Reason why leader's need to change their mindset The shift from an industrial to ecological, network model of tourism Relevance of changing worldviews to tourism The need for transformation The look and feel of transformation

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Beyond Recovery: Transformation!
Tourism’s Contribution to Community
Development in a Network Economy
Anna Pollock
DestiCorp UK Ltd.
5th November, 2009

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Introduction
This paper is for use and reflection by clients and audience members who have participated in
presentations by Anna Pollock and who have expressed an interest in contributing to the
discussion regarding the future of tourism and economic development at the community level.
It has three parts:
1. A discussion of the reason why industry leaders need to change their mindset from one
that views tourism as an industry to one that perceives it as a complex networked
system;
2. An introduction to the six key change drivers that necessitate such a shift; and
3. A discussion of the changes that tourism must make to operate in a carbon‐constrained,
highly networked, creative economy.
This PDF version is frozen in time (see date stamp in footer). The author has posted an electronic
version that will be continuously up‐dated and expanded in response to reader feedback; new
information and ideally, success stories from the field. Thus this work is intended to be a
collaborative process in which the reader is also creator. An ever expanding reading list will
enable readers to follow lines of inquiry that are of personal interest.
A Change in Perception
While five years in the history of humanity is a mere blink of an eye, future historians may
recognise this coming decade as marking a tipping point in human development – a period
during which a critical mass of human beings changed their perception of how the world works
and human’s role and relationships on the planet we call home.
The seeds for this shift were sown between the two world wars as scientists delved deeper into
the heart of the atom and realised that objective reality was an illusion; that the very act of
observing sub‐atomic phenomena changed their properties and that what we perceive as solid is
really energy and matter in constant motion.
Even though enormous breakthroughs in the hard sciences were shaking the foundations of our
worldview, the commercial world carried on business as usual developing, refining and,
occasionally, re‐engineering, an industrial model of production and consumption that had
emerged in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.
This so called “industrial worldview” is premised on the assumption of a precisely working,
fragmented, non‐changing, non‐living, and predictable ‘Clockwork Universe’, which is expressed
in the metaphors of ‘machine’ and ‘control’.
The machine imagery led to the belief that studying the parts was key to understanding the
whole. Things are taken apart, dissected literally or figuratively (as we have done with
business functions, academic disciplines, areas of specialisation, human body parts) and
then put them back together without any significant loss. The assumption is that the more
we know about the workings of each piece, the more we learn about the whole. ….i
The materialistic worldview seeks to comprehend the world through our physical senses. It
tends to operate on the principle belief that, unless phenomena can be sensed and measured,
they are considered either unmanageable or not worth managing.
The foundations of most business management theories pioneered by the likes of Taylor, Sloan,
and Kettering, and taught by Harvard and countless other business schools, were based on this
mechanistic perspective and were designed in response to the prolific output of industrialists
such as Ford. …
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…whose workers functioned as parts of the machine, each carrying out a specified,
unvarying sequence of tasks. In fact, the appropriate metaphor for make­and­sell
companies is efficient, offer­making machines. Such firms are characterised by replaceable
parts, economies of scale and replaceable people executing repeatable procedures in
accordance with prescribed business plans. ii
There’s no disputing the fact that, in terms of material output, this industrial model has been
highly productive and efficient resulting in vast increases in Gross Domestic Product. But by the
end of the 1990s, the stability needed to sustain this output was fast disappearing. Rapidly
shifting consumer preferences combined with boom and bust cycles and resource constraints
necessitated a degree of agility and resilience that centralised, “hard wired” complex supply
chains could not produce.
Limitations to the mechanistic and highly controlled method of production and distribution
coincided with a growing awareness that the world might not work in such an orderly, linear
fashion after all. Advances in molecular biology, quantum physics, astronomy, neuroscience and
network science (to name but a few areas) combined with increased awareness of resource
shortages and the environmental impacts of waste and pollutants to usher in a systems or
ecological worldview that focused on networks and the relationships connecting parts of a
network to produce a dynamic whole.
Quantum physics showed that there are no basic building blocks in nature – subatomic particles
come into form and are observed only as they are in relationship to something else. All living
systems – from the human body through to the planet as a whole – are now recognised as
complex and self‐regulating, comprising multiple and diverse, self‐organising agents in constant
relationship with each other and larger systems of which they are a part. They respond to change
by re‐organising themselves into higher levels of organisation. Systems and human organisations
act like networks or communities and while some physical laws still apply, they also obey a new
set of rules that are only now being mapped and understood.
Figure 1
The Shift in Perception
This shift in perspective from machine to organic, dynamic system is profound and is affecting
every aspect of human society. The only way leaders, be they in economic development or
tourism or both, can lead effectively is to understand the full nature and implications of this shift.
New ways of thinking are needed that draw on parts of the brain that the industrial worldview
considered irrelevant. Dan Pink’s book, A Whole New Mind, provides an excellent and highly
accessible introduction to the need to balance the differing capacities of the left and right
hemispheres of the brain in order to make sense of a rapidly changing, and increasingly complex,
world.
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Relevance of Changing Worldviews to Tourism & Economic
Development
Following the invention and rapid diffusion of mass transportation (rail and air) that rapidly
increased the volume of travellers in the 1950s and 1960s, tourism businesses looked to
manufacturing for organisational models and best management practice. The visitor’s
experience was perceived, managed and marketed not as a whole but as a series of products that
could be assembled – like the parts of a car – from within a vertically integrated chain of supply.
The science of marketing focused on identifying customer segments that could be targeted and
on which various messages and products could be pushed in order to persuade consumers to
consume and thereby capture market share. The language and metaphors were decidedly
military, highly competitive and product centric.
The results were impressive – in just under sixty years, international tourism grew from a trickle
to a flood with just under a billion international travellers exploring the planet and at least five
times that number staying within their own borders. Spokespersons for the leading tourism
agencies such as the WTTC and UNWTO regularly boasted of tourism’s resilience and projected
annual, compound increases in traffic of 4‐6% over the next decade.
