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How can tourism companies and organisations in the traditional resorts be made more professional, industrial and innovative to ensure more lasting growth ?

François VELLAS - Director of the Institute of Research for the Service Sector and Tourism (CEREST), Director of the Institute for International Economy of Tourism, Toulouse, France

 

        

1	By a consensus between public and private tourism partners
2	By a method to put lasting tourist development principles into practice
3	By an analysis and selection of lasting tourism indicators
4	By the use of evaluation tools and reference criteria
5	By international comparisons of experiences and models

The notion of lasting tourism is linked to that of "sustainable development", which expresses the "lasting" character of development, that is development which does not question the natural and social environment.

• The issue of lasting development

This concerns, therefore, a development, which associates at the same time the notion of lasting and the notion of perenniality of natural resources (water, air, sun, biological diversity) and social and human structures. The objective of lasting development is also to make the improvement of the living conditions and levels, which result from the development, compatible with the maintenance of the development capacities of future generations

• The issue of lasting tourism

The notion of lasting tourism is directly deduced from the notion of lasting development. It is a tourist development form, which must answer the tourist needs but preserving the chances of the future.

The issue of lasting tourism is essential following the confirmation of the existence of growing inequalities in the world tourist development. This is why whilst international tourism in the world has undergone an exceptional progression; the divergence between countries has tended to be accentuated. The harmful effects of tourism are especially important and serious in terms of natural environment and above the entire social and human viewpoint.

Under these conditions, the notion of lasting tourism only concerns the traditional tourist regions, which must fight against the deterioration of the natural environment, which results from tourist infrastructure development projects, but also the regions of the world, which, until now, were outside the expansion of the great tourist currents. 

It is advisable, however, to establish that until now the concept of lasting tourism has mainly given rise to applications in the field of tourist development policies. This is why the lasting tourism concept is mainly applied in the framework of tourist planning, more particularly from the regional viewpoint.

On the other hand, the application of the lasting tourism concept with respect to the sector of tourist enterprises with the evaluation of small-sized tourist development projects carried out generally by individual private operators or in the framework of small and medium-sized enterprises, is rarely put into practice. This situation is the result of the insufficiency of the tools for applying the lasting development concept to micro-economic projects. The main aim of the search for a reading grid of tourist projects based on the lasting development concept, as a result, is to respond to this need by developing evaluation tools, which can be directly used to influence the decision-taking of public and private financing and subsidy institutions for tourist development.

This is one of the essential issues of the question of professionalisation, but also of innovation and industrialisation of the tourist organisation and enterprises of traditional resorts to achieve a more lasting growth :  

1	By a consensus between public and private tourism partners
2	By a method to put into practice lasting tourist development principles.
3	By an analysis and selection of lasting tourism indicators
4	By the use of evaluation tools and reference criteria
5	By the international comparisons of experiences and models

BY A CONSENSUS BETWEEN PUBLIC AND PRIVATE TOURISM PARTNERS

Tourist development comes up, in the majority of the cases, against problems of integration of the objectives of lasting development, which may have negative consequences for the professionalisation, innovation and industrialisation of tourist organisations and enterprises of traditional resorts. The result of this is either excess visitors to certain tourist resorts, or insufficient visitors, which does not permit the economy of the tourist resorts to profit from the expected falls of the tourist activity. More serious, the investments made, even if they are modest, are not often profitable, which generates deceptions and in the long run, questions the whole tourist development programme. In effect, the installations and facilities, lacking sufficient financial means, undergo the risk of no longer being correctly maintained, which often leads to a very quick degradation of the quality of the tourist products that are proposed.

Under these conditions, the search for a CONSENSUS by the private and public heads of tourist development is essential in order to establish the conditions of a more lasting growth.

One of the most important problems posed by tourist development with respect to lasting development is the integration of certain environmental, social and economic indicators, from the conception of tourist projects in order for them to be carried out so that even for the SMEs the objective of lasting development becomes a reality in the tourist sector.

Therefore, there must be a method to evaluate the professionalisation, innovation and industrialisation for the tourist projects based on the lasting development with a programme to establish indicators aimed at managing even the small projects and tourist investments.

