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For politacal reasons there is always the temptation for governments to switch policy direc-tion. This gives the impression of the dynamics of change, but can, in practice, generate chaos through conflicting objectives. It takes a long time to create tourist destinations and build up market positions. It is therefore, rather simplistic to behave as if the factors influencing such developments can be turned on and off as with a tap. One of the principal difficulties is that tourism is a diverse and frangmented industry with many different economic agents acting in their own interests (often on the basis of imperfect information), which may not be to the long – term benefit of tourism as a whole. Uncoordinated market competition can, in these circum-stances, produce cyclical growth patterns, with a consequent waste of resources. This places a premium on a overall planning body such as an NTO, which is able to give a sense of direction by marketing the destination and acting as a distribution channel by drawing the attention of potential tourists and the travel trade to the products that the numerous suppliers in a country have to offer.
ADMINISTRATIVE FRAMEWORK
There are considerable variations in the structure of the public administration of toursm, which in turn depend on the size of the tourist industry and the importance the government attaches to the various reasons advanced for public sector involvement in tourism. A generalised hier-archical structure is presented in figure 18.1. It demonstrates a chain of direction from the governing assembly, which could be a council of ministers, a congress or a parliament, down-wards to the destinations, where tourism policy and plans are implemented.
A list of some of the most common arguments put forward for government participation in tourism inclucde:
• foreign exchange earnings and their importance for the balance of payments.
• Employment creation and the need to provide education and training;
• Tourism is a large and fragmented industry requiring carefull coordination of development and marketing.
• The need to maximise the net benefits to the host community;
• Spreading the benefits and costs equitably;
• Building the image of the country as a tourist destintion;
• The provision of public goods and infrastructure as part of the tourist product;
• Protecting tourism resources and the environment;
• Regulating aspects of social behaviour, for example gambling; and
• The requirement to monitor the level of tourism activity through statistical surveys.
In most cases, where tourism is a significant element of economic activity, so that much weigh is attributed to the arguments presented above, it is common practice to have a ministry of Tourism. This is particularly true of island economies, which frequently form some of the world’s most attractive tourist destinations. The position of the NTO within this framework may be inside or outside the ministry. In the latter case, the NTO becomes a government agency or semi-governmental body. It usually has a separate constiution, enacted by law, and a board of directors apointed from outside government with, in theory, gives independence form the political system. However, the link is maintained through the NTO being the executive arm of government policy as agreed by the ministry and public money providing the major source of funds for most NTOs. The reality is that few governments can resist giving specific policy directions for developments that are likely to influence political results in locations where the electoral outcomes are close. This allows local political parties at the destination to usurp tourism plans, either by frustrating developments or having projects inserted into plans that have a high political visibility but are of little econnomic worth, which results in a trail of poor value for public money that often ends in financial insolvency. Good NTOs are attuned to this and build flexibility into the planning process to deal with barely concealed electoral calcula-tions, ensuring that they receive prior written instructions from the responsible minister before proceeding.
Some NTOs, normally termed a convention and visitor bureau (CVB), are simply private associations whose constitution is determined by their membership, which may include govern-ment representation. Income is thus raised from a variety of sources and, similar to other busi-nesses, the existence of these bureaux is dependent on the demand for their services in the marketplace. In times of recession, such associations often have diffeculty raising funds from the private sector to maintain their activities and need to have injections of public funds to continue with long –term projects.
Since the 1980s, the upsurge in market economics has seen more and more governments urging their NTOs to generate matching funds from the tourist industry. Methods to achieve this objective have included joint marketing initiatives and charging for a range of services, for example, market research reports and brokerage fees from arranging finance. However, the main obstacles to raising private sector revenue have always been the long –term and non-commercial nature of many of the tasks undertaken by NTOs. Added to this is the fact that when
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