Visitors’ Perception on Westminster London as a Sustainable, Responsible, and Environmental Friendly Destination
Referencesp.41
List of Figures
Figure 1. Findings from the questionnaires
Figure 2. Finding for three sections of sustainability, responsibility and environmental friendliness
Figure 1.1. Sustainability
Figure 1.2. Responsibility
Figure 1.3. Environmental friendliness
Abstract
Sustainable tourism is one of the rising trends in the tourism industry. More and more stakeholder groups are starting to realize the importance of their assets. One of the best ways to preserve tourist destinations (i.e. the assets) is to promote sustainable, responsible, and environmental friendly tourism management. Unfortunately, engaging in those kinds of practices and operations can be costly. Most tourism industry firms are still bound by the cost-saving and therefore more profitable benefits of global and or mass tourism. In this paper, the author attempted to examine and discuss the visitors of Westminster’s (in London) various tourist attraction sites’ perceptions on sustainable, responsible, and environmental friendly tourism. The author hypothesized that the perceptions of the sample population on the said variables would indeed prove to be positive. Using a 12 item survey questionnaire that was divided into three sections (one section for each of the three variables mentioned), the author collected data from 70 participants, all of whom were visitors of Westminster’s various tourist attraction sites. The results of the study showed that the visitors indeed have a more positive than negative set of perceptions on Westminster’s various tourism attraction sites’ sustainability, responsibility, and environmental friendliness.
Acknowledgements
I would like to express the deepest appreciation to Head of Hospitality and Tourism Management and my Module Leader Jenny Dowlen, who has the attitude and the substance of a genius in teaching: she was always demonstrated with passion the concern of sustainability in tourism with support of comparative literature which inspire me to select the topic for my dissertation. Without his guidance, encouragement for doing better and persistent help this dissertation would not have been possible.
I would also like to thank to my family for support, profound understanding and constant patience when the time we could spend together, I had to sacrifice for my study.
Chapter I Introduction
Chapter II Literature review
Literature Review
The tourism industry, which encompasses both tourism and travel, is amongst the fastest growing in the world. It is also considered to be the largest in terms of global employment; in fact, one out of every 16 employees worldwide work in travel and tourism. According to the World Trade Organization, tourism has become a major income source for many nations. In the UK alone, tourists spent about 12 billion pounds, which contributed nearly 4.9% to national GDP. The 'Sustainable Tourism for Development Guidebook' also states that tourism plays a similarly important role in the global economy, where the WTO estimates that tourist travel contributed to about 10% of world GDP, helping to fuel job growth across the world (2013). The European commission survey, meanwhile, estimates that around 8 million people are working in tourism departments across the continent (Chen, C.F., and Tsai, D.C., 2007, 1115–1122).
In order to improve visitor perception and tourism, most countries looking to bolster tourism focus exclusively on their traditions and preserving the cultural value of a city. Many feel it should be the government's role to both maintain this heritage and apply new and innovative ways to generate revenue from it. Government and related industries should promote lesser-known areas and protect the geographic denominations of these resources. In this way, sustainable tourism policies should evaluate the importance and quality of the destination. In last decade, more and more attention has been paid to considering the input of local residents in an effort to evaluate this sustainability, which may explain why this new form of tourism has been growing quicker than other more traditional industries.
According to the Westminster City Council, its city centre currently has the highest level of carbon emissions, with the greatest energy use coming from commercial buildings. Westminster also contains a wide variety of buildings - such as restaurants, shops and offices - that produce nearly 60 % of all the commercial in the city, estimated to be at some 190,000 tonnes every year (2007, p.13). Existing carbon emission guidelines and regulations in Westminster are most intense in commercial areas such as Soho. Still, current sustainability has completely focused on the development of new buildings and new housing, while the more historic cities and towns that encompass the city have found themselves confined and constrained by street designs and infrastructure from earlier centuries. In Westminster, there are lots of historic buildings that make up the large part of conservation areas. It is such heritage areas that tourists love to visit, which is why local communities are required to make these essentially sustainable through improved performance of environmental sustainability.
Evaluating personal preference through visitor surveys provides an opportunity to ask very different types of questions that can be used to measure maximum and minimum levels of acceptable user density. Such evaluation dimension and response scales have already been discussed in different studies (Manning, et al., 2000, 97–115). There are also some different studies that have been focused on the perception of crowds in recreational and tourist areas in different countries such as Australia, New Zealand and the United States. Various studies have demonstrated that when it comes to reporting on the long-term sustainability in Westminster London, much depends on the various locations of the perceived crowds (Grossmann, M., 2004, 283-290; Sterl, P., Wagner, S., Arnberger, A., 2006, 75 – 80; Fredman, P., Hornsten, L, 2004, p.n.d).