Figure 2 is a chart illustrating the UNWTO projections of tourism growth between 1950 and 2020
that shows an exponential increase in the volume of tourism traffic which appears to have no
end. The pattern reflects an industrial mindset that tends to think in straight lines, by projecting
the future from growth rates experienced in the present or recent past and by viewing the
tourism phenomenon as somehow disconnected from the sub‐systems of environment, economy,
consumer values and behaviour on which it depends.
The pattern assumes a degree of constancy in the factors that influence demand that simply does
not occur in the real world. It ignores the potential for internal self limiting factors that might
halt the upward trajectory of growth, be they environmental constraints, congestion, or
diminishing rates of return to suppliers and or diminishing rates of satisfaction experienced by
tourists. The chart is often used to convince public and private agencies that tourism has
seemingly unlimited growth potential and therefore justifies further investment in both
development and marketing.
Figure 2: International Tourism Arrivals, 1950­2020
By contrast, Figure 3 illustrates what happens to real tourist destinations located at the local
community or regional level. The research underpinning Butler’s Tourist Area Lifecycle Model,
and that of countless tourism planners since, has shown that most destinations pass through a
sequence of stages: exploration, involvement (locals respond to the needs of visitors),
development (investment occurs from local and external sources to expand services and
facilities), consolidation (a mature period during which the rate of visitor growth and investment
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slows down) and then stagnation (when re‐investment in maintenance also declines and the
quality of the infrastructure and experience deteriorate). At this point only some form of “re‐
think” in the form of different attractors and experiences, or a mammoth facelift/makeover can
rescue the destination from further decay.
Figure 3: Butler’s Tourism Area Life Cycle Model
The chart in Figure 3 reflects an ecological mindset. The graph applies to the rise and fall of all
species in any ecosystem and more accurately reflects reality than Figure 2. It suggests that the
pattern described for local tourism can and should be applied to global tourism growth as there
could be both self‐limiting factors within tourism’s industrial model as well as external factors
(environmental limits, economic factors and societal trends) that might affect its performance.
The Need for Transformation
Despite the optimism and certainty suggested by UNWTO’s projections in Figure 1, tourism
growth has stalled in response to a severe global recession. The end of 2009 projects
international tourism traffic to have declined by 6%iii. Few expect the global economy to resume
“business as usual” once that downward trend bottoms out. It is perhaps appropriate to ask
whether the current decline represents the temporary downturn associated with a business cycle
or could represent the first signs of the stagnation phase illustrated in Figure 3.
Either way, the lull in frenetic economic and visitor growth provides every destination with the
opportunity to assess its own strengths and weaknesses and reflect on the kinds of tourism it
wishes to pursue in the future. It is time for some form of re‐orientation or shift in the way
tourism is developed and delivered in order for it to emerge from this period of difficulty
rejuvenated and renewed.
This transformative requirement is not unique to tourism – virtually every socio‐economic
activity is going through some form of re‐think or re‐boot. Borrowing from the term used to
describe the evolution of the web, the moniker 2.0 is being applied to sectors as diverse as
government, healthcare, agriculture and the terms “transformation” and “re‐boot” are cropping
up everywhere –even being used by relatively conservative accounting firms!iv
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At least six key change drivers are necessitating a profound re‐think.
• The end of NICE Times.
• Technology & connectivity
• Changing Demographics, Skills and Values
• Internal Failure – tyranny of commoditisation & inequality of wealth distribution
• Biophysical realities
• The need to de‐materialise growth
Tourism growth is inextricably linked to economic growth and we can be sure that the way in
which these factors emerge and intertwine will directly impact the global economy. Each factor
will singly, or in combination, also shape the nature of tourism demand. Neither time nor space
permits a detailed examination of these factors and their interdependencies in this paper.
Instead, we can merely outline their key dynamics as a form of map that highlights the issues that
tourism marketers and economic developers must be aware of. Readers of the electronic version
will discover that the analysis will grow in depth over time.
The End of NICE Times
Mervyn Bragg, the Governor of the Bank of England, coined the term NICE to describe a period of
Non‐inflationary Constant Expansion in which a number of growth factors propelled economic
growth forward during the 1990s and first part of the second Millennium. The UK based Forum
for the Future and Cap Gemini charted these factors (illustrated below) and developed four
alternative scenarios for global business in a report titled Acting Now for a Positive 2018
Preparing for Radical Changev. Their analysis posited 8 growth factors which had contributed to
the NICE times but which have subsequently weakened and show little signs of robust recovery.
Figure 4: The Factors That Contributed to NICE Times
Source: Acting Now for a Positive 2018 Preparing for Radical Change,
Future Foundation & Cap Gemini
As few expect these growth drivers to dominate the scene in a post recessionary world, we can
expect significant changes in the pace and type of tourism demand over the next decade.
Technology & Connectivity
We can be confident in assuming, however, that the pace of technological advancement will
continue to accelerate and that the next generation will have access to computing power and
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bandwidth that is wildly greater than that enjoyed today. By 2020, over 2 billion people will be
connected to the internet and over 5 billion will have access to a mobile phone. Readers are
recommended to a succinct and informative overview of the five key technological forces shaping
future economies and societies: processing power, connectivity as in bandwidth, nanotechnology,
biotechnology – see the Future of the Leading Edge viby InfoSavy.
The web has indeed changed everything but not just as a global distribution channel but as a
platform for collaboration in which the impact of consumers talking with each other about
brands significantly outweighs the messages that brands can convey about themselves.
Ubiquitous and pervasive connectivity and access to almost perfect information has enabled the
customer to seize control – the task now is less to “push” messages to customers in an attempt to
persuade them to buy, but to support customers by enabling them to pull the quality content they
need when, where and how they need it.
Figure 5: Evolution of the Web (David Armano)
In short, all marketing is now social in nature and requires a new set of listening, interactive and
collaborative tools and skills.
