What are Barriers in Tourism Planning?
There are different barriers in planning and the factors involved in the barriers as well as resolutions of tourism. Tourism development germinates special ecological problems not encountered in other types of economic activity. The environmental resources ‘exploited’ recreational possibilities or educational and cultural interest.
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Planning tourism occurs when a community, regardless of the size, is interested in having people from various locations visit for enjoyment and recreation. Planning for tourists can sometimes follow the same guidelines tourists themselves use when planning to visit another location, which may be foreign to them.
Since tourism has evolved as vital activity, tourism planning must develop with it. Tourism planning has to be more flexible and capable of accommodating a wide array of political, social, economic and environmental changes.
Barriers in Tourism Planning
Planning tourism occurs when a community, regardless of the size, is interested in having people from various locations visit for enjoyment and recreation. Planning for tourists can sometimes follow the same guidelines tourists themselves use when planning to visit another location, which may be foreign to them.
Unfortunately, there may be barriers that can keep a community from achieving its goal of accommodating tourists. Each community has different goals and reasons for planning tourists, and with each goal, certain issues will need to be weighed and handled.
Barriers to tourism development have hardly been discussed. Hunt (2005) outlines in broad terms such as constraints to include the following:
- A lack of community participation in development policy.
- A lack of knowledge and awareness.
- Power imbalances between governments and local communities.
- Segmented and complex institutional arrangements.
- Lack of financial resource.
- According to McGinty, (2003) , Taylor, (2003), Cronin, (2003) and Hunt, (2005), there are following barriers in community capacity building in local communities.
- Lack of power as a component of community development.
- Inadequate focus on human resource development at the community level.
- Lack of information to facilitate informed decisions.
- Lack of authority for communities to control important matters.
- Lack of effective and strong governance institutions.
- Dependency on government and bureaucracy to meet needs.
- Lack of capacity to solve problems (Cronin, 2003:3; Makuwira & Yumbah).
Factors of Barriers in Tourism Planning
These are four factors of barriers in tourism planning:
Economic Factors
- Arm Twisting is the foremost barrier in tourism planning activity in this case the Advisors of Indigenous country protects their people to cross the any tourism activity as these advisors have researched their internal conditions in terms of politics, urgency and climate.
- Crime: In this case the tourism activities are highly hampered as the people/ tourists get afraid of being the plunged into crime related activities, molestation, assault and so on.
- Lust for earning has also been a major cause of barrier for tourism planning as people moving to urban areas neglecting their regional employment services and their regional tourism development. Hence becoming the major backdrop for the tourism planning policy.
Physical and Natural Resources
The physical environment is perhaps the most widely recognized barrier.
Having an influx of individuals visiting the community as tourists may cause a strain on the overall natural resources and conservation of the environment. For example, if a community located in the Amazon rain forests wants to increase the number of tourists in the area it may experience some damage to the natural wildlife inhabiting the rain forests.
Resources must also be in place to protect certain wildlife parks and other natural resources, which may require further revenue.
Communities may assume that tourism will boost their economy, create more jobs and cause the inhabitants to further develop their communities and areas. Unfortunately, some barriers can include the maximization of income.
Maximizing income means that there are only enough resources available to equip a certain amount of tourists, which can place a cap on the income the community can make. The community must also consider the locations and activities they make available to their tourists to motivate them to visit again and again.
Community and Influence
Effective tourism planning requires resident involvement to overcome the negative impacts to channel the benefits associated with tourism development. Tosun (2000), in his study of limits to community participation in the tourism development process in developing countries, pointed out that it is important to involve the local community in the tourism development process.
- Nature of politics: A large part of the population lacks political literacy and fails to understand how political processes work. Additionally there is a tendency to voice opinions at public meetings or by attending public sector led events, but a reluctance to become actively involved.
- Perception and nature of tourism: Concern about the impacts of tourism, coupled with a failure to understand the industry and its relationship with the local economy means communities are not engaged in a long-term view and do not acknowledge that management rather than prevention is needed.
- History of involvement in tourism: Where communities have played a strong role, or form part of the historical commodity on view, they tend to be more tolerant and accepting. Examples include re-enactment societies, local festivals and events.
- Attitudes of media: When all is good media plays a key role in promoting tourism, selling positive stories and strengthening reputation. It is effective at raising support for charities and events in the sector. However, one negative feature about new developments or negative research damages the reputation of the sector.
- Apathy amongst citizens: Communities often feel there is little they can do to change a situation so are reluctant to become involved in local politics or projects.
- Cost in relation to time and money: Successful participation requires time, energy, commitment and maybe even money. This is often an underpinning factor in apathy.
- Decision making takes longer with community involvement: Sometimes it can take longer to make a decision, but this is primarily a perception which exists because of beliefs about planning processes and political systems, again leading to apathy and a failure to understand politics.
- Ensuring fair opportunities for representation from the whole community: This is hard to achieve for any organization, be it public, private or voluntary sector.
- Lack of understanding of complex planning issues and processes: Many people don’t understand what decision makers do. They tend to refer to them with terms such as ‘the Council’ and ‘them in their ivory towers’ and are unwilling to participate except to oppose change.
Government Structuring
Government is the key player in tourism development and a great contributor to tourism in developing countries. As already discussed tourism is an economical enhancer and ultimately contributes to the govt. in the development of destination directly or indirectly, there lies the need for tourism promotion and planning policies to be implemented at the local, regional and national levels as well.
There must be a government infrastructure set up to ensure that tourists feel safe and protected, as well as to provide for the allocation of funds to prepare for and maintain tourists. There is also the pressure from supra-national forces, which is defined as a mixture of countries that have agreed to come together for policymaking, assistance and possibly developing tourist planning in certain areas.
Supra-national or international forces may suggest tourists not to visit the community that wants to plan a tourism, as it may stagnate their goals. Violent conflicts and lack of political stability will be a constant problem in Sea in tourism in future years.
A lot of conflicts full of violence has occurred among or between countries and it is probable that it will occur again although the details of the way of doing this will fluctuate from one situation to another.
Lack of effective political organization will cause public discontentment to change to extra-law forms. In addition, internal conflict and the potential failure and inability of the government, which has resulted from the substitution crisis, will happen in all developing countries in future years.
The incongruity existing between different tribes which are a necessary but insufficient condition for creating a violent conflict has become common in all countries of this region. Therefore, it is probable that weak organizations having weak bureaucracy and limited central control cooperate with other discontented groups and create a barrier for stability and development of the region.
Barrier to Tourism Development and Possible Resolution
A Barrier to Tourism Development and Possible Resolution
| Barriers | Possible Resolutions |
| Lack of vision | Facilitate focus groups with stakeholders and representatives from the company. |
| Lack of education about tourism impacts | Hold open houses and educational assemblies where community members can learn about the positive and negative impacts of tourism. Involve local media in the development process. Involve community leaders in disseminating information. |
| Lack of Education about the development process | Appoint Sub Committee to research laws regulations concerning all aspects of development: real estate, sign ordinance, DOT plans, Historic Preservations. |
| Insufficient infrastructure | Concentrate on bettering what already exists rather than using limited resources to add new infrastructure to an insufficient foundation. |
| Lack of direction and organization | Develop standard means of communication within the industry, such as a calendar of events or newsletter. Use past research and future data collection efforts to identify the target markets & to aid in product development. Local marketing efforts can also be used to state’s long – rang direction. |
| Politics | Ensure that diverse groups from the community are represented proportionately in developing stages. Maintain the focus of all efforts as a QUALITY OF LIFE issues the whole community. Employ an outside agency for assessment, development and policy. |