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Summary Chapter 13 Attractions
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Summary of 'Tourism principles and practice', John Fletcher, sixth edition, Chapter 13 Attractions.
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Chapter 13Attractions
Introduction
For many tourist destinations around the world, it is their attractions that serve as the catalyst for
tourist visits. Attractions are numerous, diverse, fragmented geographically and often have limited
resources at their disposal for purposes of management.
The nature and purpose of attractions
Attractions provide the single most important reason for leisure tourism to a destination. Many of
the components of the tourist trip (transport and accommodation) are demands derived from the
consumer’s desire to enjoy what a destination has to offer in terms of ‘things to see and do’. Thus a
tourist attraction is a focus for recreational and, in part, educational activity undertaken by both day
and stay visitors that is frequently shared with the domestic resident population. Every region and
every town boasts at least one attraction, adding to its appeal as a destination. Attractions also serve
a variety of different purposes, since for many their origins had nothing to do with tourism.
‘Flagship’ attractions can be used to pull in visitors, meet needs of local residents and develop
stronger tourism activities within the destination.
With such diversity present within the attractions sector, the uniform definition and categorisation of
attractions has proved elusive, as has the ability of many attractions to share ‘best practice’ both
from attractions of a similar kind and from attractions elsewhere around the globe. The fact that
tourist attractions may be shared with the host community can give rise to conflict in popular
destinations, where tourism is perceived to cause problems of crowding, traffic congestion,
environmental damage and litter. There can thus be little doubt that the management of tourist
attractions is a challenging activity with so many publics to please.
Characteristics of attractions
There are many different types of attraction, and a number of attempts have been made to classify
them. Classification is possible along a number of different dimensions:
ownership;
capacity;
market or catchment area;
permanency;
type.
Early attempts at classification were according to type, distinguishing between natural resources and
artificial ‘man-made’ features or products. Man-made features were as follows:
Cultural – religion, modern culture, museums, art galleries, architecture, archaeological sites.
Traditions – folklore, animated culture, festivals.
Events – sports activities and cultural events.
We commonly associate such features with positive experiences, but visits to ‘dark tourism’ sites,
that is those associated with death, suffering and tragedy, have become increasingly common. The
motives for this are not necessarily just voyeurism.
Classification by type is the most common way in which countries collect attraction statistics, but
here some form of permanency is required so that public access can be controlled and measured,
, which implies that even some iconic attractions are never listed in official statistics.
International events that are regarded as world class normally stand alone as hallmark events, while
others may be used to complement site-specific attractions. It is what is happening at the time that is
usually more important for events than their location, so megaevents (the Olympics), may move
around the globe.
Man-made attractions that are the legacy of history and culture also share with natural resources the
fact that they cannot be reproduced without considerable expense and alterations to their
authenticity, unlike attractions designed principally for entertainment. They therefore deserve
greater protection and management input to guard against excessive use.
Natural attractions
In the instance of natural features it is often the quality of the resource that provides the attraction,
whereby location becomes secondary. Their appeal is both national and international. Traditionally,
water-based resources, either coastlines or lakes, have always been the most important tourism
resource and still are, but with more frequent holiday-taking, the countryside and panoramic scenery
have witnessed increasing usage. However, natural amenities are not only confined to the landscape
but also include, for example, climate, vegetation, forests and wildlife.
Figure 13.1 Optimal recource allocation
The most common aspect of natural resources is that they are generally fixed in supply and are able
to provide only a limited amount of services in any given time period. But in many cases, the services
provided by this fixed stock of natural amenities can be put to several different uses. There is
therefore a trade-off that must take place to ensure that the resource is used to the best advantage
of society. This is demonstrated in Figure 13.1, where the vertical axis represents the social net
benefits (social benefits less social costs) of using a given area of land for tourism or industrial
purposes.
Market failure and public provision
One of the problems concerning the provision of outdoor areas for leisure purposes on a large scale
is that they are rarely commercially viable in terms of the investment costs and operating
expenditure necessary to establish and maintain them. The reasons for this lie in their periodic use
(weekends and holidays) and the political and administrative difficulties of establishing private
markets in what are perceived by the public as gifts of nature. This suggests that, if left to market
forces, the result is more likely to be under-provision of natural resources for leisure purposes rather
than over-provision. Yet there are considerable social benefits to be enjoyed by the population from
the availability of recreational amenities and in the control of land use to prevent unsightly
development spoiling the beauty of the landscape.
Economists ascribe the term market failure to situations of the kind outlined above and in such
circumstances it is common for the state to make the necessary provision.
There is another aspect of state provision: the so-called public or collective good. The principal
feature of such goods or services is that it is not realistically possible to exclude individuals from
consumption once they have been made available. Private markets for these goods would quickly
disintegrate because the optimal strategy for the individual consumer is to wait until someone else
pays for the good and then to reap the benefits for nothing. Thus if the good or service is to be
provided at all, it may be consumed by everyone without exception and normally without charge at
the point of use.
The point at issue is that public goods form no part of the private costs facing the tourism developer
and are therefore open to abuse through overuse. In response the state, in addition to enforcing
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