Consumers must now be viewed as partners not targets as they have almost equal power to
produce content (blogs, books, photos, movies and, thanks to web services or widgets, entire web
sites with sophisticated functionality). If markets have become conversations as the authors of
The ClueTrain Manifesto viipresciently forecast in 1999, then the objective now is not to talk but to
become the topic of other’s conversation. Each consumer sits at the centre of his or her own
distribution network and thanks to intersecting online social networks may be able to influence
thousands of peers. The new metric to watch is “return on influence”.
Marketers have long understood the battle for consumers’ time, attention and income. Now the
battle for their trust assumes far greater importance. The combination of connectivity and
content has generated a degree of transparency unparalleled in the history of commerce such
that a brand’s equity is increasingly a function of its reputation. Soon all products, places and
people wishing to do business will be reviewed and rated and these reviews and ratings will
appear alongside the search engine results.
Destination Marketers and Economic Developers must embrace the new collaborative platforms
and understand the impacts of pervasive social connectivity if they are to stay relevant and if
they are to support their communities in fully participating in a globally networked economy.
Changing Demographics, Skills and Values
Professional tourism marketers and economic developers are fully aware of the power of
demographics to impact communities and shape development as well as influence the profile and
behaviour of visitors.
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Demographics
The underlying challenge affecting all of us pertains to sheer numbers. Despite reducing fertility
rates in many countries, the global population continues to rise – it will exceed 7 billion by 2011
and add another billion in the next decade.
In 2006, almost 500 million people worldwide were 65 and older. By 2030, that total is projected
to increase to 1 billion—1 in every 8 of the earth’s inhabitants. Significantly, the most rapid
increases in the 65‐and‐older population are occurring in developing countries, which will see a
jump of 140 percent by 2030. The impact of this trend on the economies of such countries is not
yet clear although we can expect to see a growing tax burden placed on the existing workforce as
it copes with caring for an aging population who may not have planned to live so long. Nor is the
impact on propensity to travel certain. Much depends on the value of pensions and savings. If
boomers remain healthy in body and finance, we can expect senior travel to boom; on the other
hand, pensions crises combined with costly medical bills could leave little cash for vacations.
In addition to the growing gap between young and old, we are also witnessing a widening gap
between rich and poor. The realities of the stark contrasts in population dynamics between rich,
developed and developing nations is illustrated in the following chart published by the
Population Reference Bureau in its 2009 World Population Data Sheet viii. Even though Canada
and Uganda have close to the same population today, Uganda is expected to have more than
double Canada’s population by 2050.
Eighty percent of today’s youth (all 1.2 billion) live in Africa and Asia and can be expected to be
highly mobile as they search for education, training and work. In 1950 there were two people for
every rich person; by 2025; that ratio will have increased to 8:1 with the poor people having
almost equal access to the same information through the Internet and mobile devices as their
wealthier peers. The growth of piracy on the high seas adjacent to impoverished countries such
as Somalia could spread into more kidnapping events on land. Failure to be able to guarantee
tourists’ personal safety can effectively kill international tourism overnight.
In the western world, propensity to travel and preferred style of travel will vary between three
key demographic groups: Boomers, born after 1946 and now thinking of either full or part‐time
retirement; Generation X, a smaller cohort born between X and Y who will be assuming the
majority of leadership positions in business and government; and the generation variously
described as Gen Y, the Net Generation and the Echo population born between 1977 and 1997.
This is the generation that can best help Destination Marketing Organisations and Economic
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Development agencies best understand the impact and opportunities afforded by today’s
connecting technologies as, according to Don Tapscott, it represents the first generation that
grew up “bathed in bits.ix” In a world dependent on effective use of information technologies and
collaborative ways of working this generation will be a prized source of talent, competence and
creativity.
N­Gen employees expect the companies they go to work for to have the collaborative tools and
processes in place that they have grown accustomed to in their personal lives. As an example, 28%
of N­Gners dislike email as a communications technology because it is too slow.
Our ability to forecast the impact of climate change on travel behaviour also suffers from
inconsistent and ambiguous research findings. In 2007, the UK Civil Aviation Authority stated, “at
present, passengers’ attitudes towards the environment do not seem to be having a significant
effect on the demand for air travel” x In 2009, another study on social attitudes in Britain found
that 70 percent agree that air travel has an effect on climate change. xi The take up of carbon
offsets offered by airlines remains low – hovering around 3‐5% for a variety of reasons. It’s
interesting to note that while Americans’ understanding of the issues has strengthened, only 9%
are willing to pay more for eco‐friendly options.
Skills Shortage
Despite the recession, the globe is facing a major skills shortage as the population ages and the
mismatch between current workforce skills and future requirements worsens. The competition
for talent will become even fiercer in the years ahead. Successful organisations and communities
will find ways of helping the three generations work effectively together and harnessing the
different talents and perspectives that each brings to problem solving and creativity.
The nature of work will also change dramatically – more jobs will be shared; the proportion of
people self‐employed will rise with a potential impact on use of leisure time; sub‐contracting
and outsourcing will escalate; and individuals will have multiple careers.
Changing Values
At the same time, each generation is exhibiting a steady shift in values.
According to Claire Ratushny in the MediaPost article “Meeting Consumers’ Emerging Values,
xii”
People are paring down and simplifying their lives. Consumers are increasingly selective
about the products they purchase. “Excess is causing revulsion, prompting consumers to
purchase fewer products and more in bulk; then to repurpose as much as they can. Even
trendsetters are reorienting their lifestyles to eliminate unnecessary waste. Good news for
the environment and overflowing landfills.
According to the 2008 Going Green xiii study by Yankelovich, 62 percent of Americans agree that
“People today consume far more of everything than they really need,” up from 49 percent in
2007 reflecting an emerging trend called Enoughism. Richard Watson, futurist and author of
Trend Blend 2009 has suggested;
Organisations will become increasingly values­driven. They will also become more
connected with their communities, be it a geographic area or the wider community of
employees, customers and suppliers. …People will be spending more time with their
immediate family and friends. This is an opportunity because people will be interested in
things that enable this or tap into the need to slow things down a little.