 

BY A METHOD FOR ESTABLISHING LASTING TOURIST DEVELOPMENT PRINCIPLES

This is a method to evaluate the lasting character of investments and tourist activities that will be possible to make the growth more lasting. With this aim, the execution of a Reading Grid of the tourist projects based on indicators of lasting development specifically adapted to the context of tourism of each country and of each region may be one of the privileged means of reaching this aim. This regional tourist policy instrument must, specifically, permit the link between a tourism that brings development and the evaluation of the situation of public and private tourist operators even when they are small enterprises.

Therefore, the method used is essential. It is advisable, indeed, to carry out comparative analyses of the lasting development indicators that are best adapted to the tourist and environmental context, after selecting the most relevant indicators and in order to propose an evaluation rating summary with reference indicators.

This method is based on three main phases :

• FIRST PHASE : - Analysis of the tourist indicators of lasting development applicable to all the types of tourist enterprises including the small and medium-sized ones. It is a question of identifying the environmental, social and economic indicators that best adapt to the tourist context of each resort or development area. This identification must be able to be made by means of a survey aimed at the test tourist areas and resorts. The opinions and expertise of the international and European organisations are essential to participate in this evaluation, above all the WTO, the European Commission, the CNUCED, the BIT and the UNEP as well as the representatives of the tourist sector, above all the hotel industry, rural lodgings and tourist products as well as the regional environment and tourism associations.
• SECOND PHASE : Selection of the most efficient lasting tourism indicators that is, the most feasible and the most suitable to be integrated in the reading grid of the tourist investments and projects. The surveys must thus permit the identification and selection of a limited number of the most representative indicators of lasting tourism and give reference evaluations for each tourist resort. 
• THIRD PHASE : Evaluation of the indicators and elaboration of the Reading Grid of Lasting Tourism. The indicators selected will be evaluated in order to determine reference ratios corresponding to the different tourist development geographical areas and to the different tourist resorts. This evaluation will be carried out according to the information collected with regard to private and public partners and the objectives of the regional policy bearing in mind:
  • The economic approach
  • The financial approach
  • The commercial approach
  • The social approach
  • The training approach
  • The environmental approach
  • The cultural approach
  • L'approche touristique

    

BY AN ANALYSIS AND A SELECTION OF THE INDICATORS OF LASTING DEVELOPMENT

For that reason, two families of indicators must be privileged within the framework of the planning of lasting tourism: the environmental indicators and the social economic indicators.

The environmental indicators

The environmental indicators may be considered as the basic indicators for the origin of the problem of lasting development. These indicators are essential for the planning of lasting tourism. Tourism is an economic activity that represents for many countries, one of the only possibilities of locally developing activities that provide employment and a source of income.

Five types of environmental indicators can be proposed following the work carried out above all by WTO and UNEP as well as in the framework of the work of the Development Group with the support of the European Union :

• The ecosystems and biodiversity fragility indicator 
• The waste treatment indicator 
• The soil utilisation intensity indicator
• The water utilisation indicator
• The atmosphere protection indicator

The Ecosystem and biodiversity fragility indicator

The ecosystem and biodiversity fragility indicator is essential when it is a question of putting in practice tourist development policies in sensitive areas, above all in coastal area.The indicators used are in this case the number of rare species or in danger of extinction.

In this case, it is advisable to proceed to count the different species with the following measurements:

•  For fauna :
  • Number of species
  • Number of individuals of the marked species espèces repérées
  • Surface area occupied by the species
  • % of deteriorated surface area  
• For flora
  • Number of species
  • Count of species
  • % of the original flora species in the total of vegetable coverage
  • Surface area occupied by the species
  • % of deteriorated surface 

The ecosystem and biodiversity fragility indicators must be able to be evaluated based on ratio, especially the percentage of the deteriorated surface area with respect to the surface area used for the tourist development.  

Waste treatment indicator

The waste treatment indicator is perhaps the most efficient indicator to proceed to the evaluation of the environmental impact of tourist planning. In effect, any tourist development project produces waste, which may have a more or less important and controlled impact on the environment and may question the lasting character of the tourist development that results from it.