Amongst the many historic fundamentals of Westminster and London are its many national and international treasures and environments. Given this fact, innovative and sensitive development should provide sustainable retrofitting solutions to make a historic future possible. This should include considering both preserving the integrity of these heritage assets while addressing the challenges of climate change. In order to develop an effective and smart renewal strategy, it is necessary to analyse customer satisfaction by acknowledging the key points of tourist satisfaction. Understand the tourist means comparing visitor expectations with post-consumption satisfaction to recognize both the strengths and weakness of a particular location, while identifying those issues that could be solved. Bernini and Cagnone (2014) stated in their research study that when it comes to analysing tourists, their satisfaction is just as important as where the destination they just visited can be located on a map (p. 01 - 20).
The Central activity zone (CAZ) has designated Westminster central as an area whose core strategy and mixed use is both very unique and important both for London and the world. Westminster earns its vitality by using a complex mosaic of land, role and characteristics. More recent changes in the pattern of land use have proven effective through more careful consultation and planning policies. This approach has already proved to be successful; ensuring Westminster and its central areas should retain their status as a location for business. The relative proportion and monitoring for this approach highlights the issue of increasing office floor space in most of the central area the core CAZ has designed. This design has changed very little over the last 25 years: It was described at 50 % in 1983, 51 % in 1990 and 48% in 2008). The Westminster’s central activity zone (CAZ) helps to provide the human touch to significantly enhance the experience of visiting Westminster from street level. Westminster continues to remain vital to the world, especially when it comes to the strategic location of offices, media, retail, creative industries, arts and culture, entertainment for tourism and higher education institutions - all of which accommodates the function of the government. Different strategic land uses currently extend beyond this and aim to unite the west end of Westminster. Maintaining such complex environment to develop similar approach over a lifetime will help to ensure that the incremental changes for redevelopment do not corrode the mix, either at the local level or on a citywide scale.
Competition between tourist destinations - in particular between mature and mass destinations - has become more and more fierce over the last decade. Those new tourist destinations should appear in travel guides, maps and tour operator catalogues. However, tourist can now move between the large number of mature and mass destinations with more ease, making comparing the characteristics of locations more demanding than ever. To identify those factors that influence and ultimately determine tourist satisfaction is considered to be the most major challenge for all mature and mass tourist destinations. Leading the development of proper strategic resources and policies from this knowledge is key to understanding these decision patterns. Some researchers have discovered that the main features of individual experience that determine what destination tourists will usually consider include cultural factors, along with natural resources, infrastructure, accommodation and tourism facilities (Ritchie, J. R.B., and Crouch, G.I., 2003, p.n.d). Therefore, ensuing a destination's competitiveness has been improved by its quality of services has been recognized as being a major strategy.
These specific features acquire more and more room for sustainability efforts that can effectively render a tourist destination into a mass and mature destination. To maintain a sustainable destination, therefore, means managing high levels of tourist satisfaction and ensuring meaningful tourists experiences while preserving the features and resources for a more sustainable destination. Other research has demonstrated that sustainable destinations have served to raise the awareness of tourists when it comes to sustainability issues, which then serve to promote more sustainable practice for tourists (Petrillo, C. and Swarbrooke, J., 2005, p.n.d). The recent studies of sustainable environments suggest an outstanding service that reinforces the loyalty of tourists while increasing the odds of attracting new ones (Baker, D.A., & Crompton, J.L., 2000, 785 – 804; Kozak, M., 2001, 784 – 807; Nowacki, M., 2009, 297 - 309). The consequences of understanding the factors that affect tourist satisfaction is that such analysis can be used to increase the destination of supply strategies (Kozak, M., & Rimmington, M., 2000, 260 - 269).
These multi product and mature destinations should also be compared against new mass and mature tourism destinations - as well as new tourism demands - in order to maintain a relevant and deep knowledge of tourist perception and needs. In fact, increasing attention has been paid as to the relation between destination attributes and complete tourist satisfaction. Several studies have investigated the relationship between sustainable tourist development and destination competitiveness (M., Chen, S.H., and Lee, H.T., 2011, 247 – 264; Lin, C.C, Lin, Y.S, 2011, 523 - 534). Oppermann (2000), meanwhile, states that perceiving sustainable strategies goes a long way in affecting the tourist’s holiday decision process and will ultimately impact their level of satisfaction (p.78–84).