The corporate world has certainly made a huge shift in its perception of what business is all
about. Just a few years ago, Milton Friedman’s view that profits was the only legitimate focus of
business dominated the commercial sector. Over the past decade Corporate Social Responsibility
has shifted from an issue of compliance to an opportunity to build and enhance an attractive
brand reputation.
The Barrett Values Centrexiv has undertaken significant research mapping corporate values and
determined that corporate values can be classified by the same Maslow hierarchy used to map
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consumer behaviour. – as illustrated below. A growing number of leading corporations are
finding that it makes very good business sense to move up the hierarchy from survival to
actualisation.
Destinations will soon find themselves measured, indexed and rated according to the seriousness
with which they take their environmental and social stewardship responsibility. Simon Anholt,
one of the key experts on place branding has this to say on the subject:
Three aspects of reputation have become critical: perceived environmental credentials;
perceived competence and productivity in technology; and attractiveness as a place of
learning and economic and cultural self improvement.xv
Internal Failure – the Challenge of Commoditisation
One of the most telling signs that a shift in perception is now taking place, is the reference to
widespread and fundamental market failures be they associated with climate, food or the most
recent economic meltdown. There is a growing awareness that while industrialised capitalism
may have brought many benefits in terms of wealth creation, it contains internal design flaws
that may limit its long‐term success.
One of these self‐limiting factors, aggravated substantially by consumers’ digital access to
unparalleled amounts of information, has been the relentless onslaught of commoditisation – the
mechanism whereby goods and services drop in perceived value over time.
Tourism is particularly vulnerable and susceptible to the curse of commoditisation for a number
of reasons: a) the product is perishable; b) there are low barriers to entry; c) products have
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become homogenised; d) fierce global competition; e) reliance on debt financing and f)
prevalence of notoriously thin profit margins. While airlines may be able to adjust capacity by
parking planes in the desert, the rest of the tourism supply chain is stuck with fixed operating
costs and heavy investments in hard and soft overheads (facilities, buildings and people).
Even during boom economic times, when consumers felt their disposable incomes rising, tourism
suppliers often competed on price. During bust periods, price discounting appears to be the
preferred coping mechanism.
As revenues decline, operators have few choices – they must cut costs and this can only be done
by reducing services, redundancies, by standardising the product offering or through
automation. All these responses result in a deterioration in customer experience. Revenues can
only be grown by mergers and acquisitions or by a focus on volume which, in turn, leads to more
congestion, greater dissatisfaction and increased vulnerability to substitution (staying at home,
replacing travel with video conferences and net meetings).
This negative and downward spiral harms destinations as the tourism community is less able to
generate tangible benefits to the host community (wages drop and cheap labour is imported )
and tourism enterprises are less able to pay for external costs such as ecosystem services. In
order to boost tax revenues and sustain employment, destinations must encourage growth in
volume (more visitors or more suppliers).
In short, during and after recessionary periods, destinations and suppliers must find the antidote
to commoditisation or face their long‐term decline.
Biophysical realities
If these internal flaws were not troublesome enough, the tourism community is now being forced
to face some biophysical realities. Tourism is all about the movement of people through space
and their consumption of resources at specific places and times. There are biophysical limits to
the amount of resources that can be consumed both in total and during a specified period
without there being a negative consequence. This phenomenon is called “carrying capacity”.
While notoriously hard to define at the local level, we are now experiencing the challenge of
living beyond our means as a species on the planet called earth. Globally, humanity is practising
the ecological equivalent of deficit spending, utilising resources at a rate faster than that which
the planet can regenerate in a calendar year. In other words, we now require the equivalent of
1.4 planets to support our lifestyles. Put another way, in less than 10 months, humanity will use
ecological services that the Earth takes 12 months to regenerate. If humanity consumed at the
same rate as North American populations do, then we would need another 5 planets to supply
the resources necessary to sustain our way of life. xvi
The Carbon Footprint, which accounts for the use of fossil fuels, is almost half the total global
footprint, and is its fastest‐growing component, increasing more than eleven fold from 1961 to
2005. The majority of the global scientific community is now convinced that climate patterns are
changing at a faster rate than most natural systems can adjust impacting the viability of species,
landscapes, food production and the habitability of vast tracts of land along coastlines and deltas
where vast numbers of humans live.
Tourism is thought to have contributed 5% of the planet’s carbon footprint in 2005 but should
tourism grow at the rates forecast by the UNWTO and should other industries reduce their
carbon footprint as required, tourism will become one of the single most significant contributors
to carbon generation.
The Icarus Foundation was founded in 2007 as an attempt to
encourage the tourism industry in Canada to address the climate
change issue straight on. More information can be found on the
web site and blog dedicated to the climate change topic. A paper
outlining the issues associated with climate change and tourism
is available here.
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According to Sir David Beddington, the UK’s Chief Scientist, humanity is facing a biophysical
“perfect storm” over the next 20 years with energy demand and food demand both rising 50%
while water availability reduces 30%. It doesn’t require more detailed data to suggest that the
tourism industry will be operating in a very different biophysical environment as time passes
and some form of adjustment to business as usual will be essential. Whilst the efforts of
individual businesses to become sustainable through reductions in waste, carbon and resource
use must be applauded, they will be in vain unless the broader tourism community can address
its dependency on volume growth.
The Need to De­materialise Growth
The really big issue affecting all humanity is the need to de‐couple growth from the use of scarce
resources and generation of wastes in excess the earth’s biophysical capacity to absorb and
process without harmful side effects.
Until recently, the subject of growth was so built into the assumptions of “how things work” that
questioning the need for economic growth was considered taboo. Our current economic model is
dependent, to the point of addiction, on growth for two fundamental reasons:
a. output has to offset productivity gains in order to keep people in employment
and
b. output has to increase in order to pay the interest in debt that compounds over
time.