The waste treatment indicators must permit an accurate measurement of the impact on the environment of waste production, which results from tourist planning. Waste treatment includes both solid and liquid waste. For liquid waste, above all the treatment of treated used water with respect to the total volume of waste water. For solid waste, the concentration of waste at the location is an important indicator providing that it can be evaluated with sufficient accuracy.
The difficulty in evaluating the waste treatment indicators is related to the need to add a qualitative evaluation to the quantitative appreciation. As a result, the evaluation of the volume of treated used water with respect to the total volume of used water must be accompanied by a measurement of the level of treatment effectively carried out. And the same occurs with the waste concentration indicator at the location, which must bear in mind the treatment level of waste present at the location..  

Soil utilisation intensity indicator

The soil utilisation intensity indicator is essential in order to plan lasting tourism. It is directly linked to the problem of the load capacity, that is, of the capacity of the location to support different levels of more or less intensive tourist development.. The soil utilisation intensity indicator must permit a first, but essential, measurement of the load capacity of a location, which is the object of a tourist development. There are two main criteria for measuring the soil occupation tourist intensity :

• The first measurement criterion is the tourist/resident ratio, which enables us to evaluate the location occupation intensity, above all in high tourist season period. This criterion bears in mind infrastructure and tourist demand. 
• The second measurement criterion is the surface ratio of tourist infrastructures / total surface. This criterion only affects the density of occupation of the soil by the tourist infrastructures. This may be evaluated depending on whether the infrastructures are constructed or not constructed. 

The comparison of the two measurement criteria for the soil utilisation intensity leads us to point out that the two complement each other. However, the first criterion corresponds more to the evaluation of tourist planning policies based on the concept of lasting development. On the other hand, the second criterion may be considered as more significant and easier to use for small-sized tourist projects managed by individual operators or by small and medium-sized enterprises.

The water utilisation indicator

The use of water within the framework of tourist investment projects is especially important because it concerns at the same time the natural resources and the compatibilities of the tourist needs with those of the local people.
The water utilisation indicator must permit the evaluation of the impact of tourist planning on the water resources both from the quantitative and qualitative viewpoint.
Several indicators permit the evaluation of the impact of a tourist project on the water resources. These are:

Quantitative indicators :

• Percentage of the volume of water used by the tourists with respect to the volume of water used by the local population.
• Percentage of the volume used with respect to the availability of fresh water (reservoir or other types of capacity)   

Qualitative indicators :

• Salubrity rate of the available water in tourist facilities
  (is the water available drinkable or not ?)
• Contaminant number rate
  (Numbering of the colliforms and concentration of heavy metals 

Price indicators :

• Cost of the supply of water / number of tourists
• Cost of the supply of drinking water / number of tourists

These different indicators help provide a good evaluation of the use of water in so far as the group of data can be available. However, for the small projects, especially in the developing countries, it seems difficult to be able to have information to favour the planning of lasting tourism.

The atmosphere protection indicator

The atmosphere protection may seem less essential within the framework of tourist development projects than the other environmental protection indicators. In effect, the tourist investments do not, as a general rule, generate more atmospheric pollution than the housing building. However, this is not the reason why certain tourist concentrations that have negative effects on the atmosphere. The atmosphere protection indicator is linked mainly to measuring the air pollution. By extension, it is possible to add indicators to it about sound and traffic pollution.

Two types of indicators may be used to determine the protection of the atmosphere, which results from tourist development projects :

• The air pollution measurement indicators
  • Rate of air pollution (nitrogen oxide, particles, etc.)
  • Rate of pollution due to exhaust fumes
  • Number of days that exceed the pollution standards required
     
• The other indicators
  • Acoustic pollution levels (decibel rate)
  • Intensity of use of the location (number of visitors)
  • Tourist / resident population relation 

The different indicators proposed need to have a precise measurement of the atmospheric pollution levels. This type of measurement is particularly difficult to be carried out within the framework of the tourist projects by the operators even when they are large enterprises. It is therefore very important within the framework of lasting tourism planning. 

The social economic indicators

The impact of tourism on the social-economic medium is one of the greatest issues of lasting tourist development. In effect, although tourism is an important source of revenue, many problems are engendered by certain types of growth of the tourist visitors. This mainly concerns the destruction of the ways of traditional life, the increase of the cost of living, land speculation and the weak impact of certain tourist activities on the local economies.

