1.
Tourism Systems, Destinations, Products and
Resources: An introduction

2.
Defining Tourism & Tourist
• Core concepts:
• The voluntary movement of people;
• a sector of the economy or an industry; and
• a broad system of interacting relationships of people
(including their need to travel outside their
communities/home environment) [consumption] and
services that attempt to respond to these needs by
supplying products [production] and their associated
effects

3.
Scales of Analysis of Tourism

4.
Thinking systematically
Generating /
source region
Destination
Environment
Travel to destination
Travel from destination

5.
Main Elements Of Tourism Production At
Different Points Of The Tourism System

6.
Key elements of consumer psychology at different
points of the tourism system

7.
Multilayered product nature
• The trip product This is the overall trip that a tourism consumer
experiences including all firms, organizations, and service
moments from the initial decision to purchase to the return home.
• The destination product This is the sum of all experiences the
tourist has at the destination as a result of encounters with firms,
people, communities and the destination environment.
• The tourism business product This is the set of experiences
provided by an individual firm or agency over different stages of
the trip.
• The service product These are the various sets of formal and
informal service and other encounters that the consumer
experiences through their trip and at the destination.

8.
Trip product
DESTINATION
Can be understood in both an experiential
and a more formal sense
• Experiential sense in what the tourist sees
as the ‘product’ can be significant for
satisfaction
• Formal sense includes package tours and
horizontal and vertical integration of
tourism production.
• Tourism value chain

9.
The Tourism Value Chain

10.
Destination Product
The Destination
• What most people think of when they think of tourism!
• The destination is the amalgam of
a) from a marketing perspective all the products and
attributes that are packaged and promoted to visitors
within an identified destination brand;
b) from an experiential perspective all business, service
encounters and experiences that a tourist has within a
destination. (Note these are different things with
consequent implications for satisfaction and individual
firms)

11.
Tourism Business Product
• All encounters with a business over time [time
constitutes an interesting element here]
• Whether at destination or not.
• However, the various elements of the business may
operate relatively independently of each other. From
a consumer perspective it may be possible to
distinguish between the destination and non-
destination elements. These in turn may be broken
up into service products – But many service products
are not under the control of firms or destination
management and marketing bodies.

12.
The Destination Concept
• Highly complex – operating at different scales
• Metelka (1990: 46) defined a destination as the
‘geographic location to which a person is
traveling’
• Vukonic (1997) equated the term to that of a
‘resort’
• (1994: 107) saw a destination as being a ‘travel
market area’ and referred to destination zones
that are geographic areas ‘containing a critical
mass of development that satisfies traveller
objectives’ (Gunn 1994: 27).

13.
Problematic?
• Destination is by nature a problematic concept. It
refers to a varying range of spatial scales (i.e.
levels of representation) in tourism: continents,
states, provinces, municipalities and other
administrative units, tourist resorts or even single
tourist products. Spatial scales and definitions of
destinations based on administrative or other
such units … tend to approach tourism as a
spatial and geographical phenomenon from a
technical and static viewpoint (Saarinen 2004:
164).

14.
Destinations are therefore…
• described at different scales ranging from the country
level to regions, towns or resorts, specific sites and
even specific attractions that are visited by tourists.
• A destination is a spatial or geographical concept
that is primarily defined by visitors from outside the
location, although many places seek to make
themselves destinations for visitors in order to be
able to benefit economically from tourism.
• A destination, by definition, comes to exist by virtue
of the people that visit it. If people from outside a
location do not visit a place it is not a destination.

15.
From Places to Destinations
• Three principle meanings of the idea of place
can be distinguished:
– Location
– Locale
– Sense of Place

16.
Place as Location
• In locational
terms, a place is a
specific point on
the earth’s
surface.
• You are here!
• Shows
relationality

17.
Place as Locale
• Place as a physical setting for people’s daily social
relations, actions and interactions.
• The physical aspects of places are important in
terms of the capacity to manage visitors as well as
providing resources and attractions for tourists.
• Place in this sense not only refers to urban
settings, such as ethnic neighbourhoods and arts
and heritage precincts, but also to various kinds
of ‘scapes’ (views), including landscapes,
servicescapes, streetscapes and experiencescapes

18.
Elements of place as locale

19.
Scapes
• Landscapes are a visual idea
and refer to how a portion
of the earth’s surface is
socially constructed and
perceived.
• in most ideas of landscape
it is something the viewer is
outside of whereas place
tends to be something that
one is inside of.
• Important for image and
experiences

20.
Landscapes

21.
Servicescapes
• Refers to the physical
facility in which a service is
delivered and in which the
service provider (firm or
other organization) and the
customer interact, and to
any material or tangible
commodities that facilitate
the service (Bitner 1992).
• The idea of servicescapes
was originally primarily
applied to the immediate
physical environment
provided by firms in which
they sought to use design
principles to reinforce
brand as well as provide
positive service encounters.