The history of the western world is all about production and once the market for essential goods
and services was sustained, business had to innovate through novelty or technology that changed
the rules of the game.
Novelty has been the main growth driver in tourism – see Butler’s Tourist Area Lifecycle chart
above, Figure 3. Privileged travellers (never tourists) discovered new places that sooner or later
became tourist destinations. The problem is that the number of undiscovered places is running
out. New ways of creating novelty, adding value and generating yield have to be created.
Fortunately, the growth discussion is no longer taboo and
economists who question its net benefit and value are no longer
relegated to the wilderness. An increasing number of publicly
and privately funded research agencies and think tanks is now
examining how we might sustain well‐being and quality of life
without the need to live beyond our means. One really
important contribution to this important discussion is the
thought piece published by the UK‐based Institute for
Sustainable Development Growth titled Prosperity Without
Growthxvii
Presently growth is measured by increases in GDP even though
there is growing evidence that GDP – a measure of total output –
can rise without their being any corresponding increase in well‐
being.
If the tourism community wishes a) to be taken seriously; and b) to be allowed to continue to use
increasingly precious natural resources (both stuff and places), it too must focus its attention on
how to sustain its operations, generate benefits to host communities; and provide delight to
customers without increasing its ecological footprint. Any other conversation is the medieval
equivalent to debating how many angels dance on a pin head.
Nothing short of transformation is needed – a complete metamorphosis in the way travel and
tourism is conducted and sold. The balance of this paper highlights what the author believes are
some fruitful places to start that transformation process and invites all readers to join in this
common endeavour…..
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The Look and Feel of Transformation
The following concepts are preliminary thoughts on the way tourism and community economic
development might develop in response to the shift in perception and the change forces
described about. They obviously constitute a “work in progress” and are shared in order to invite
discussion and refinement from practitioners in the field.
Places are Back
While the need for transformation is universal, I contend that they can only be faced from the
community level up. Only when we shift our perception from tourism as an industry (consuming
resources, making and selling products) to tourism as a phenomenon or system based on
communities of people, will effective solutions emerge. Places are re‐emerging as the
organising principle; the “queen bees” around which activity coalesces and creates meaning and
value for guest, host, supplier and consumer.
Prior to industrialisation and the connectivity that has been associated with it (the printing
press, the telegraph, telephone, internet), most people stayed put, with the vast majority
travelling at most just a few miles from their homes. Each place developed its own distinctive
“sense of place” based on a unique combination of geography and history. To travel far really did
mean to encounter the unknown. The industrial process, with its focus on volume, necessitated
standardised production and distribution and now many towns offer the same mix of commercial
buildings and services.
Local is back. Paradoxically, globalisation has made unique places more important than
ever. Neighbourhoods, cities, regions, even countries are all trying to define and
communicate a one­of­a­kind authenticity that will lure people, investment and visitors to
their locale. xviii
The objective of the community is viability, vitality, stability, health and prosperity, as expressed
in the capacity for its people to flourish.
The question now focuses on how communities differentiate themselves and sustain their
inhabitants in a globalised network that is increasingly valuing wellness, creativity, ideas,
thought and mental processing over the production and consumption of stuff. To answer that
question requires examination of values, viability, diversity, connectivity and scale. It also
requires understanding how complex adaptive systems behave and looking to new sources of
conceptual understanding based on networks and complexity.
People are Back
The industrial model focuses on things, materiality and stuff. An ecological mindset focuses on
people, agents and relationships. The industrial mindset labels reality, breaks it into components
parts that are assigned to boxes or categories. The ecological mind works with wholes and sees
individuals acting out multiple roles that thrive on dynamic, ever changing sets of relationship.
Destination Marketing Organisations (DMOs) currently exist to focus on the needs of visitors and
those tourism‐related suppliers who cater to visitors from outside the community. But there are
so many other kinds of people that without direction attract outsiders to the community:
residents, workers, students, export business owner/managers, investors, immigrants (would be
and actual), people of influence (media, celebrities); film producers seeking the perfect location;
and event creators.
Each of these types of individual has a stake in the destination. Their roles are often
interchangeable – a visitor becomes an immigrant or an investor; a business traveller returns to
buy property and rent out to friends
Each plays an important role in building and shaping the place brand and each has its own
network of connections that can be tapped as a future source of visitation. There are no longer
serious technological impediments for individuals to perform the same invitation functions as
were delegated to DMOs. They can produce complex web sites, for example, using free software
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that provides a range of content and functionality. The task of the DMO in the future will
increasingly be to stimulate and harness this creative energy of the community to support the
work of inviting others to visit a place.
The Need for Integration
The ecological mindset sees all things as inter‐connected and inter‐dependent even though the
nature and impact of those connections may be hard to isolate, describe and measure.
Sometimes, small connections can have big consequences.
Given this inter‐connected reality and the fact that places are settings for people and that people
play multiple, interchangeable roles; does it make sense to put the activities associated with
making a place attractive into separate boxes, ie, to separate tourism from economic
development?
Place branding cannot be undertaken by DMOs in isolation from all the other people with a stake
in the community’s future and most certainly cannot be outsourced to an external agency.
Placemaking is a shared activity, especially in what has been described as The Creative Economy.
Urban planners and strategists agree that vibrant, authentic places bubbling with lively
cultural and entertainment options are magnets that attract and retain creative people.
This creative workforce in turn generates wealth in an expanding knowledge economy. The
old assumption in economic development was that people follow business and investment.
We know that the reverse is true. If we build communities where people want to live and
work, business and investment follow people, not vice versa. xix
Tourism is a major contributor to the viability of a community. Tourism connects the place with
the people who might be investors, employees, entrepreneurs, idea generators, managers,
leaders and influencers who make the community work; make it attractive to others; and make it
possible to visit and enjoy.
Tourism is the means and not the end to community development and sustained prosperity.