Investment, economic performance and competitiveness remain the 2nd pillar of the World tourist organization (WTO) sustainable tourism guidelines. According to some researchers, the relationship between performance and destination competitiveness depends upon the implementation of this resulting strategy, which could then be complied with the established goals (Ritchie, J. R.B., and Crouch, G.I., 2003, p.n.d). Satisfaction could then be monitored over time so that it becomes a major issue for destination managers. Researchers maintain that continuously employing this strategy should be done in a disciplined manner, in which the strategy meets tourist needs and preferences while avoiding strategic drift (Rodriguez, J.R.O., et al., 2008, 53 – 65; Zhong, L., Deng, J., and Xiang, B., 2008, 841 – 856; Dwyer, L., and Edwards. D., 2009, 321 - 335).
A multi-product, mass and mature destination like Westminster London, where the percentage of repeat visitors is very high, the benefits of this approach should be very clear. Here, the renovation of old buildings and products could be more crucial for the sustainability process and the promotion of new products. According to Harrabin (2006), old existing buildings in Westminster currently make up only 1.5% of current buildings (p.n.d). While current garbage handling focuses on zero-carbon emission, developing new maps of eco towns may want to consider incorporating old buildings as well. As such, existing buildings have been estimated to account for roughly between 45% to 48% of carbon emissions in the UK (Westminster City Council. 2007a, p.11). Residential buildings account for up to 28% of carbon emissions around Westminster, given their use of energy sources like electricity, gas and other fuels; while non-residential buildings account for roughly 20% (McAllister, I., and Sweett, C., 2008, p.3).
Of course, there is also the need to settle the economic expansion and ethical dimension of sustainable development (Hassan, S., 2000, 239 - 245). It remains that there is only the potential tourism model to maintain a large part of sustainability. Therefore, government and tourism industry employers need to hold up their end of the bargain to sustain the tourist. In order to overcome the problems of visitor, according to the sustainability issues, tourism operators must investigate and apply different procedures to overcome all the various issues. Using alternative energy sources means these bodies must also investigate carbon emission reduction, sensitizing guests to conserve energy, improve efficiency in waste management and recycling.
This current study has completely focused on sustainability as a part of tourism, incorporating a green perspective and environmentally features into a mass and mature destination in Westminster London. The WTO maintains that most inclusive destinations for tourism sustainability are those that take in full account all current and future social, economic and environmental impacts, economic, addressing the tourist, the industry and the environment along with host communities (WTO, 2003). The world tourism organizations that emphasize the sustainability of tourists is one that considers both part of thematic area and a cross-sectional problem. To explain this implementation, three main objectives are discussed below:
The use of environmental resources should be optimal and be constituted of major elements in tourism development, which maintain essential ecological process and help to conserve natural heritage and biodiversity.
In order to preserve the socio-cultural authenticity of host communities, these should respect and conserve traditional values, cultural heritage and contribute to both overall tolerance and intercultural understanding.
Two major features of the sustainable development include better world tourism management (WTO) of information and satisfaction for the tourist (Rodriguez, J.R.O., Parra-Lpeza, E., & Yanes-Estveza, V., 2008, 53 – 65). The participation of all possible and relevant stakeholders is strongly required in order to ensure high participation and consent of buildings. Constant monitoring is also needed to assess the impact and effect prevention and corrective measures when necessary. It cannot be emphasized enough that it is the perspective of current European Union policy that, despite all these challenges, tourism remains the fastest-developing sector by economic activity (Zabkar, V., Brencic, M., and Dmitrovic, T., 2010, 537–546).
Similarly, the WTO considers the tourism sector to be Westminster's largest economic contributor after distribution and construction. Tourism contributes 5% to total GDP and 5.2% to the total labour force of the city. The complete direct and indirect contribution of tourism to the economy is more than 10% of GDP and 12% of the total labour force. The goal of Westminster tourism strategy is to facilitate a green and more competitiveness for this mass and mature destination (Murphy, P., Pritchard, M.P., & Smith, B., 2000, 43–52). The proven job creation associated with such sustainable development, will only attract more tourists and lead to further growth. Although the main feature and aim of this study was to analyse and assess tourists in Westminster as a case study for the multi-product, green and environmental mature destination, the goal of nudging the satisfied tourist toward a more sustainable long-term destination should not be overlooked.