22.
Extension of servicescape concept
• to include the external built environment, concepts of place
experience, and the social environment created in spaces of
consumption - the social-servicescape (Tombs and McColl-
Kennedy 2003).
• The concept of the brandscape, the ‘material and symbolic
environment that consumers build with marketplace products,
images, and messages, that they invest with local meaning, and
whose totemic significance largely shapes the adaptation
consumers make to the modern world’ (Sherry 1998: 112).
• Brandscapes are utilized by transnational leisure and hospitality
companies such as Disney, Starbuck, Hyatt and Marriot to
provide a symbolic retail space that is familiar and comfortable
for consumers no matter where they are in the world, and
which also enables them to physically inhabit and experience
brandspace (Thompson & Arsel 2004). Thereby, experiencing
what Guliz and Belk (1996) refer to as a consumptionscape.

23.
Social-servicescape

24.
Experiencescapes
• landscapes of deliberately produced experience.
• They are physical spaces of market production and
consumption in which experiences are staged and
consumed and are, in effect, in effect, stylized landscapes
that are strategically planned and designed with market
imperatives as the key design goal.
• experiencescapes ‘are not only organized by producers
(from place marketers and city planners to local private
enterprises) but are also actively sought after by
consumers. They are spaces of pleasure, enjoyment and
entertainment…’ (O’Dell 2005: 16).
• Can connect different firms and businesses – and are often
part of urban redevelopment and regeneration schemes.

25.
Ethnic districts
• Many previously existing distinct
communities may become
transformed into packaged
experiencescapes as a result of
destination development and
promotion processes.
• The thematic development of
parts of a city for tourism and
leisure purposes is an extremely
common urban tourism strategy.
• Many cities, for example, have
Chinatowns or other ethnic
districts such as a ‘Little Italy’ or
‘Little India’ even though the
social, political and economic
processes that originally led to
the creation of such ethnically
distinct locations have long past.

26.
Sense of place
• Refers to the subjective, personal and emotional
attachments and relationships people have to a
place.
• The notion of sense of place is usually applied in the
context of people who live in a location on a
permanent basis and reflects how they feel about
the physical and social dimensions of their
community.
• People might only consciously notice the unique
qualities of their place when they are away from it,
when it is being rapidly altered, or when it is being
represented or marketed and promoted in a way
they do not relate to.
• People can have multiple senses of place

27.
Christchurch
Anglican
Cathedral
The demolition of the
severely damaged
Christchurch cathedral
which is in the city’s
central square has
been immensely
divisive. The Anglican
church has decided to
demolish the
cathedral while
experts maintain that
the iconic structure
could be rebuilt.
The building is one of
the key landscape
icons for the city and
has long been central
to the city’s identity
and imaging.
• over 60,000 people
took the opportunity
to ‘farewell’ the
cathedral over two
weekends in March
2012

28.
The Resource Base of Tourism
• A tourist resource is that component of the
environment (physical or social) which either
attracts the tourist and/or provides the
infrastructure necessary for the tourist
experience (Hall 2007: 34).
• Tourism resources can be categorized as scarce
(e.g. capital, labour, land) or free (e.g. climate,
culture).
• Yet resources are an entirely subjective, relative
and functional concept.

29.
Context
• What constitutes a tourism resource
depends on the motivations, desires
and interests of the consumer, and
the cultural, economic and
technological context.
• ‘resources are not, they become;
they are not static but expand and
contract in response to human
wants and human actions’
(Zimmermann 1951: 15).
• A tourism resource therefore
becomes a resource only if it is seen
as having utility value, and different
cultures and nationalities can have
different perceptions of the tourism
value of the same object.
• What may be a resource in one
culture may be ‘neutral stuff’ in
another - what may be a tourist
attraction in one culture or location
may not be recognized as an
attraction in another.

