generated by tourists who use the environment for well-being.
And still, the residents carry out a twofold role in tourism: on one side they draw profit from the
visitors with which they are in competition; from the other they are a tourist good, which means an
directly attraction object (e.g. the folklore) or indirectly, the products of their activity (landscape
product).
In other words, tourism is a factor that affects the environment, but also tourism absence in
the areas in which it represents an irreplaceable source of profit, can be cause by environment
degradation. In fact, in these areas, the absence of economic opportunities generates emigration.
This generates loss in terms of “diversity” (extinction of cultures, cultivations, traditions) and, at
last, social degradation. The result is a levelling and a homologation. The extinction of certain
production forms, beyond reducing the diversity, it has an negative impact on the territory, that it is
meant to degradation because of maintenance.
In order to be sustainable tourism must be seen like an interaction process and not like an
extraction or rob process. By definition, the niche tourisms are qualitatively and quantitatively
various from mass tourism. In the first one the interaction prevails, but in the second is prevailing
the act of consumption; the first one exalts the diversities, the second produces levelling; in the first
one prevails soft use, in the second exploitation.
The activation of the niche tourisms, based on the possibility of using services environment
offer by local community, constitute one of the ways in order to render the trade-off less intense
between quality environment and economic development. In these cases the visit, not conforming to
the simple action of consumption, it is transformed in an increase cultural and learning moment.
This approach allows of to reduce the levels of confrontation and stresses that often accompany the
tourist phenomenon. It is common experience of the areas characterized by strongly tourist
acceleration, in fact, the creation of dispositions and attitudes of varied level of “irritability” from
part of the local communities, with consequent conflict dynamics, that it must, instead, to preview
and to convert in attitudes positively participating.
3. Tourism and local economic development
Tourism is one of the fields that stimulates the creation of small and medium enterprises. In
the countries characterized by a local economy relatively developed, the impact it can be more
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consisting, thanks to the most developed existing interrelations system between several fields
(agriculture, building), resulting that multiplying effect is more elevated. On the contrary, small
diversified economies, structurally weak and with one strongly external dependency (imports) risk
to experience de-multiplication processes, characterized by parts consisting of additional value that
are obtained elsewhere and an ulterior increase of the external dependency. This phenomenon is
more probable if the area of reference become smaller.
In the places where the tourist monoculture represents the prevailing model, the phenomenon
is
still
more
emphasized
by
the
external
origin
of
the
invested
capital
and by the model of tourist development on which it is decided to aim (model of the linear cities,
typically bound to the mass tourism, rather than model of the diffused hotel bound more to the
relational tourism). Therefore the structuring of the economic system it becomes necessary
condition for the start of the crosspiece process.
The importance of the tourism industry which covers the economy of many territorial realities
pushed some analysts to characterize it, in the tertiary sector and especially in tourism, as the
locomotive of their future economic increase. In many cases, it would be an error to limit itself to
promote ulterior only the mass tourism as balneary tourism which is almost close to the saturation
point. Instead, it is necessary to give space to so-called niche tourism and, especially, to those which
bound directly or indirectly to the environment (naturalistic and cultural tourism, fishing tourism,
farm holidays, sport tourism). Many operators have begun to understand the important role that the
environment can carry out in the locale development. In fact, the natural resources, opportunely
combined with one good culture of acceptance and with one diffused entrepreneurship of the
territory production can be transformed in a powerful motor of increase.
Offer diversification increases the tourist capacity attraction of a territory; moreover, it allows
to avoid the limits inexorably introduces by a development strategy based on the ulterior expansion
of balneary tourism. Such limits could be manifested as crescent congestion and environmental
degradation; moreover, it would be more persuasive the use of the price as competitive variable,
with probable negative consequences on worker’s profits. Instead, the diversification has the
advantage to catch up new demand segments and, at least in some cases, it renders the mainly
attractive territory for the already acquired customer, with the twofold positive outcome: to increase
its degree of “fidelity” and to expand its potentialities expense in the area. These aspects do not go
underrate for at least two of reasons:
•
the tendency to reduce the medium holiday period in the last years, it denotes the tourists
inclination to increase the holiday frequency which generates a greater exploitation of the
resources;
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•
the total expansion of the expense would be much weak if depend of the ulterior expansion of
the traditional tourism.
•
Taking into account the previous effects, it must remember that one greater diversification:
•
it concurs of offer de-seasonality, with positive consequences for the average costs of
management and for the pressure on the resources;
•
it constitutes a possibility to connect more the coast or the large city centres with the inside
territory, recovering therefore marginal areas subject to depopulation in the profit distribution
circuit. Today, the tourism represents an important instrument in the territorial distribution of
the profit.
In order to maximize the results it is important that several tourism forms to be organize in
order to:
a)
interact more with the other fields;
b)
to be complementary between them;
c)
to be connection to them, in order to create a net.