Chapter III Methodology
Research Philosophy
It has already been established that the goal of this research was to examine the visitors of Westminster, London’s tourist destinations’ perception on sustainable, responsible, and environmental friendly tourism. Considering the numerous previously published studies that were reviewed, certain research philosophies, which can be subdivided into numerous assumptions, were developed. The dominant research philosophy used in this research is post-positivism. In order to realize the importance and the potential impacts of having or utilizing a post-positivist research philosophy in the current research, a sound understanding of the post-positivism. It would also be important to be able to compare it with other existing research philosophies.
All studies are based on a certain set of assumptions. In most cases, these assumptions are based on the author(s) of those studies’ perceptions . This can be considered as one of the potential sources of bias even in blinded and quantitative studies . One of the most important positivist concepts suggest that a researcher and an individual who is being researched are independent of each other. This is one of the concepts that have been amended in post-positivism. In the amended post-positivist concept, it is no longer viewed that the researcher and the persons being researched are independent of each other. At some point, what is being believed by post-positivist is the opposite. That is, the sociocultural background, values, knowledge, and preconceived theories of a person conducting a research can have a direct impact or influence on what he would be able to observe from the population or phenomenon he is researching about . Positivism and post-positivism are two of the most prevalent research philosophies being subscribed to by researchers, social scientists, and academicians. One similarity between positivism and post-positivism is the fact that they both push for objectivity. Objectivity’s greatest enemy is research bias and in the example that was provided earlier, it showed how positivist and post-positivists identify and combat research bias . In modern research, post-positivism is the one that is becoming increasingly prevalent, mainly because of the fact that post-positivist arguments make sense. Post-positivism also suggests that human knowledge is dynamic and should therefore be not based on rock solid and unchallengeable foundations; they are affected by various discourses and conjectures. This also means that human knowledge is continuously evolving. Because of this (i.e. that human knowledge is based on conjectures and discourses), there needs to be a way to warrant them and the only verifiable way to warrant those conjectures and discourses is through investigation and research. Now, relating it to the current case, the post-positivist research philosophy is the more applicable one because of the fact that the author is guided by the assumption and hypothesis that visitors of popular tourist destinations in Westminster, London have a generally positive perception when it comes to those destinations’ sustainability, responsibility, and environmental friendliness. It is important to note, however, that this does not mean the author would be motivated to cook or falsify the results of the research or any interpretative processes just so he can prove himself right. These are merely hypotheses and assumptions and their role is only to guide the author or researcher on what types of questions to ask. They do and should not, in any way, preset the outcomes of an ongoing research or investigation, a strict rule that has been applied throughout the entire study. Nonetheless, post-positivist theories would still recognize the presence of these hypotheses and assumptions as possible sources of research biases.
Research Approach
There are four main approaches in conducting a research: quantitative, qualitative, pragmatic (i.e. mixed), and participative (i.e. emancipatory) . In this case, the quantitative approach was the one chosen. The process of selection was mainly based on which among the four possible choices had the best ability to lead to the most systematic answer to the research question and verify the author’s research hypotheses. In this case, the question focused on the visitors’ perception on whether Westminster, London’s tourist destinations employ a sustainable, responsible, and environmental friendly approach to tourism. Perceptions on certain issues are variables that can be quantified as evidenced by the abundance of previously published literatures that made use of a research framework based on quantified perceptions. Such research frameworks involved the use of a certain scale-based questionnaire. Often, respondents in such studies are asked to answer a questionnaire where the positivity or negativity of their perceptions could be quantified and interpreted using a scale. Each number in the scale or in some cases, certain rangers, is presented with an interpretation. Using descriptive statistics, researchers can generate conclusions based on collection of quantitative responses that they were able to obtain. The author of this paper aims to make use of a similar approach.
The main goal of the methodology section is to be able to collection information regarding the perception of visitors of various popular tourist destinations in Westminster, London. In order to do this, a respondent population will have to be recruited. A total of 70 participants were recruited. The goal was a hundred percent response rate. Most researchers would agree that this is a hard thing to achieve because there is always the certainty that not all people would agree to voluntarily participate in a study, regardless of how less of a time it would take them to do so. However, it is not impossible to achieve this. The author of this paper has employed a unique approach in sequencing the data gathering procedure. In order to address this, the researcher firsts asks the prospective participants to read an informed consent form. The said form contains all of the pertinent information about the study. It is explained in that document what they should expect as a research participant, the tests and procedures that they will undergo. Overall, the goal of the document is to eliminate the red tape and just to set the proper expectations to the target respondents. This way, a lot of time and resources that could have been used in explaining to them what to do only to realize that some of them would bail on their words was saved. At the end part of the document, there is a space that asked for their name and signature. Filling in the paper and signing it would signify their voluntary participation in the stud. The author of the paper made the informed consent form brief but concise in order to make everything clear from the beginning, which is important because the goal of including this step in the research methods and approach is to make the data gathering procedure as efficient as possible. In the end, the author of this paper was able to get a response rate of a hundred percent. This only means that all of the individuals who read and put their signature in the informed consent form participated in the study. Those who did not agree to the terms were given the opportunity to decide and back out. Some people indeed were not interested and they were able to cancel their participation, an observation which was not entirely unexpected. Because the researcher was able to save a lot of time, looking for a replacement using the preferred sampling method proved to be easy. To summarize, the author of this paper was able to meet the target of seventy participants.