30.
Tourism resources are dynamic
• New technologies or cultural appraisals can lead to the
recognition of new tourism resources. E.g., the
development of new recreational technologies such as
mountain bikes or sailboards meant that the tourism
capacities of existing natural resources were considerably
expanded and allowed some resort locations to overcome
seasonal limitations (natural tourism resources are often
seasonal in nature) – although this can also create conflicts
between users.
• Some destinations (e.g., beach, mountain, skiing, hunting,
or fishing destinations) are especially seasonal because of
either the nature of the main resource used by visitors or
the environment in which the resource is located
• As consumer preferences change, so does the perceived
utility of particular tourism resources.

31.
Beach swimming
• Relatively recent leisure development
• Often highly clothed and highly segregated
• only became legal to swim during the day at Manly
Beach, now one of Sydney’s main tourist attractions,
in 1903
– I think promiscuous surf-bathing is offensive in general to
propriety, and a particular feature of that offensiveness is
the attraction it has for idle onlookers...There is no border-
line between vice and virtue. Our worst passions are but
the abuse of our good ones. And I believe that the
promiscuous intermingling of sexes in surf-bathing makes
for the deterioration of our standard of morality...Woe
betide Australia if she is going to encourage immodesty in
her women (Archbishop Kelly, The Sun, Sydney, 14 August
1911).

32.
Changes in beach fashion

33.
Changes in beach fashion

34.
Suntan
• 1920s change – related to
issues of status and health
• In the northern summer of
1929 Vogue featured models
with a sun tan for the first
time as the models and the
film stars of the then new
Hollywood film industry had
been holidaying in the South
of France (Coco Chanel).
• Art deco movement – large
windowed houses
• Shift in destinations and
activities (and clothing!)
• Significance of fashion

35.
Landscape preferences
• Until the late 18th and early 19th C, mountains or wild rural landscapes
were seen in Western culture as being not worthy of places to visit
• Ideal landscape was regarded as being urban areas or well managed and
highly designed gardens.
• With the arrival of the Romantic movement in art, literature and design
in the late Eighteenth Century, and the consequent reaction to the
rapidly industrializing towns, all began to change.
– Painting started to feature wild seas and mountain ranges often shrouded in
mist.
– Poets, such as Wordsworth and Coleridge, also started to write of waterfalls,
lakes and hill country.
• Influence on the popular taste of the upper-class and the emerging and
increasingly literate middle classes.
• Implications for leisure travel in the 19th C. were staggering. wild and
alpine areas suddenly became desirable landscapes to visit – implications
as well for national parks, wilderness and appreciation of nature – cult of
the picturesque

36.
Artistic change

37.
Implications
• Different cultures will have different
understandings of what is a tourism resource and
therefore what constitutes a tourist attraction.
• We must recognize that even within cultures,
changes occur and therefore perceptions of
resources will also change.
• Perceptions of resources change as a result in
shifts in cultural taste.
• Role of media – in the broadest sense – is vital

38.
Resources and destination attraction
1 Resources in the form of physical and cultural
attractions to encourage people to visit.
2 Resources in the form of facilities and services,
including human resources, that enable tourists to
stay at the destination.
3 Resources in the form of infrastructure and services
that makes the destination accessible as well as the
various attractions, facilities and services within the
destinations accessible.
4 Information provision so that the consumer actually
knows about the destination and its resource. -
information is also a tourism resource and a
gateway resource, in that it creates awareness of
the other types of resources that a destination has.

39.
Tourism
generating region
Tourism
Destination
Region
- Emissions / use of energy
+ Conservation of some
species
+ Justification for reserves and
national parks, some heritage
- Transfer of biota & disease
- Loss of habitat in high
amenity locations (coast, lake,
alpine)
- Habitat occupied by transport
and tourism infrastructure
- Competition for water, food &
other resources
Tourism’s role in GEC
- Transfer of
biota
- Transfer of
disease
- Habitat
occupied by
transport and
tourism
infrastructure
- Transfer of
biota
- Transfer of
disease
- Habitat
occupied by
transport and
tourism
infrastructure
-pollution
Transit Route

40.
Change matrix of consequences of tourism. Shading indicates relative change
as a consequence of the consumption and production of tourism. The darker
the shading the more apparent the consequences. Note this focuses on
perceptions.