The logic must be that one of the scope and net economy, rather than scale economy, also for
the various environmental repercussions that the two types of logic involve. One such
organizational form guarantees greater possibilities of increase. In fact, it is much difficult if only
tourism activity constitute the motor of the local development, if do not come magnificat “natural”
complementary regarding tourist and economic activities. In this optical, the tourism can be seen
like an instrument of the territory promotion. The construction of an adapted compatibility between
the activities is a necessary condition for rising a favourable bidirectional circuit: from the tourism
to the product and from the product to the tourism.
This is confirmed by the analysis of the origin tourist flows and the destination of local
products. If the tourist flows are decomposed taking into account the origin country and destination
region and the outlet markets of the regional exports are analyzed, it notices that exists a strongly
correlation between the variables observed (tab. 1). This denotes the existence of territorial affinity,
of fidelity towards at all that a certain region represents, which mean towards the “system region”.
Table 1: Exports and tourist attraction / regions
Region
Piemonte
Valle
d'Aosta
Export destination
markets
France
Germany
Belgium
Tourists
origin
Germany
France
U.K.
France
Germany
Swiss
France
U.K.
Germany
Region
Umbria
Lazio
8
Export destination
markets
Germany
France
USA
Germany
France
USA
Tourists
origin
Germany
USA
France
USA
Japan
Germany
Germany
Germany
France
Swiss
USA
France
Germany
Germany
France
Japan
Lombardia
USA
USA
Germany
Germany
Austria
Austria
Trentino
Swiss
Swiss
Germany
Germany
USA
Austria
Veneto
Spain
USA
Germany
Austria
France
Germany
Friuli
Swiss
Ex-Yugoslavia
Germany
Germany
France
France
Emilia R.
USA
Swiss
Germany
Germany
France
Ex-URSS
Marche
U.K.
Austria
Germany
Germany
USA
USA
Toscana
France
France
Source: Elaboration CIT-SL&A based on ISTAT Data
Liguria
Campania
Abruzzo
Molise
Puglia
Basilicata
Calabria
Sicilia
Sardegna
Germany
USA
France
Germany
France
U.K.
Germany
U.K.
Belgium
Germany
France
USA
Germany
France
USA
Germany
France
U.K.
France
Portugal
Germany
Spain
Malta
France
Germany
USA
U.K.
Germany
Swiss
USA
Germany
USA
Swiss
Germany
USA
Swiss
Germany
France
Swiss
Germany
France
Swiss
France
Germany
USA
Germany
France
Swiss
In the moment in which the manufacturing, agricultural, handicraft products, etc of the several
Regions, thanks to the own specificities, are more and more grouped in markets “niches” and
become identifiable in the global market, to the tourism can be entrusted one function of
transmission of acquaintance with important economic consequences. Just for this reason, thinking
in the optic of local development, the projects must have as major objectives: to rethink and
reorganize the offer, to study the interactions between fields and to value at maximum the positive
externalities generated by these interactions. All that, but, in the optic of an economy that configure
itself as “territorial productive system” or, still better, as “territorial production”. Paraphrasing
Becattini, we could say that it must pass from the Made in Italy Sector to the Made in Italy
Territories, meant in its wider meaning, in which agriculture, handicraft, food industry constitute
the various complementary elements of a composite and identifiable good. In the agriculture case,
as an example, the new tendencies of market involve that the vitality of this field, especially in the
disadvantage zones, cannot pass through the intensification of the mass productions. On the
international markets the demand for certificated products and for quality is more requested. This is
the segment that must aim the small economic territorial systems which are characterized by
disadvantage conditions.
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4. Open territory resources and tourist offer
The local tourism systems are generally equip in order to satisfy the mass tourisms demand
(mostly balenary nature), more traditional but also mature than that niche tourisms, more recent but
also with solid perspectives of increase. The promotion of the niche tourisms allows to create a
strongly tourist offer not specialized in a certain segment of market, but diversified and integrated,
configured itself as sum of many niches, each specific to one resource of the territory.
In a more and more competitive environment, taking into account also the smaller costs and
the greater facility of movements, the diversification together with the quality constitute
fundamental competitive arm in the tourism field. The diversification and the qualification of the
offer pass also through the recovery of the environment resources for tourist scope. In the specific
case of environment this involves conservation “gentle use” policies.
In this view, one of the segments on which to invest is the farm holidays. This constitutes one
of the opportunities that a preservable territory can offer. In this tourism form the agricultural
entrepreneur together with relatives manage the receptive structure placed inside of their own
agricultural company. The farm holidays can become, therefore, the occasion in order to promote
rural territory and its typical productions, to recover the traditions and handicraft forms which are
meant to “extinction”. It constitutes, moreover, an optimal opportunity in order to recover part of
the real estate rural patrimony, embezzling it to the second houses phenomenon. These, abandoned
during the year, carries an excessive concentrated anthropic carry in short periods of the year,
composed from mostly “patrons”, bearers of needs and demands, in many cases, odds in respect
with the characteristics and the effective requirements of the territory and its residents.
