Stefan Hartman (p), Frans Sijtsma (p)

Dominique Vanneste

Resilient tourism destinations? Governance implications of bringing theories of resilience and adaptive capacity to tourism practice

The tourism challenge for destinations is to become robust enough to endure perturbations and flexible enough to recover or to re-develop/re-invent itself – contributing to its resilience. This implies a more evolutionary-adaptive perspective, considering and managing tourism destinations as complex adaptive systems. Taking this perspective allows us to identify conditions that contribute to the ability of systems to adapt and evolve and to building resilience. The governance and management issues and discussions that come with (building) resilient tourism destinations still remains under researched in tourism literature whereas it gains attention in fields such as urban and regional planning and the management of ecosystems and protection of area with a special status (e.g. National Park, Geopark, UNESCO World Heritage Site). This article aims particularly to contribute to an enhanced understanding the governance implications that are related to bringing resilience theories to tourism practice – making use of results and lessons learned of research projects conducted by the author in the Netherlands. Data is used from studies in regions such as the Wadden Sea area, UNESCO Global Geopark De Hondsrug, various National Parks and from studies on industry clusters such as the traditional sailing industry.
The article consists of three sections. In the first section theories of resilience are explored. After introducing the concept of resilience it is explained how resilience can enhance tourism (studies). Then, key conditions are highlighted that can be derived from literature that are seen as important for building resilience. In the second section implications of bringing resilience theories to practice are discussed. A set of conditions is distinguished and elaborated on that are needed for resilient tourism destinations and/or building resilience. Each condition comes with implications for governance, management and strategic planning. Implications that often equal practical limitations – here a link is made to various type of ‘traps’ that are discussed in resilience literature. In the third section conclusions are drawn and a discussion is provided on how to proceed, drawing attention to the magnitude of the ambition of building resilient tourism destinations and the importance of building resilience step-by-step over time.

Hiroyuki Shibusawa (p), Katsuhiro Sakurai, Makoto Yamaguchi

Stefan Hartman

In this study, we develop a methodology to evaluate the economic impacts in the Sightseeing Area (Kankouken). The sightseeing area is generally composed by several cities, towns and villages. To evaluate the spillover effects of tourism in a spatial context, we estimate the inter-regional input-output table at municipality level in Shizuoka prefecture. Based on the number of visitors and people to stay in each cities and towns, we evaluate the economic impacts of local tourism in Shizuoka prefecture. We propose a method to find a suitable tourism regional area using intra-regional effects and inter-regional spillover effects.

Dominique Vanneste (p), Michelle Bogers

Hiroyuki Shibusawa

Tourism has a mixed reputation. On the one hand, its development potential in terms of job and income creation have been proofed and highlighted; therefore tourism was and still is promoted as a development tool for especially rural regions with limited economic resources. On the other hand, tourism is not a neutral business since it impacts on local culture and social structures, can enlarge rather than diminish differences between stakeholders, fuels power relations and can damage natural and build-up resources by unsustainable use or, simply, by over-use. Of course, management (destination management, visitors management) was and is considered part of the solution, while integrating local (sense of) ownership and know-how (e.g. use of commons). Today a new societal trend tends to link sustainability, resilience and the slow movement in trying to implement sustainable tourism, resulting in the so called ‘slow tourism’. Resilient regions and destinations look for assets that allow to develop such a slow tourism. Traditionally, rural areas are linked with natural resources because of the abundant present of nature or, at least, of open landscapes, while focusing on eco- and geo-tourism. Now one discovers the (hidden) cultural assets in the landscape; re-valorizing them has become part of resilience. In the presentation/paper the case of the re-valorization of pre-industrial pathways for sustainable tourism will be elaborated. The research (situated in the eastern part of Flanders, Belgium; 2016) consisted of a regional survey for (good) practices completed by a qualitative research (interviews) among stakeholders to grasp the (changing) vision on resilience, assets and opportunities and tourism development