The Tourism Futures Simulator: a systems thinking approach
Paul A. Walker
Abstract: Tourism operates as a complex system. In itself, the industry contains a myriad of factors and activities which are inter-dependent. In addition, there are two-way relationships to economic, social, environmental and policy factors at various spatial levels. In collaboration with the tourism industry, CSIRO has established the Tourism Futures Project which aims to develop an innovative framework for evaluating the bene?ts and impacts of nature-based tourism and the policy options for managing tourism activity and development. The case study area comprises Douglas Shire in Northern Queensland and the Cairns section of the Great Barrier Reef. This paper describes the progress in developing this framework for mapping and summarizing key social, economic and environmental outcomes of various development scenarios in annual steps to the year 2020. We refer to the framework as the Tourism Futures Simulator (TFS).
Keywords: Tourism; Simulation model; Systems thinking; Economics; Environment; Mental models
1. Introduction
Understanding the forces that shape the future of tourism in a holistic manner is essential for sustainably managing tourism development in Douglas Shire and the Great Barrier Reef. The last couple of decades have seen remarkable growth in tourism activity in the region and there is concern within the industry that growth cannot continue without some form of economic or environmental backlash. Some players in the industry regard the natural attractions of the region as an unlimited resource to be exploited in order to maximize their returns. Others see the continued growth of visitor numbers and tourism-related infrastructure as prejudicing the core attractions of the region and the lifestyle of its residents.
In addition to these attitudinal differences amongst the stakeholder in the case study area, there are external factors which create sudden and often severe ?uctuations in tourism activity. Previously, dramatic declines in visitor numbers have been experienced in the case study area due to natural factors such as cyclones or human-induced factors such as a pilot strike. A common response to these ?uctuations is to increase marketing expenditure or to change the image or brand of the destination. It is a widespread belief among people in the tourism industry that marketing holds the key to regional tourism success.
However, if we view tourism as a complex system, it seems more likely that a large range of activities and factors have to be managed simultaneously for regional tourism to be successful and sustainable in the long term.
The Tourism Futures Project is an attempt to create a framework within which a wide range of economic, environmental, social and external factors affecting tourism activity in the case study area can be evaluated simultaneously.
2. Tourism Futures Project
CSIRO Wildlife and Ecology has been developing GIS based resource accounting and evaluation systems for a number of years, especially those which integrate economic and ecological approaches to agriculturerelated land-use questions. The Tourism Futures Project applies these skills to another industry and a different set of natural resource management activities.
The Tourism Futures Project is a joint project between CSIRO and the tourism industry. It is aimed at developing an innovative framework for evaluating the beneifts and impacts of nature-based tourism in a region, for assessing a range of policy and management activities for guiding tourism development, and for making the causal relationships explicit in a manner that is conducive to improving the knowledge of stakeholders. Thestudy area is Douglas Shire in North Queensland and the adjacent Cairns section of the Great Barrier Reef.
The simulator is intended to provide a capability to evaluate a wide range of economic, social, environmental and land-use factors that could affect tourism development and/or be affected by tourism in the region.
The Project uses concepts from Systems Thinking, as exempli?ed by Senge et al. (1994) and Learning Organisations, as exempli?ed by Chawla and Renesch (1995)
and takes advantage of recent developments in low-cost simulation languages and macro-languages.
Systems Thinking is an approach to de?ning problems and formulating and testing potential solutions. It focuses on identifying the underlying causes of problems and, through the use of computer simulation, evaluating the consequences of management responses and other scenarios. In combination with the ‘learning organisation’ concept, the approach can be used to achieve group or team learning about a problem. Often the hardest step in addressing a complex problem is harnessing the creative power of the stakeholders.
Through workshops and interviews, we harness the knowledge and understanding of aspects of the tourism system held by tourism operators and of?cers in local government. This in itself leads to learning about the tourism system by the development team, but also about systems thinking by the stakeholders. Beyond this, our goal is to develop a systems analytical tool that has the potential to be widely adopted by tourism operators and local planners. We envisage that continued development work will produce something similar to a ?ight simulator that lets people explore the future implications of tourism management and policy options. We call the system the Tourism Futures Simulator (TFS).
The client base for such a system is broad and includes people from both the private and public sector. The TFS could allow exploration of a range of commonly cited economic indicators of tourism, for instance total visitor spending, occupancy rates, and employment, but it might also help managers and planners to explore
more complex and systemic implications, including environmental implications for land and water resources, and social impacts on the local community.
The core concern of the TFS is to explore how tourism in a region can grow in such a manner that the limit to the growth of tourism is not the adverse effects of the
growth itself, but something of the region’s choosing.