Research Methods
A deductive approach will be used in the implementation of the research methods, the main objective of which is to be able to verify the hypothesis and answer the research questions. The objectives of the study can be summarized into five namely:
Analyze the sustainable features of key Westminster tourist attraction sites from an economic, social, and environmental perspective
Compare key Westminster tourist attraction sites with one which have a sustainable award
Examine the visitors’ perceptions on Westminster, London’s tourist attractions’ sustainability, responsibility, and environmental friendliness
Analyze the visitors’ perceptions comparing them with findings from previously published literatures and other reports
Provide recommendations based on the study’s key findings.
Research Design
A quantitative deductive research design was the one used in this paper. The dependent variable that the author of this study aims to describe and deduct was the visitors’ of Westminster, London’s tourist attractions on sustainability, responsibility, and environmental friendliness. There were three tenets of discussion, each of which was separately addressed in the survey questionnaire and they were: sustainability, responsibility, and environmental-friendliness.
Data Collection and Sampling
It has been established that a survey questionnaire was to be used to collect data from the respondents. The author of this paper aimed to collect completed questionnaire responses from a total of 70 participants. As for the sampling method used, the researcher used a random sampling procedure. He also aimed to be able to obtain a one hundred percent response rate. The main rationale behind setting such goal was to make the data gathering process more efficient. This enabled the researcher of this paper to have more time to analyze and interpret the results. In the end, these two targets on data collection and sampling were both achieved. The following table shows the legend used to interpret the participants’ responses to each item.
Below is a sample of the questionnaire used in the study.
Ethical issues
No ethical issues were expected to be violated in the study. All respondents will be asked to voluntarily participate. This can be evidenced by their signature on the informed consent form. No underage individuals will also be allowed to participate in the study. All information coming from the respondents were also treated with confidentiality. No information was released to any third party entity and the information will remain to be private indefinitely except in cases where the individual allows the sharing of their information or when certain legal prosecutions are involved. Further details on the ethical considerations made in the execution of this study can be found in the ethics form.
Chapter IV Data Presentation and Findings
A total of 12 items can be found in the questionnaires. The research instrument was divided into three sections namely: sustainability, responsibility, and environmental-friendliness. Each section contained four items. For each section, the questions begin by tackling the specific issue (i.e. sustainability, responsibility, and environmental friendliness) from a broad to a narrower perspective. The statements can be narrowed down to the following topics: economic, social, and cultural. For the sustainability component, for example, the first question asks whether the respondent thinks that most tourist attraction sites in the target location promote a generally sustainable tourism. The following three questions in that section then asks for economic, social, and then cultural sustainability. The same setup was used and implemented for the two remaining sections.
Each item was written in the form of a positively implied statement. This is because the current operating hypothesis is a positively implied one as well. To specify, the author of this paper hypothesized that the visitors of Westminster, London’s tourist attraction sites’ perceptions on sustainability, responsibility, and environmental friendliness are generally positive. For each item, the respondents simply had to think about how much they agree or disagree to the statements. A five point likert type of rating scale was used in the development of the questionnaire. This was done in order to capture the specificity and intensity of the members of the sample population’s responses.
Considering the above mentioned information, a combination of primary and secondary sources were used to achieve the five main aims and objectives. Primary data come in the form of the respondents’ answers to the items in the survey questionnaire. The nature of the survey questionnaire would also suggest that the primary data sources are quantitative in nature. The perceptions of the respondents were measured using a five point likert scale for every question. The respondents simply had to determine how much they agree or disagree to the statements being presented in every item. The use of a likert-type scale is the most widely used approach when it comes to scaling or quantifying a sample population’s responses especially in survey types of researches. Because the scale is aimed at quantifying the level of agreement or disagreement that a member of a sample population feels or perceives towards a certain statement or question, the use of this approach effectively captures the nature of their feelings (i.e. positive or negative). This means that it also enables a group of researchers to obtain information on the intensity of a respondent and from a larger scale an entire sample population’s feelings regarding a lined item in a survey questionnaire.