Brand Magic – an inclusive process
In a globalised, networked and utterly connected world comprising thousands of places, it is vital
that each can stand out and have the capacity to attract the people, investment, ideas and capital
it needs to sustain itself. (Each place being an open system nested in a global network of
systems).
Capturing distinctiveness is the essence of any brand. But brands are far more complex than
implied by taglines, images or logos. Place brands cannot be owned, let alone controlled by any
agency. Place brands constitute the sum total of interactions and encounters between guest and
host.
We live in a world where the little things do really matter. Each encounter no matter how
brief is a microinteraction which makes a deposit or a withdrawal from our rational and
emotional subconscious. The sum of these interactions and encounters adds up to how we
feel about a particular product, brand or service. Little things. Feelings. They influence our
everyday behaviours more than we realise.xx
Place brands represent the interaction of two sets of desire: 1) what the resident community
intends the place to be, what it values and what it stands for; and 2) what the visitor is
hoping/expecting to experience there. The brand is the sum total of the micro interactions that
occur between visitors and residents and visitors with visitors and their peers, ie, experiential
reality is expressed as the buzz of conversation taking place about it.
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Figure 6: Brands as Interactions Between Residents and Visitors
It is not enough for the place simply to stand out. Places are now expected to offer “authentic”
and meaningful experiences based on a unique identity that reflects the unique attributes of the
history and geography of the place, the past and present aspirations of its people, their culture
and past achievements. Cultural mapping is now emerging as a key tool to help communities
determine what makes them different and this is extremely important in the fight against
commoditisation as it creates a “scarcity of place” that prevents one community substituting for
another.
While the body of literature on place branding is increasing rapidly, I would like to suggest three
additional aspects of this topic that justify further attention:
a. Attraction
Most marketers still follow the five Ps of product, positioning, price, place and promotion –
in other words, push a product or its brand to an audience with the intent of persuading a
customer to purchase. Given the plethora of channels, the surfeit of messages and
customers’ limited time, attention, income and trust, a new strategy is evolving – that of
attracting or pulling the visitor towards a place. The distinction is not a subtle one.
Attracting requires clarity, energy, transparency, commitment, authenticity and alignment
from all aspects of a community. It means being what and who you want to attract. As
marketing shifts from a push to a pull activity new skills and ways of measuring success will
be developed.
b. Alignment
Attraction occurs when molecules are in alignment. A laser beam can attract attention
because its light beams “march in step” – they are said to be cohesive or coherent and,
thereby, become visible over great distances. Communities also need to have their members
act coherently – ie, to align their perception of themselves and their intent. They need to
know who they are and the kind of people they wish to attract. The process of reaching
community alignment is still poorly developed. There has been a tendency for both DMOs
and Economic Developers to retain the services of professionals to help frame the brand but
without a core of support and identification from within the community, the brand can ring
hollow.
c. Values
While the process known as culture mapping helps a community map its resources and
identity; there’s still a piece of the puzzle missing and that revolves around community and
visitor values. According to Victor Frankl, it’s our values that give our lives meaning and
render one experience significant over another. What do we consider important? What
types of behaviour are to be encouraged or discouraged?
If the values of the visitor clash with those of the host community we can expect a high
degree of discontent and dissatisfaction. Similarly, if there is internal disagreement about
core values, few organisations can achieve success.
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For example, as I value peace and quiet, being in or near nature, natural, home made objects
etc., I am attracted neither to Las Vegas nor to a cruise experience. Fortunately Las Vegas
“knows itself” and I am very clear about its values so I can avoid making the wrong vacation
choice. Thanks to the connectivity and communication’s capacity of the internet (as a
collaborative platform) places, products and people are now “naked”. Reputation is
sustained through authenticity.
Values mapping (as opposed to value mapping) is a relatively new science and has only been
rarely applied to tourism. The Canadian Tourism Commission’s extensive investment in
identifying and measuring different Explorer types and their development of the Explorer
Quotient has made an outstanding contribution to understanding what travellers value. xxi
As corporate culture is known to be a reflection of shared values, many companies have
undertaken values mapping exercises and these techniques are, just now, being applied to
places. One of the most powerful methodologies is that undertaken by the Barrett Values
Centre that over the last ten years, has conducted national values studies in Argentina,
Bhutan, Denmark, Latvia, Iceland, and, most recently, USA. Latvia is using the results from
their national survey as the foundation for their sustainable development strategy, Latvia
2030, which was presented to the EU in September 2008. Weeks before the collapse of the
Icelandic economy, the Icelandic National Survey revealed critical levels of dysfunction in
their current culture with potential bankruptcy on the horizon. xxii
Excelling in The Experience and Transformative Economy
There are only three antidotes to commoditisation:
• to stage experiences unique to a place and time;
• to engage and enable customers to personalise their own experiences in meaningful
and effective ways; and
• to enable the customer to have a transformative experience – ie, experience an inner
change of perspective, being or value.
While Joe Pine and Jim Gilmore, authors of The Experience Economy xxiii identified all three steps
over 10 years ago, very few destinations have invested time and energy in applying these
antidotes. The Scandinavians are an exception. In Lapland, they have created LEO – a Centre of
Expertise for the Tourism Industry and run a series of programmes that enable small, medium
sized operators of attractions, events and activity providers to re‐think their core business from
the provision of products (a highly industrialised concept) to the staging of experiences that the
customer perceives as delivering additional value.
LEOxxiv has developed the Experience Pyramid, based on Pine and Gilmore, which incorporates
six key elements of a meaningful experience (individuality, authenticity, story, multi sensory
perception, contrast and interaction – for more, read here). While an academic rigour has been
applied to the development of the programme, it is also considered highly practical and valuable
by those SMEs who enjoy significant improvements to their margins as a result of this shift in
thinking and practice.