3. Models of tourism development
A number of models have been developed to help understand how various factors interact to generate tourism development. In this section, we explore two such models: the Tourism System model and the Destination-life-cycle model.
3.1. Tourism System
The ‘Tourism System’ (Mill and Morrison, 1992) consists of four components; namely:
(1)Market—including the internal and external factors affecting travel, the market inputs and the process by which purchasers of tourism products select a destination.
(2)Travel—including the market segments, the passenger flows and forms of transportation.
(3)Destination—procedures that a destination should follow to develop and service tourism activity.
(4)Marketing—including the processes by which suppliers and destinations market products and services.
In essence, marketing sells the destination to the market, while travel allows the market to get to the destination (Mill and Morrison, 1992). A knowledge of each of these areas of the tourism system is important.
Another way of conceptualizing a tourism system is to distinguish between supply and demand. Gunn’s (Gunn,1994) model shows how the demand and supply of tourism interact to increase regional tourism development. The supply side is represented by attractions, transportation, information, promotion and services.
Developers and managers within each component come from commercial enterprise, non-pro?t organizations and governments. Change in any component in?uences
all others and needs to be monitored (Gunn, 1994). How well each of these components functions depends on organization, leadership, ?nance, labour, community, competition, government policies, natural resources, and cultural resources.
3.2. The destination life-cycle model
Several models have been developed to describe the evolution of tourism at a destination through a life-cycle process. The focus of life-cycle models has been the changing nature of the tourism market and the motivations of the traveller rather than the economic, social and physical impacts of those changes on the destination.
One model, in particular, by Butler (1980), has attracted considerable attention and application. The concept of ‘tourism destination life-cycle’ suggests that tourism development in a region tends to follows a prescribed path. Butler’s destination life-cycle model differentiates six stages in the life of a tourist destination:
(1)Exploration—An area is ‘discovered’ by people who cherish its raw beauty or culture.
(2)nvolvement—A small but growing stream of visitors; tourism acts as a catalyst for local initiatives to cater exclusively for visitors.
(3)Development—A dynamic period of growth and change; large numbers of new visitors continue to arrive, fuelling growth. Outside investment is
attracted; a decline in local participation and control.
(4)Consolidation—Visitor numbers continue to increase, but at a declining rate. Marketing and promotion efforts are increased to extend the tourism season and
attract more distant visitors.
(5)Decline or rejuvenation—If the destination fails to address its economic, environmental and social problems, it continues to lose visitors to more ‘unspoilt’ destinations. The cycle can begin again with a rejuvenation phase. This, however, requires a dramatic change in the resource base. Either a new set of artificial attractions is created or a previously unexploited natural resource is utilized.
Fig. 1typifies the destination life-cycle model.
Fig .1 .Destination life cycle model (Greiner ,1997 ,after Butler,1980).
3.3. Implication for the Tourism Futures Simulator
Combining the notions of visitor numbers, visitor types and economic and environmental impacts of tourism, as described above, provides a useful framework for understanding how destinations and their markets evolve. It is an aid to conceptualizing tourist impacts and planning and marketing responses at various stages in the development of the destination. This understanding gives the region a choice of either enhancing tourism growth towards mass tourism or developing an ‘alternative’ tourism product (Greiner, 1997).
The tourism life cycle is characterized by increasing growth in tourist numbers, eventually reaching a turning point at which the numbers of visitors reaches a maximum level from where it declines (Fig. 2). This life cycle can also be viewed as the combined result of developments in different visitor segments. Backpackers are attracted to the region as long as it is ‘off the beaten track’ and void of tourism infrastructure. As tourism development occurs, less backpackers visit. Later, high- income professionals become more prevalent in the region and stay in the new accommodation facilities. For some time, they enjoy the exclusivity of the location.
Eventually, an airport and new roads increase accessibility and large-scale development opens up the region to mass tourism. The region has largely lost its attractiveness to backpackers and up-market visitors. This process is conceptualized in Fig. 2.
Fig.2 Composit tourism cycle
When the life-cycle model is generalized into a multimarket-segment model, the net effect is one of growth in visitor numbers associated with a change in market
composition, but ultimately leading to a decline in visitor numbers as the carrying capacity of the destination is exceeded.
These developments can, but do not necessarily, occur in each region. Just as the market composition for one region could change under this simple model, equally a
transfer of market segments can occur from one region to another.
A multi-market-segment regional life cycle model forms the foundation of the TFS.
4. Process of building the TFS
The process of building TFS involves five steps:
(1)Developing the concept—This involves conceptualizing a holistic view of tourism and identifying key factors of economic, environmental, social and policy nature, and how they interact with each other.