The table below summarizes all of the key results and findings from the questionnaire.
Figure 1. Findings from the questionnaires
The most important numbers to look at here would be the total number of respondents who strongly agreed, agreed, did not have a sure answer, disagreed, and strongly disagreed to the sustainability, responsibility, and environmental friendliness-related statements. Following the total number of hits per lined item is the total percentage of people who responded based on their answers to their questionnaire. This will be analyzed further in the data analysis and discussion paper.
A more conclusive table would be the one that is shown below. This table shows the combined results and findings for all of the three sections in the questionnaire. The row where the average findings for all the three sections would be the most important one to look at because it directly answers the research question that was posted earlier. It can be recalled that the current research question asks what the visitors’ of Westminster, London’s popular tourist attraction sites’ perceptions are when it comes to those sites’ sustainability, responsibility, and environmental friendliness. In Figure 1.1, the results were categorized into three sections. For example, it can be shown how majority of the seventy respondents said that they generally have a positive perception on Westminster, London’s tourist attraction site management from a sustainability perspective. This can be evidenced by a combined percentage of 51% of the people who answered affirmatively (likert scale values 4 to 5) as opposed to only 42% (likert scale values 1 to 2) who answered non-affirmatively. The same principle of analysis can be applied to the remaining items in the questionnaire. In Figure 1.2, a more summarized set of findings can be obtained. This shows all the averages obtained for the entire questionnaire that is for all the three sections. Each major finding for the individual sections (i.e. sustainability, responsibility, and environmental friendliness) and their respective percentage values can also be seen as a reference. The results of the study generally show that 21% of the respondent population has a strongly positive perception c; 28% had a more positive than negative perception; 4% were undecided; 30% had a more negative than positive perception; and lastly, 16% had a strongly negative perception. In order to make the interpretative process simpler, those who said that they generally have a positive perception on Westminster, London’s tourist attraction sites’ sustainability, responsibility, and environmental friendliness were 49% versus the slightly smaller 46% who said they have a generally negative perception. It would be too hard to make a call early at this point and so a more thorough analysis will be carried over to the next section where each of the three categories will be evaluated. This way, it would be possible and easier to identify where the positivity and negativity of the public’s perception lies; whether it lies on the sustainability, responsibility, or environmental friendliness component; or to a more specific level, whether the problems can be traced to cultural, social, or economic problems.
Figure 2. Finding for three sections of sustainability, responsibility and environmental friendliness
Figure 2.2 Responsibility
Figure 2.3 Environmental friendliness
Chapter V Data Analysis and Discussion
This paper centers on the topic of sustainable tourism. Tourism is a term that refers to the process and theory (or study) of touring. From a business perspective, it refers to the art of attracting a certain number of people (often the bigger the number the better) for accommodation, entertainment, and pleasure. Those who engage in the business of touring are called tourists. There can be numerous definitions of tourism but in practice, it can be described as the act of going to and staying in locations outside one’s usual environment for business, leisure, and other purposes . The tourism industry has a long history, the earliest of which can be traced back to the age of antiquity, when people from the elite and wealthy social classes and caste systems were the only ones who had the privilege of travelling to distant parts of the world, which only made sense considering how modes and means of transportation were different during those days compared to today. During the middle ages, the number of people who travel was greatly boosted as most of the biggest religious groups namely Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam started to establish tourism-related religious traditions such as pilgrimage. This greatly motivated and at some point, required members of society’s lower classes and castes to embark on distant journeys— mostly for spiritual and religious empowerments. These practices, based on the definition of tourism that was presented earlier, can be considered as the earliest methods of touring (i.e. tourism). Fast forward to today, people are embarking on all sorts of journeys for pleasure, fund, entitlement, and in some cases, just for the sake of doing it. The size of the market for tourism (measured based on the number of people who can be customers of products and services being offered by firms operating in the industry) tremendously increased as a result of those developments. This later on resulted to the development of tourism as a business model—where one firm tries to offer tourism products and or services to prospective customers (e.g. .travelling to a popular tourist destination, offering accommodation, among other things). This was the early form of tourism. Studies would refer to it as mass tourism because of the way how people promoting it focus on the number of people that they can sell their services to. In some cases, mass tourism may also be referred to as global tourism. This is in contrast to what is being focused on in this paper which is sustainable tourism. Conventional frameworks for the tourism industry emphasize profit and volume of customers. That is, the larger the number of people a tourist spot or destination can accommodate, the better, mainly because of the expected out that suggests that it would be more profitable. There is no doubt about the way how that business-oriented framework on tourism works because it is linear and can be easily predicted. However, it does not take into consideration the way how popular tourist spots and destinations get affected or in this case expended. It has been established in previously published studies that the current generation of tourism—that is generally classified as mass or global tourism, is often perceived negatively by the public because of the way how they damage the environment and culture of the surrounding areas where they are located. This consensus coming from the literatures that were reviewed in the paper particularly in the literature review section can be verified by interpreting the results of the raw data obtained from the respondents using the survey questionnaire.