Under these conditions, the social indicators must permit the evaluation of the extent to which tourism can be inserted into the medium and the living habits of the local population, so that the tourism developed in parallel to other sectors of economic activity and directly benefits the local development.

Five types of social indicators can be determined in the first place :

• The economic pressure indicator
• The social impact indicator
• The social population satisfaction indicator
• The safety indicator
• The public health indicator 

The economic pressure indicator

The pressure exercised on the local population by tourist visitors is one of the most important indicators to measure the social impact of tourism and its lasting character, and it is also one of the most difficult to apprehend. In effect, the tourist pressure concept is very different depending on the social and economic context in which the tourist development is carried out, for example, among the tourist coastal and insular regions of certain industrialised countries such as the Algarve, the south of California or the Balearic islands and the new tourist regions of developing countries such as the coast of Hammamet in Tunisia, Bali or Maurice island.

In these conditions, the tourist pressure indicator must be analysed with precaution, mainly when it concerns tourist planning in developing countries.

The tourist pressure indicator must permit the evaluation of the impact on a tourist project with respect to other existing tourist infrastructures and with respect to the wishes of the local population. The tourist pressure can be measured either with respect to the local population, or with respect to the tourist resources available to the local population :

• The tourist visitor intensity indicators
  • Number of tourists visiting the location with respect to the local population per day
  • Per month
  • Per tourist season period
  • Per year
• Tourist location utilisation intensity
  • Tourists per square metre of beach
  • Of natural locations
  • Of cultural locations

These indicators must permit the supply of relations between the number of tourists attracted by the execution of the tourist project and the different types of measurements of tourist pressure that result from this, bearing in mind the tourist executions already active.

The social impact indicator

The social impact can be considered as one of the best issues of the planning of lasting tourism. It concerns, in effect, evaluating to what extent can the tourist project improve the living conditions of the local population or on the contrary have negative consequences on them. The social impact of a tourist project must permit the accurate determination of the effects of tourist development on employment, qualifications, education and equality of sexes.

Several indicators can be used to evaluate the social impact of tourist planning. These indicators can be grouped together in two categories: the impact indicators and the ratios with respect to the local population:

• The impact indicators
  • Number of jobs created
  • Number of qualified jobs created
  • Number of female jobs created
  • Number of qualified female jobs created
  • Schooling rate of boys in the population
  • Schooling rate of girls in the population
• The ratios
  • Ratio of average female salary with respect to the average male salary for non-qualified jobs.
  • Ratio of average female salary with respect to the average male salary for qualified jobs
  • Ratio of education and training of female employees in the tourist project with respect to the average level of the population
  • Ratio of education and training of male employees in the tourist project with respect to the average level of the population

The social impact indicators must enable a relation to be established between tourist planning and the economic and social medium. To this end, it seems important to retain ratios susceptible to giving a precise measurement of the contribution of the project to the elevation of educational and socio-economic levels of the population concerned by the new tourist facilities.

Local population satisfaction indicator

Taking into account the satisfaction of the local populations is one of the greatest challenges of lasting development planning. This importance of taking into account aspirations of the local population is included in all the analyses of lasting tourism after the summit of Rio de Janeiro, which considers that "sustainable tourism is in harmony with the population, the environment and the culture of the place, in such a way that its development is constantly carried out to its benefit and not to its detriment".
The indicators of the degree of satisfaction of the local population must also permit the measurement of the acceptance of tourism by the people.

The measurement of the satisfaction of the local population can be determined either by surveys made by means of questionnaires, or by using representative ratios of this satisfaction.

• The questionnaires carried out by way of surveys are the best way of evaluating the degree of satisfaction of the local populations. These questionnaires must be able to be carried out by way of BEFORE / AFTER surveys in order to be able to compare the feelings of the population when the tourist development project is put into place and after this project has effectively been carried out.
• The representative ratios of the satisfaction of the local populations can be determined under the following conditions:
  • Ratios of the use of hotel infrastructures by the local population
  • Ratios of use of catering infrastructures by the local population
  • Ratios of use of the sports infrastructures linked to the tourist project by the local population
  • Ratios of use of the cultural infrastructures linked to the tourist project by the local population.

