Premium
A systems approach to island tourism destination management
Author(s) -
Carlsen Jack
Publication year - 1999
Publication title -
systems research and behavioral science
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.371
H-Index - 45
eISSN - 1099-1743
pISSN - 1092-7026
DOI - 10.1002/(sici)1099-1743(199907/08)16:4<321::aid-sres255>3.0.co;2-5
Subject(s) - tourism , visitor pattern , destinations , hospitality management studies , marketing , tourism geography , population , business , reductionism , environmental resource management , regional science , geography , economics , computer science , sociology , philosophy , demography , archaeology , epistemology , programming language
Tourism destination management is an increasingly competitive and complex business involving the coordination of economic, social and geographic elements within a designated tourist area. Traditional research in tourism destination management has tended to use a reductionist approach in order to monitor certain flow variables (visitor numbers, expenditure) or to measure discrete relationships between variables (tourist expenditure and employment, visitor numbers and social impacts). The limitations of this approach in research are now becoming apparent, as tourism development impinges on many elements within a destination, and a new approach to research in tourism destination management is needed. This paper will provide an overview of systems approaches to tourism destination planning and management and describe a systems research approach to island tourism destination management. A systems approach to tourism management in small island tourist destinations (less than one million population) using soft systems methodology (SSM) is discussed. It is envisaged that SSM would best be applied to management of island tourism destinations because it can accommodate social and environmental processes, as well as the economic factors that have been the foci of previous research. Furthermore, it is argued that the tourism system is an open system in that it responds to changes in social, natural and economic factors and is evolving toward an increasing state of complexity. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.