The discussion, just like the questionnaire, will also be based on three categories namely, sustainability, responsibility, and environmental friendliness. It would be important to be able to define what each category encompasses first before embarking on a more formal discussion.
1. Sustainability
The term sustainability refers to the endurance of a system. In this case, that system can be classified as the tourism industry or on a smaller case, the popular tourist attraction sites in Westminster, London. The first section of the questionnaire basically asked the respondents how they perceive the endurance (from a general, economic, social, and cultural perspective) of Westminster, London tourist attraction sites to be. Often, sustainability is being used interchangeably with environmental friendliness. While it is true that environmental sustainability is indeed the focus of most sustainability-inspired projects, there are other forms of sustainability and one common characteristics among all of them is that they emphasize the continuity of the loop with minimal to no reliance on external inputs—inputs that often come from the environment through various means of extraction. For a tourism project to be considered sustainable, it has to be able to create only a positive impact on the environment, economy, and society. A tourism site that relies on non-sustainable forms of energy use and even transportation such as burning of fossil fuels to transport people from one place to another—after all, tourism is highly dependent on transportation and mobility, may not be considered to be one hundred percent sustainable. That conclusion can be valid for two reasons; the first one being that the system (i.e. the specific tourism site) still relies on a certain input. In this case, that input comes from the environment in the form of fossil fuels—which they need to transport the people, based on how it was portrayed in the example scenario. Reason number two suggests that because there is a need for input coming from the environment, the overall impact of the mere existence and operation of that tourism site (especially on the environment, would still be negative. This was the way how sustainability was explained and defined to the respondents. It is important to note that the author of this paper made sure that the respondents understood what each of the section means (i.e. sustainability, responsibility, and environmental friendliness) prior to the initiation of the implementation phase. The table below summarizes the results for the sustainability section.
It can be seen that more than half (a total of 51%) of the respondent population said that they perceive tourist attraction sites in Westminster, London to be generally sustainable. Some 42%, however, said that they thought otherwise. Statistically, the side that agrees to the existing research hypothesis represents the majority. It is important to note, however, that the opposing side still represent more than one third of the entire sample population in this section. It would be important to know the reason or which specific aspect of sustainability they think most tourist attraction sites in Westminster, London failed. According to the breakdown of results, the highest number of low scores (represented by D and SD in the table) was recorded in question number four of the sustainability section. 45% of the respondents believe that the tourism industry practices being implemented in most Westminster, London sites do not support a culturally sustainable form of tourism. This means that the role of culture in tourism is poorly exhibited in the popular tourist sites . This may also mean that the tourism-related activities in the Westminster, London sites contribute to the degradation of culture in the area. When it comes to the social and economic sustainability, however, both followed the trend set by the general question on sustainability. That is, majority of the respondents reported to have a positive perception on Westminster, London’s popular tourist sites when it comes to social and economic sustainability.
2. Responsibility
Responsibility in this case refers to accountability. Ideally, firms operating in the tourism industry should solve their own problems and clean up their own mess, especially if they are the ones who created or caused them in the first place. There are simply a lot of things that can be damaged by and in the tourism industry. A significant number of popular tourist sites not just in Westminster London have life cycles. This means that after reaching a certain point of saturation , degradation may follow. In such cases, certain parts of the tourist site may end up being damaged. Most tourist sites are naturally occurring and if they indeed are, they are essentially non-renewable and therefore disposable . That is, after they complete their life-cycle, for profit firms operating in the tourism industry would have no use for them already. Setting expectations on responsibility or accountability is generally a good idea because it motivates, or in some cases, even requires tourism industry firms to take the necessary steps to prolong the lifecycle of certain tourist sites. Accountability and responsibility measures can be effective ways to encourage the public, including the tourism businesses, to promote sustainable tourism.