The importance that the farm holidays can have is great and it becomes necessary to control
the quality, avoiding to radically change of the function, preventing that the non-agricultural
operators option for this type of receptivity in order to avoid binds and own norms of other
receptive forms. The farm holidays must represent one of the ways in order to guarantee additional
profits to the agriculturist families. The pluralism and part-time have represented in many cases the
solution to the problem of the country side depopulation.
The same type of considerations is worth also for the fishing, relatively to the fishing tourism.
The more recent experiences in this field represent a hope for the future. Like in agriculture, also in
this case the pluralism must represent one of the ways in order to guarantee additional profit to the
fishermen families. In both cases, the pluralism represents also an answer to the excessive pressure
on the environment resources. In fishing case, as an example, thanks to the additional profit
guaranteed by fishing tourism activity, the fish effort can be reduced.
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The protection and the valorisation of “true” fishing tourism and farm holidays represent one
of the instruments that are possible to use in order to prevent depopulation phenomena and to
guarantee adequate profits to the agriculturists and the fishermen. The instrument is more effective
when the period of stay in a farm holidays or in fishermen family house it is transformed from
passive to active until is arrived to integral forms of farm holidays and fishing tourism, with
involvement of the tourists in the daily activities. The period of vacation in the house of the
entrepreneur, creating an interpersonal relationship between customer and manager, must become
an occasion of “consumption education” of the local products, to appreciate characteristics and
history. This could be the way in order to exceed, in some cases, the production costs problems
necessary to produce assets with certain characteristics and with a small market.
The environment protection and the historical-cultural patrimony passes also through one
corrected prevention policy of depopulation, that, in many cases, it can be characterized like one of
the main causes of environmental disasters and loss of diversity. The last is a wider concept than
biodiversity, embracing aspects relating to the culture, art and trades of a place. The depopulation
phenomenon in many zones of Italy and Europe emerge because of the modern agriculture and the
modern techniques of fishing in the comparisons of marginal agricultural lands and the more
traditional fishing forms. In many areas of Italy the abandonment problem of the country side and
the small marine villages would have worrisome fallen back consequences. The artificial nature of
many territories ask for the necessity of maintenance work. The arrest of such activity would be
source of environmental upheaval; taking into account the high landscaped value that these
territories introduce, it will have an impact negative on the tourism.
In the event of some Italian regions, as an example, the leading role of the wine and bovine
culture or the oil and the olives is great, their eventual abandonment would have disastrous
consequences on folklore, mentality, culture and, consequently, on the tourist attraction of the place.
The landscape, typical tourism resource is always natural and cultural at the same time.
The recovery and the valorisation of the natural resources allow the development of other
tourism forms, respectively sport tourism which constitutes one of those gentle tourism forms. Its
development would guarantee at least three results, all in tune with the environment protection
purposes:
•
territory maintenance - the sport tourism, for being able to be practiced, demands, in fact,
investments in support infrastructures. It would constitute, moreover, an optimal tourist
opportunity in order to recover some of the territory resources;
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•
itself diffuse control - the human presence on the territory, correctly managed, it prevents
fraudulent actions and it reduces the amount of resources to assign to the control, than
therefore they would make available for the realizations of others objects;
•
emerge of new job profiles - the development of these tourism forms stimulates the
appearance of new occupational forms and enterprise ideas (tourist-scientific guides, stations
interchange managers, instructors).
Because of the territory nature, a main role could play the scientific and congress tourism. The
last, perhaps more than others, is not bound to the seasonality and needs of qualified professional
figures bound to the supply of valid congress services.
To these activities have to be placed side by side innovative form of jobs bound to the new
computerized instruments. Internet represents a valid vehicle of the image promotion, but it
represents also the instrument through which, in the near future, will pass the great part of the
exchanges. The main objective is that one who place side by side and integrate the sources of profit
with the traditional activities and the tourism which constitute the natural lines of local tourism
development systems, with new innovative and sustainable sources.
Only one diversified productive structure and in a position to withholding good part inside of
the produced wealth is in a position to generating long-lasting increase (multiplier model). In
particular, tourism becomes the locomotive of economic sustainable development for an area with a
strong conservation vocation, if it does not represent the only source of profit for local community
of the territory.
Diversification is not enough. Other variable on which investing it is represented by quality.