The personalisation of experiences can
only occur when individual consumers
can access, assemble and manipulate
various elements of their desired
vacation experience prior to and during
their trip and then create suitable
memories to make the experience last
after they have gone home. Since two‐
thirds of the visitor experience (the
fantasy and the memory) is a virtual
one, revolutions in the digitisation of
content could be useful. But a
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preoccupation with transactions has resulted in an obsession with bookings by DMOs and tour
operators and online travel agencies have focused on dynamic packages and product control. It
remains very difficult for customers to be able to access all the information they could use to plan
their fantasy trip, enrich its experience and create entertaining memories that won’t bore their
family and friends. This frontier of customer‐oriented usability has yet to be fully explored by the
travel industry.
The business literature on Web 2.0 seems more focused on new channels and eyeballs (Facebook
fans, Twitter followers) rather than customer service and integration. Venture capitalists are
gamblers at heart betting on business models that might rise to domination like Facebook and
Google. While we wait for winners to emerge, the traveller is finding their online experience
increasingly frustrating.
Acting Responsibly
Sadly the term sustainability has lost much of its meaning due to overuse and misuse. The three
so‐called pillars of sustainability are not equal any more. The economy is a wholly –owned
subsidiary of the environment. If we lose our life support system (breathable air, clean water and
sufficient wholesome food to sustain health) we won’t have either a society or an economy. The
opportunity to balance society, economy and environment was squandered a few decades ago.
It’s now up to every tourism destination regardless of scope (i.e. national, regional or local) to
minimise the footprint left by the activity called tourism and to go one step further – to
demonstrate leadership by renewing the environment so that healthy economies and societies
might be sustained into to the future.
Responsible tourism does not mean saying no to travel but it does mean saying yes to activity
that leaves minimal trace. It means reducing the carbon and ecological footprint of ground
activities (accommodation, ground transport, activities etc) to zero and switching more transport
from air to ground, where possible. Responsible travel doesn’t necessarily mean saying no to
growth but it does mean a genuine switch from a focus on volume and gross benefit to a
preoccupation with value and net benefit growth.
It means stopping discounting and selling the destination short. It means invoking the scarcity of
place and the development of highly value added, transformative experiences to maximise the
value from the experience. It means ensuring that all existing suppliers are operating at optimum
capacity and are catering to a diverse set of customers whose propensity to refer others and
return also exceeds industry averages. It means avoiding further expansion of facilities and
services until it can be demonstrated that the host community will not be negatively impacted
(ie, the net benefits from an increase in visitation, when fully assessed, would exceed costs.)
In short it means leaving industrial tourism behind and developing a creative, low impact place
and community‐based alternative. Or more to the point, it means that destinations and the
businesses and residents located there must now convince visitors that they CARE (ie, they are
Communities that are Actively Renewing their Environment). DestiCorp UK Ltd. has developed
an innovative programme designed to help communities show that they care.xxv
The Future is Creative and SURREAL!
Since Pine and Gilmore wrote The Experience Economy, a number of authors, including John
Howkins in The Creative Economy: How People Make Money from Ideas and Dan Pink, in his A
Whole New Mind, has identified that wealth in the western world would increasingly come from
applying higher levels of creativity to the provision of services and experiences. Things that are
beautifully designed will be more valued than things that simply perform a function. Services
that can be wrapped in meaningful experiences will fetch a higher price, etc.
Whilst the majority of reports on the Creative Economy focuses on the role of culture and the
arts, software, media, content and design, many authors are recognising that creativity can be
applied to virtually all human endeavour. An important working paper from the Martin
Prosperity Institute titled From Kraft to Craft: Innovation and Creativity in Ontario’s Food
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Economy, points to the possibilities for tourism. The author distinguishes the older industrial
“Kraft” food economy from a new “Craft” economy.
Economic power within the industrial food economy is highly concentrated; food is highly
processed and incremental innovation is invested in packaging and marketing; firms are
located close to traditional production inputs.
By contrast, in the new “Craft” economy, economic power is diffused and decentralised from
owners or controllers of the means of production to individual, highly creative knowledge­
workers and extra­firm institutions. Ideally the control of land, resources and capital are
dispersed and quality is a measure of taste, terroir (the attribution of a product’s quality
and reputation to its geographical origin) and talent of entrepreneurs. The traditional
production dimension is important, but place becomes central to quality food making,
marketing and consuming. xxvi
Tourism forms a critical contributor to the emerging creative economies, especially those
associated with places. Tourism‐related activities transport and house visitors who may in turn
chose to live, invest, and work in the region they visited. This external market of non‐residents
plays a critical role in maintaining the viability and enabling the diversity of various amenities
and services enjoyed by the resident population.
In the same way that a craft food economy is emerging to stand as a counterpoint to an industrial
food production system, so does tourism need to encourage a form of craft tourism which for the
time being we have described as an anagram spelling SURREAL in which:
S= slow (visitors are encouraged to stay longer, savour more)
U= uniquely expressive of the place (minimising the potential for substitution and
taking advantage of the scarcity of place)
R= responsible minimising the environmental footprint and maximising net benefits to
host community, employees and investors
R= regenerative – actually renewing both the host community, its people, its
environment while rejuvenating and refreshing the visitor;
E=experiential – replacing products with value wrapped experiences based on mutual
respect and reciprocity between guest and host
A=artisans – using products and materials that are created by artisans and artists and
convey a level of meaning not present in factory generated things
L=local – making maximum use of materials and services that can be supplied locally.
There is a real need and an opportunity for tourism marketers and economic developers to work
together to develop and sustain a highly profitable form of craft tourism that draws sustenance
from a local creative economy and in return provides sustenance to its host.
Joining Up the Dots – Empowering and Enabling the Connectors.
Tourism is ultimately all about connecting people to each other and people with places. It moves
physical bodies through space for that purpose. It has much in common with telecommunications
– the process of moving digitised content (bits of information) between people and places. Sadly
and ironically these two giants; these two huge economic drivers have not yet joined forces
despite their common focus and their interdependence. It will be interesting to see what can
happen when they “get into bed with one another”.