The information obtained through surveys and questionnaires has the disadvantage of requiring important means to obtain sufficiently reliable information. As a result, it is difficult to imagine these surveys being made when small tourist projects are started up. In these conditions, the ratios can give quite a useful idea of the satisfaction of the local populations although they are subject to the hypothesis according to which this satisfaction can be measured by the degree of use of the tourist infrastructures by the local population.

The safety indicator

Safety is a concern of both visitors and the local population. From the disorder engendered by the tourist development, the lasting character of this development can be considerably affected by a progression of insecurity, which is subject to being generating.
The safety indicators must permit the evaluation of the threats that tourist development can provoke and which directly concerns the population.
The measurement of the impact of tourism on safety can be made based on criminality indicators concerning the local population and the tourists :

• For the local population :
  • Ratio of thefts declared with respect to the local population
  • Ratio of aggressions declared with respect to the local population
  • Ratio of crimes declared with respect to the local population
  • Ratio of misdemeanours taking into account the minors with respect to the local population
• For the tourist
  • n Ratio of thefts declared with respect to the number of tourists
  • Ratio of aggressions declared with respect to the number of tourists
  • Ratio of crimes declared with respect to the number of tourists
  • Ratio of misdemeanours taking into account the minors with respect to the number of tourists

Must the safety indicators give an evaluation with respect to the local population or else with respect to the visitors ? Depending on one or other of the two options, the evaluation of indicators can be very different. In addition, it must be pointed out that it is advisable to take into account the evolution of the safety ratios, which is an essential element in order to measure the consequences of the impact of the influx of tourists following the start up of the tourist planning.

Public health indicator

The public health indicators are one of the most important signs of economic and social development. These indicators are mainly used within the framework of planning and mainly concern the policies addressed by the public powers.

The public health indicators must be able to evaluate the impact of tourist development on the health level of local populations. These health indicators concern either the general state of health of the population, or certain illnesses such as sexually transmitted illnesses.

• Global indicators
  • Death rate
  • Number of inhabitants per doctor
  • Number of inhabitants per nurse  
• Specific indicators
  • Number of cases of sexually transmitted illnesses / population
  • Number of cases of food infection / population
  • Other types of illnesses / population 

The health indicators are difficult to evaluate within the framework of tourist development projects in so far as the operators do not have possibilities to get to know the impact of their activities on the people's health. However, it seems important to seek a type of evaluation that would permit giving a measurement of this impact within the framework of lasting tourism planning.

These different indicators of lasting tourism must enable a link to be shown between tourist planning and economic development under the condition that this link corresponds to lasting development criteria. For this reason, the only growth indicators of the production of the sector of CHR (Cafe, Hotels, Restaurants) are insufficient to be able to evaluate the lasting character of the tourist projects considered. It is advisable, therefore, to integrate significant qualitative aspects in the growth analyses.

So the control of the development is one of the greatest issues of lasting tourism planning. A bad control of tourist development may be the direct cause of harm to the environment with the increased constraints for the local population. This situation generally causes a rivalry between the local people and the tourists to access the installations or facilities directly or indirectly linked to the tourist activity. The result of this may, in the long term, question of the tourist development as a whole, from there the need to find out what is the scope and the limits of the role of planning in lasting tourism development.

  

BY THE USE OF EVALUATION TOOLS AND CRITERIA OF REFERENCE

The main results expected consist in proposing new evaluation tools for the tourist investments and also useful tourist regional policies for the local communities and for the financial institutions in charge of establishing tourist investments.

The reading grid must permit a classification of tourist projects to be made depending on the criteria of lasting development and putting into place the permanent observation tools at the service of the development policy. These references are based upon an evaluation system of the tourist projects based on lasting development with a classification scale, A (very good), B (acceptable), C (need to improve) or a classification depending on the number of indicators selected (for example from 0 to 16).

Thus priority tourist projects including the whole tourist chain and aimed at created a new and remunerative activity will able to be sustained, too, based on objectives of lasting development and environment even when the investments are made by the SMEs.

