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"Best practices" : is the "corporation model" superior to the "community model" ?

Professeur Craig A. PETERSON - John Marshall Law School, Evanston, Illinois, United States

 

 

I wish today to discuss some of the many advantages of a “Community Model” of managing “tourism resources”, by which I mean all the elements that attract tourists to a destination. Here in Chamonix, for example, there are ski lifts, modern hotels and a good road; but there are many more elusive tourism resources, as well: beautiful scenery, favorable climate in two important seasons, aesthetically harmonious appearance, and clean air. The latter resources are owned by no one, but are common to all, including importantly, the year round residents of the valley. A community model extends to planning and also implementation of strategies for careful management of all of these easily compromised tourism resources.

This approach is quite different from what might be termed a “Corporate Model” affecting tourism resources, where development takes place where and in the forms decided upon solely by an entity in the business sector, subject to general land use and other regulatory rules, but without meaningful local community input.

Because of the short duration of these remarks, I will focus first on a case study of a highly successful North American ski resort town that exemplifies a “Community Model” of tourism development. I will follow that with brief references to what our recent study published as Managing Tourism Growth: Issues and Applications shows to be the most important elements of a successful community model.  Finally, I will discuss three of those elements.

 A Successful Ski Resort using a “Community Model”

Sixty five miles north of Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada is "Whistler Resort Municipality" perhaps North America’s most successful ski resort, from both the economic and environmental perspectives. Because we are gathered in a world famous winter sport destination, I’ve chosen this other mountain center to illustrate a community model of tourism development.

Since 1965 when a new road from Vancouver was constructed, Whistler has evolved into a year-round destination resort community of roughly 9,500 permanent residents in the valley area with 2 million annual visitors. This was the first North American resort to achieve that remarkably high level of visits, which prompted the construction of a major additional ski lift two full years in advance of its originally planned operation.

In 1976 a very homogeneous and small population developed an Official Community Plan to focus development in one area :  an undeveloped landfill between two mountains. Presently, that 53 acre site hosts linked, pedestrianized town plazas with attractive cafes, restaurants, hotels, shops, and landscaping, as well as mini-parks and a meandering stream. As the town grew, new constituencies developed, such as second homeowners and entrepreneurs; in response, the town expanded its forums for public participation and planned out a comprehensive infrastructure program including elaborate medical facilities, a small local library and an ice rink. Later in the 1990’s there were numerous public meetings, workshops, hearings, open houses, and the like, culminating in a 1994 plan, which essentially provided that new development would be approved only if it (a) provided substantial benefits to the community and resort; (b) was supported by the community: and (c) would not cause unacceptable impacts on the community, resort, or environment.  The 1994 plan also created a very significant new civic undertaking a formal public consultation process with two elements:  a community and resort monitoring program and an annual town hall meeting.

The principal regulatory mechanism that arose out of these community-based discussions is control of tourism growth. In the words of the 1988 Comprehensive Plan :

“The quality of the natural environment, the caliber of the resort experience, and the livability of the community are all dependent on the management of growth and development: how much, what type, in what locations and over what time period.”

The pace of development in Whistler is restricted by limiting the number of bed units, which in turn is determined based on the capacity of water and sewer infrastructure. There is great flexibility to that technique. The cap on the number of bed units is reviewed every five years as the Official Community Plan is updated; indeed, the cap has been increased in each of the four such plans (from 45,000 to 52, 500 bed units, the present level of allowable “build-out”). Presently, there are 44,000 existing bed units and still others under construction.

Success as a ski area prompted the community to consider tourism growth of another sort : as a four-season resort (not incidentally, a path taken in the European Alps as well). In order to attract year-round visitors, Whistler needed additional amenities, such as tennis courts, golf courses, swimming pools and trail-linked lakeside parks that it could not afford to develop on its own. Accordingly, it increased the number of allowable bed units, but tied development permission to the provision of amenities that the resort and community needed.

In addition to growth controls, Whistler has adopted strict environmental protection and aesthetic controls, as well as provisions requiring employers to provide a level of employee housing as a condition of development approval.

This multi-faceted community model approach has resulted in a highly successful mountain resort destination where both residents and tourists express (as part of an organized feedback of information program) great satisfaction with the quality of their experience. Press coverage has been extremely favorable, as well : for example, a special interest American magazine Snow Country named Whistler “Best overall resort design”, noting that “Whistler is in a class by itself.” Growth management mechanisms created and monitored by the community have ensured visually attractive development within relatively compact areas, protected the natural beauty and environment, and provided for resident as well as tourist amenities.

Key Elements of a "Community Model"

Two colleagues and I recently studied many tourism destinations and concluded that six processes lead to effective, tailor-made strategies for carefully preserving and enhancing tourism resources. 