The tourism, more than many other assets, constitutes a typical example of those that the
economists define good experience, but is also a sophisticated composite good. The tourist good, if
analyzed like one shot game, guarantees that the consumer will pay regardless the effective quality
of the supplied service (the egg theory-today). In an long optical view, seen as repeated game, the
things change; its nature of experience good renders a good in which the reputation it counts a lot.
The flow of guaranteed profit not only depends on the quality of the supplied service, but also by
the degree of product satisfaction, which mean the correspondence between created expectations
and service offered (hen theory-tomorrow). Tourism can be transformed in a development motor if
faced in an long optical view. The natural consequence is that: for being able to think in an optical
of territorial system, it is necessary to guarantee all the system that turns around in that territory. In
fact, if an element of the system creates a problem this has repercussions on the reputation of all the
system. This is as well as truer if that system is watched from far away.
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This aspect is particularly important in the tourism field. Tourism, in fact, between the other
things, is a powerful instrument of communication. The tourists are more accredited as witnesses
and transmission channels of the relative information of the visit realities. This implies that it must
only promote only that we are sure of being able to offer and to really guarantee effectively.
5. Some conclusive considerations
The considerations carried out in this job have evidenced some of the general and particular
conditions that it is necessary to satisfy to generate the crosspiece process and to render the
development if not sustainable, at least less harmful for the environment. As far as the conditions of
general character the importance of the qualitative dimension of the increase process has been
evidenced - the participative model.
Coherently with what said above, it has been evidenced like, in the event of fragile economic
systems and of small dimensions with strongly tourist connotation, to generate a participated
process of increase is necessary to invest on specific resources of the territory and to exit from the
tourist monoculture, assigning to the tourism the structure role of the economy. Unfortunately, the
more diffuse models seem to go in the opposite direction, that is towards models characterize from
concentrated increase, monoculture and seasonality mass tourism, in which the excursion
component has one important weight. In many cases it is just the type of figure to create the greater
problems of environmental stress because is more appropriate to the consumer model (bite and
escape tourism or hold-up tourism) or is more difficultly noticeable.
The increased number of excursionists it stretches to expel the tourists for the external
diseconomies that produces on the environment and the other visitors (congestion effect). A such
aspect is easy comprehensible, inasmuch as the two figures are characterized from preferences that
in average differ a lot. The diversity of preferences is also source of various behaviours. Between
the others, as an example, it has been observed that the tourist is characterized by a higher medium
and qualitatively various expenses in respect with the excursionist.
These aspects are not secondary. The reduction trend of the medium stay of the tourists,
phenomenon that with various intensities has interested during the last few years the various tourist
areas of the national territory, accompanied by an increase weight of excursionists it produces an
increase in the number of visitors that, to total expense parity, provokes a greater consumption of
resources.
If the considerations carried out previously are correct, then it is easy to deduce that a such
type of tendency, if not contrasted, it could carry to an irreversible degradation of involved systems.
If, like many times over said, the development it is sustainable if it is only integrated, diffused and
13
participated, then the model which reference is not sustainable neither economically neither
ecologically. In fact, irregular and contemporary flows of residential tourists, excursionists and
tourists characterized by a strong seasonality causes:
•
a reduction in the quality of the services that generates minor fidelity and ulterior reduction of
the medium stay;
•
a lowering, if not extinction, of the offer specialization and qualification;
•
a quality levelling of more numerous and less profitable category of visitors;
•
an incidence increment of the seasonal and irregular jobs, with all the consequences that that
involves (lowering of the social conditions, increase of the migratory flows);
•
cultural and territorial identity loss;
•
“diversity” reduction, with arts, typical trades, products loss of the place.
This model produces elevates profits for short periods, but it does not succeed to activate
those “process of crosspiece” before recalled, just because not evaluate the products indirect labour
costs. If it is true, in fact, that the tourist it is attracted from the system in its entirety (natural,
cultural, artistic and landscaped value) then the reduction of the complexity system in long view
renders little attractive of the same system.
Just for this “tourism”, in last analysis, must be seen as an instrument and not as an aim. It, in
the respect of the own purposes, must contribute:
•
to structure the local economy;
•
to diversify the offer, in function terms (activity terms) and in spaces them and temporal (deseasonality) terms;
•
to revitalize economically and social the rural and natural spaces;
•
to transform the environment protection from slogan in existential service;
•
to generate diffuse economic development on cultural base.
Tourism can become the locomotive of long-lasting increase and instrument for safeguard the
cultural and natural resources. In fact, only one diffuse and participated development, together with
an adequate redistributive policy can contribute to avoid that the population alive the environment
only like a tie. As mentioned previously if that sense of belongings is created, it is easier to avoid
reactions to varied bounds of nature. A diversified, participated and diffused development generates
self-control forms and inter-crossed control between the members of one society. Exists only a
pervert game between “guards” and “thefts” that inexorably produces “gained” and “ephemeral
winners”.
14
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