Based on the different indicators analysed, the work carried out by the Development Group has enabled a reading and an evaluation grid to be carried out of private and public tourist projects based on lasting tourism.

The reading grid is presented, in effect, in the following way : 

READING GRID OF TOURIST PROJECTS : INDICATORS

INDICATORS OF SUSTAINABLE TOURISM	EVALUATION OF THE PROJECTS	REFERENCE EVALUATION	RESULT
Physical impact indicator
Liquid waste treatment indicator
Solid waste treatment indicator
Water consumption indicator
Visual indicator
Job creation indicator
People continuous training indicatorl
Local frequentation indicator
Safety indicator
Health indicator
Indicator of impact on local productions
Development control indicator
Cultural tourism indicator
New technology indicator
Information (child protection)
Existence of work agreement

The reference evaluations are for the authorities in charge of tourist development the privileged means for creating an effective link between the objectives of lasting tourist planning and the evaluation of private tourist development projects, which must be encouraged or, on the contrary, restrained.

The ratios proposed for the evaluation of indicators must be able to be balanced in the reading grid depending on the desired importance in each tourist area or region for each one of them.

The ratios selected are the following for the reading grid of tourist projects based on lasting tourism : 

READING GRID OF TOURIST PROJECT : RATIOS

SUSTAINABLE TOURISM RATIOS	PROJECT EVALUATION	REFERENCE EVALUATION	RESULT
% Surface area for tourist use / Total surface area
% treated liquid waste
% treated solid waste
Water consumption per room
Average and maximum height of buildings
Creation of jobs per room / place
% of people following continuous training
% local visitors (CA)
Rate of crimes per tourist (%)
Distance from nearest doctor
% local purchases / total purchases
Participation in agreed environment protection actions
% cultural expenditure
Existence of access to new technologies(Internet)
Existence of information on child protection
Existence of work agreement

BY THE INTERNATIONAL COMPARISON OF EXPERIENCES AND MODELS

These international comparisons of experiences and models are the best way of answering the question of professionalisation, innovation and industrialisation of the tourist organisations and enterprises of the traditional resorts, to make growth more lasting. In particular, they must permit the selection of a restricted number of indicators, which could be integrated in the establishment of tourist projects in order to evaluate their "lasting" character.

With this object, the questions of the choice of the most relevant indicators, but also the easiest to use, are essential. This is the main object of the indicators already indexed in the studies dedicated to lasting development and tourism and which must also be tested within the framework of international comparison from the point of view of their relevance and their facility of use in the case of evaluation of the tourist project.

The question of determining specific indicators depending on the geographical areas, tourist products or local differences permits the determination of "a smaller common denominator" permitting it to be applied to the majority of the tourist projects.

Thus, the lasting tourism growth can play an essential role in the success of the development of traditional tourist resorts permitting the mobilisation of all the actors of the economic development towards a common objective, which will also permit the reinforcement of the economic impacts of tourism, guaranteeing the protection of the environment

 

REFERENCES

This contribution has been made possible thanks to the research work on "THE READING GRID OF TOURIST PROJECTS BASED ON LASTING DEVELOPMENT" carried out within the framework of the programmes of the DEVELOPMENT GROUP carried out with the support of the European Union and the cooperation of the WTO, the CNUCED, the BIT and the UNEP.

• Commission Européenne, DG XXIII : Le tourisme et l'Union Européenne,
  Guide pratique, Bruxelles 1997
• Commission Européenne : Rapport de la Commission sur les mesures communautaires affectant le tourisme, Bruxelles 1997
• Conseil de l'Europe, Tourisme et Environnement, Strasbourg, Novembre 1997
• Groupe de Développement, Grille de Lecture des Projets Touristiques à partir du développement durable, Paris, Juin 2000
• O.M.T. Organisation Mondiale du Tourisme, Guide pratique pour l'élaboration et l'emploi
  d'indicateurs du tourisme durable, Madrid, 1999
• P.N.U.E. Programme des Nations Unies pour l'Environnement, Industrie et Environnement,
  Divers codes de conduites pour le tourisme, Paris, 1995
• WTTC World Travel and Tourism Council et O.M.T., Earth Council : Agenda 21 for the
  travel and tourism industry - towards environnementaly sustainable development, 1996