(2)Developing a simulation model—The concept must be translated into a simulation model in a manner that reflects the dynamic and spatial character of the processes and captures systems characteristics, such as lag times and threshold behaviour.
(3)Data integration—A geographic information base and tourism data base for the region has to be developed.
(4)Building a model interface—A user interface to the simulation model has to be developed. It should allow users to manipulate input data and develop scenarios, and easily graph the simulation results.
(5)Develop a learning environment—Procedures are developed to teach stakeholders how to apply the TFS. The TFS is customized for particular tourism operators.
5. Current status of the TFS
The TFS, through its user interface, allows the user to explore the various economic, environmental and social aspects of tourism activity in the study area. Users can modify data input, import custom data bases from Excel spreadsheets, export data, generate graphs for specific regions or groups of regions, generate graphs for market segments and generate graphs for the study area as a whole. It also enables the user to explain the model results using causal tracing.
The TFS has been designed to focus on up to 25 geographic areas within the case study region and three market segments and simultaneously calculate outcomes for each region and each market segment.
The following sections describe the current status of the TFS in relation to development path.
5.1. Building stakeholder views into the TFS
With an ever increasing emphasis on community consultation and ownership of research and policy-development processes, many community groups are actively seeking involvement in the research and policy development agenda for their regions. Before building the TFS, it is essential to identify the potential users of the tool and to identify the key questions that these stakeholder groups have. Understanding how these groups view the future of tourism in the region, and what they see as the
critical driving forces affecting change, is critical to the TFS. Some examples of the stakeholder group concerns are:
(1)Resident community—The resident community is concerned with employment opportunities and security, their lifestyle and the cost of living in the region.
(2)Local government—Local government is concerned with issues such as the relationship between tertiary sewage treatment and oceans water quality and the implications of land-use zoning and the number of building approvals on occupancy rates and employment.
(3)State Government—The State Government sets general land-use guidelines and regulations which can affect the scenic value of the region and its attractiveness to visitors.
The TFS must be able to relate to these and other concerns held by the community, industry and by policy makers at different levels. They, as stakeholders, will want to evaluate the consequences of activities and compare alternative developments. Proponents of change need to understand how their proposals will affect other people and the resources upon which they are dependent.
5.2. From mental models to the simulation model
The simulation model currently contains more than 60 factors, many being recorded for each region or market segment. The simulation model complexity comes from the inter-relationships and inter-dependencies that are needed to describe how economic, social, environmental processes are responding to and being changed by visitor numbers and market segments.
The TFS allows the user to explore these interactions and uses simulation techniques which provide a simultaneous assessment of how these linkages respond to a change in a controlling factor. It also provides tools which help the user to interactively view these linkages by simply pointing and clicking on words in any dia-
gram displayed.
The model currently contains the following components:
(1)Economic model—This includes spending patterns, employment and other economic impacts.
(2)Marketing model—This focuses on the role of marketing activities and other external factors on the visitor stream.
(3)Visitor activity model—This focuses on the movements by visitors, for instance, to reef or rainforest regions, as well as the number of visitors in each mar-
ket segment. It also distinguishes day visitor activities from those of overnight guests in the Shire.
5.3. Data integration and data base development
A key component of the TFS is to build a spatially coherent data base for the study area. Integration of existing data sets is given a higher priority over establishing new data sets. The TFS needs to include information on external factors affecting tourism demand(including exchange rates, income growth), types and quantity of accommodation provided (e.g. backpacker to five-star resorts), destinations and infrastructure to support land and marine tour operations, environmental factors, as well as a set of economic and social indicators. We envisage that the integrated database will be made available to a range of government and research agencies
trying to implement and formulate local development, conservation and sustainable management strategies.
Currently we are negotiating with tourism industry representatives and local government to initiate data collection speci?cally for the TFS. These new data will be
collected at the geographic resolution required for tourism planning. In the meantime, we have integrated currently available data, with data speci?cally collected by CSIRO, into a regional tourism and land use data set.
6. Conclusion
CSIRO is establishing the Tourism Futures Project, which aims to develop an innovative framework for evaluating the bene?ts and impacts of nature-based tourism
and the factors in?uencing tourism development. The framework, called the Tourism Futures Simulator (TFS), is based on the tools and procedures from Systems Thinking and Learning Organisation.
Systems Thinking is a powerful tool to help explore the complexities of the tourism industry and its interactions with the economy, the environment and local communities. Systems Thinking also helps to simplify and clarify problems associated with the industry and provides a mechanism to probe potential solutions.
The TFS is being developed to help the industry, management agencies and planners understand complex relationships (especially those linking environment, social and economic processes) and also to develop and test alternative management policies.