 

 

1

Careful delineation of the boundaries of a planning area, so that a community can assess the impacts (positive and negative) of tourism activities and thus allow development of a strategy to minimize negative impacts so as to promote “sustainability”, that is protection of the resources for future generations ;

2

Identification of all the parties (often called “stakeholders”) who are likely to share in the benefits and burdens of tourism, so as to allow them to participate in planning and implementation efforts ; this will increase the likelihood that the community strategies will equitably allocate the benefits and burdens in a way that most will regard as fair ;

3	Widespread community participation in establishing goals and objectives and in making implementation decisions ; this will increase the likelihood that the programs will reflect the values and vision of the locality and thus also enjoy a high degree of compliance and acceptance ;

4	Adoption of management techniques that address specific local objectives so as to promote the creative use of various mechanisms, tailor-made to the community, and discourage reliance on overbroad regulations ;

5	Continual participation and ongoing sharing of information, which allows community members to rely on the long term viability of the selected management strategies to protect the tourism resources and also the overall quality of life ; and

6

Creation of a system to monitor the effectiveness of the strategy in meeting its goals, to provide the community with data to determine whether the strategy needs to be amended to respond to changing circumstances and also to facilitate enforcement. (Ecologists call this concept “resiliency”, the capacity of an institutional system to adapt.)

  

 

Three of the six elements of a successful Community Model

 

I wish to turn now to three of the six elements of a successful Community Model, (a) defining planning boundaries (b) identifying the stakeholders, and (c) localizing rules as much as possible.

(a) In order to plan for tourism resource protection and enhancement, it is of course essential to identify precisely what the resources are and where they are located.  Otherwise, a targeted approach is impossible. In Whistler, for example, geography dictated the boundaries because there was a natural “bowl” of undeveloped landfill between the two mountains that were perfect for skiing. In other destinations, an existing stock of historical structures of touristic significance would be a good example.

But because other sites are more elusive, pinpointing the tourism resources (and hence meaningful planning boundaries) can be more difficult. In Napier, New Zealand, it took a group of local residents interested in civic improvement to recognize that the city’s wide and varied stock of art deco buildings could be thought of and marketed as a tourist resource. In Ambergris Caye, Belize in Central America, tourists seem to be attracted to a “laid back” atmosphere and sand roads of the town of San Pedro as well as to the diving and sea breezes. Sometimes the boundaries are deliberately narrowed, as at Nusa Dua in Bali, where the government decided to locate new luxury hotels on an isolated peninsula and thus reduce the impact of visitors on the traditional lifestyle of the Balinese. (This would have been even more successful with more local input).

(b) There is no scientific method for identifying who should be included in the community planning process. This will vary from place to place. In many American cities and towns, for example, there is a tradition of community organizing, with special interest groups and small cadres of neighbors who demand to be treated as equal players with larger, more formally established groups. The location and the type of project will identify some stakeholders : the developer and affected neighbors are normally very interested in participating in rule making. The probable developmental impacts will also often determine appropriate stakeholders : businesses that will benefit from more tourists might supplant businesses that cater to local residents’ needs ; local access to a popular beach might be affected if it is to be included in a hotel proposal ; community funds and efforts might be used in ways that are perceived to benefit only a small segment. One can conceive of scores of other examples, especially where the community is diverse.

(c) Turning now to the desirability of localizing rules as much as possible, recent academic studies in a variety of disciplines that focus on “common-pool resources” have emphasized the need to tailor solutions to local conditions instead of trying to impose broad “model” solutions. As to tourism planning, any particular combination of tourism resources is likely to differ (often greatly) from any other, even within the same general category (such as ski resorts) or area (such as French ski resorts).  Failure to give adequate consideration to human and financial resources of a destination often results in failed plans (Nepal and Bangladesh come to mind). While unlikely in Europe, failure to take local conditions into account may spawn organized protests, disruptions and refusals to participate. (This occurred in a National Park in Brazil). More possible in Europe is the potential problem of indifference to or disregard for a plan or regulation that has been adopted without appropriate regard to local conditions. 

Many successful United State destinations have emphasized local conditions in their efforts to protect and enhance tourism resources. One of our conference speakers is the very distinguished mayor of the high end, year round resort town of Aspen, Colorado, which we discuss in our book. There, after a long process, the residents identified a series of local objectives that included maintaining specific physical attributes (such as the small scale of buildings and important viewscapes) as well as unique social factors (such as the diversity of the population). Similarly, the residents of Teton County, Wyoming (home of Jackson Hole, with its skiing and also summer mountain activities) identified the “rural and Western character” of the area as its most important feature, which was to be preserved in making decisions about tourism growth.

 

CONCLUSION

Tourism usually provides a myriad of positive benefits to hosts and to visitors.  This has been true in the European Alps for more than a century and will continue to be true. But (as you know far better than I) mountain tourism in Europe is not without controversies respecting perceived negative impacts. Some citizens and institutions are very concerned about impacts of European Alp tourism on grazing animals, soil conditions, vegetation, noise, traffic, drinking water quality, land and energy uses, and runoff. Indeed, as a general matter, destinations throughout the world have learned that if poorly managed, tourism can have serious, adverse impacts on the environment, physical appearance, economy, health, safety, and social values of the destination community.

That said, I believe that a community model is well suited to “taming” tourism by carefully managing its growth and operations so that it brings to the destination community the benefits the community wishes and minimizes the impacts that the community deems harmful. It is not easy but it is possible and well worth doing.