Destination, place‐based, craft tourism would benefit enormously from the knowledge and skills
resident in the information technology and telecommunications sector. Tourism has been a
major factor in the web’s rise and domination as travel has been one the most frequent and
extensive users of the web. A significant chunk of the business enjoyed by such firms as Google,
Nokia, Apple and Cisco is generated by the travel industry. Thus far, the interactions have
occurred most effectively when between industrialised corporates on either side of the travel‐
communications divide.
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I venture to suggest that over 95% of the businesses engaged in tourism and the ones with the
greatest potential to serve tomorrow’s customer and generate highest net benefits, is still under
utilising the available technology either due to lack of broadband connectivity, inferior hardware
or a dearth of skills and awareness.
This paper opened with the observation that if you want to change tourism you have to change
your perception of how it works. By following the machine‐based industrial model, destination
marketers and managers (ie economic developers) have missed a key opportunity, ie, to use our
knowledge of networks, computerisation and information processing to create a powerful, highly
flexible, loosely coupled, distributed electronic infrastructure (combining wired, wireless,
hardware, applications and content) that would enable a destination to become truly smart. The
technology now exists to support an activity called tourism the way it is in reality – ie, as a
complex adaptive system – not as we might falsely perceive it to be – ie, as a highly integrated
supply chain.
Destinations most closely approximate the “business web” so ably described by IT guru Don
Tapscott in his books Paradigm Shift and Wikinomics. DestiCorp has often described them as
“Destination Webs” arguing that, in the same way that a brain is smart, thanks to its connections
between cells and not the number of cells, so destinations could become smart if their small
enterprises were wired together and some forethought was invested into the nature of content,
and the purpose and benefits of its exchange. Because few destinations have invested in that kind
of thought, we have a system that is as messy and as haphazard as the reality it could support –
literally millions of discrete and independent web sites; and terabytes of content (text, data,
images, videos and now reviews and ratings) that can’t be mixed and matched. At the same time
we have individuals responsible for marketing that have to wait years to find out how their
sector is performing; we have investors having to look in a rear view mirror in order to make
future investment decisions and many businesses either leaving business on the table or unable
to secure emerging opportunities.
Never has the need been so urgent for a coming together of tourism and IT in a constructive way.
A destination web would significantly enhance intelligence gathering and permit a degree of
adaptability and agility essential in this world of increasing change and uncertainty. It might also
enable existing businesses to improve their economic sustainability and profitability without
needing to multiply. It would be surreal but it would be worth it!
Conclusion
This paper is dedicated to tomorrow’s leaders. Over the next 5‐10 years the leadership of the
global tourism community will change dramatically as its boomer leaders finally hand over
power and responsibility to a new generation. It is not yet clear how the next cohort of leaders
will perceive the tourism community and its place in that of the global society. Will they see the
world through the ecological lenses described in this paper or will they need to unlearn the
paradigm that has dominated mass tourism?
Peter Drucker once observed:
"A paradigm shift may take 25 years ­­ the time it takes for the 'unwilling to unlearn'
proponents of the old paradigm to retire."
Unfortunately, we don’t have 25 years, so every effort must be made to accelerate that learning
process. As inspiration, let me quote the famous, current philosopher, Erik Hoffer:
“In times of radical change, the learners inherit the earth, while the learned find themselves
perfectly equipped for a world that no longer exists.”
Readers are invited to join in this learning adventure for the stakes are indeed high.
November 5th, 2009 Anna Pollock, DestiCorp UK Ltd. 19

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ENDNOTES
i Leadership and the New Science, Wheatley Margaret. J. Berrett Kohler, 1999
ii Adaptive Enterprise, Stephan Haeckel, Harvard Business School Press, 1999
iii UNWTO forecasts
iv Change Your World Or Your World Will Change You, Deloitte, 2009 ‐
http://www.deloitte.com/view/en_CA/ca/industries/government/article/719ef16bc31fb110VgnVCM100
000ba42f00aRCRD.htm
v Acting Now for a Positive 2018 Preparing for Radical Change, Forum for the Future and Cap Gemini
vi Future of the Leading Edge, by InfoSavy – see www.committedsardine.com
vii The Cluetrain Manifesto, Locke, Levine, Searls, Weinberge, 2000
viii www.prb.org
ix Don Tapscott and Keith Goodwin, Success in the Second Wave of the Internet for Cisco, March 2008
x Recent Trends in Growth of Air Passsenger Demand, Civil Aviation Authority, January 2008.
xi British Social Attitudes Survey, National Centre for Social Research, 28 January 2009.
xii Meeting Consumer’s Emerging Values, Claire Ratushny
http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=112295
xiii Going Green Yankelovich:
http://www.yankelovich.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=category&sectionid=13&id=75&Itemi
d=257
xiv The Barrett Values Centre http://www.valuescentre.com/
xv Simon Anholt’s Introduction in The Handbook on Tourism Destination Branding, World Tourism
Organization and the European Travel Commission, 2009
xvihttp://www.footprintnetwork.org/en/index.php/GFN/page/earth_overshoot_day/
xvii Prosperity Without Growth – Tim Jackson for Sustainable Development Commission, 2009
xviii Culture, Authenticity, Place: Connecting Cultural Mapping and Place Branding, Greg Baecker and Jeanette
Hanna, in Municipal World, February 2009
xix ibid
xx David Armano http://www.slideshare.net/darmano/microinteractions‐marketing‐20‐paris
xxi http://eqgb.canada.travel/
xxii The Barrett Values Centre: http://www.valuescentre.com/
xxiii The Experience Economy; Joe Pine and Jim Gilmore, 1999
xxiv LEO: English website ‐ http://www.leofinland.fi/LEO/In_English.iw3
xxv Places That Care – concept developed by DestiCorp (available on request)
xxvi From Kraft to Craft: innovation and creativity in Ontario’s Food Economy, Betsy Donald, Martin Prosperity
Institute, February 2009
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