The tourism industry is being effectively regulated in the United Kingdom. This case is true in Westminster. This can be evidenced by the fact that around three quarters (the exact number is 73%) of the sample population said that they think most tourist attraction sites in Westminster, London promote a generally responsible form of tourism characterized by stakeholder accountability practices. Only 24% of the sample population said that they have a negative view of the practice from a responsibility or accountability point of view. This only shows how the citizens from the target geographical location look up to the tourism laws and policies in the area. Their overall positive perception in this category shows how the policymakers in the country and on a smaller level, the local government, keeps track of the developments in the industry and ensures that various stakeholder groups are encouraged to make significant contributions to the maintenance and ideally, improvement, of the existing tourist attraction sites. The trend was consistently observed in all four questions. In the case of the respondents’ perceptions on how economically responsible tourism-related practices in Westminster, London sites are, for example, more than half of the respondents said that they believe existing accountability rules and policies are being effectively enforced and followed. This coincides with what the literature suggest about the United Kingdom as a whole. In a press release published in one of the government’s websites, for example, the Prime Minister expressed great interest in boosting tourism across the country through a new five point plan in an effort to drive tourists beyond just London . London is one of the busiest cities in the planet. The high enough level of population density in the city plus the severely elastic volume of tourists who flock in various times of the year can set up a string of unexpected problems. Examples of such problems may include traffic, and from a tourism management perspective, the degradation of the tourist sites in various city districts such as the ones in Westminster. This was just one of the evidences that show how the government intends to play an active role in protecting its assets in the tourism industry.
3. Environmental Friendliness
The main goal of most sustainable tourism programs is to make tourism industry practices and operations more environmental friendly . This makes sense because a significant part of tourist destinations are natural. This means that once they get damaged and inevitably destroyed by various human activities (a good example of which would be mass and global tourism, which has been established to be unsustainable), the effects can be permanent. Tourism represents a significant portion of some developed and developing countries’ GDP and so ensuring that they are aware of the value of sustainability and environmental friendliness of their sites and those sites’ respective operations is essential.
In the literatures that were reviewed, the consensus suggests that although sustainable tourism is growing in popularity—as people start to realize the real value of naturally-occurring tourist destinations and the fact that destruction of income-generating tourist sites can lead to dire economic, social, and cultural consequences, many countries and tourism industry firms are still lagging behind when it comes to pushing for and maintaining sustainability among other related outcomes. For instance, certain tourism groups still focus on the economic benefits of their operations and the quality of service (and satisfaction that they can provide to their clients) even if it may come at the expense of the tourist sites’ degradation . These are examples of practices that the principles of sustainable tourism are trying to stop and address. This only means that there still exist a lot of tourism industry firms who do not practice and promote environmental friendliness in their operations. This can definitely be a problem as it is already known and proven by previously published studies that conventional tourism practices (i.e. mass and global tourism) could lead to severe social, economic, and cultural consequences .
The table above shows the summary of the results obtained in the third section, environmental friendliness. The first question that needs to be addressed here is what exactly does the sample population say (as a group) about the environmental friendliness of Westminster, London’s tourist attraction sites. So far, compared to all the three sections, the environmental friendliness section is the only one where a significantly larger majority of the respondents answered with non-affirmative responses. In this case, around three quarters or precisely 74% of the sample population (all of whom are visitors who spent some time as tourists in Westminster, London’s various tourist destinations) said that they have an overall negative perception on the environmental friendliness of the tourism practices and operations being implemented in the area. Costs and levels of environmental friendliness are variables that have a directly proportional type of relationship. When costs are low, environmental friendliness often suffers mainly because of the fact that keeping up an environmentally sustainable set of tourism management operations is expensive . There can be a multitude of reasons why people visit tourist destinations but in most cases, costs can be an effective motivator or deterrent. When environmental sustainability levels are high, on the other hand, costs (of admittance and operations) would normally be high as well. For a logically thinking manager of a tourism industry firm, the most logical option would (if economic sustainability is the main priority) is to keep the costs and expenses low even if it means letting the environmental friendliness of the activities and operations suffer. These were the related events that, in theory, may have prompted the respondents to answer so negatively in this category.
The next question one has to ask here is whether the literature and the primary findings in this category share similarities or are different. In this case, it was the latter. Both the literatures and the primary findings of the implementation show that most tourist destinations in Westminster, London or in any other part of the planet are not yet ready for a fully sustainable and environmental friendly set of tourism management operations.
Chapter VI Conclusions
This paper was written based on the goal of examine the visitors of Westminster, London’s tourist destinations’ perceptions on sustainable, responsible, and environmental friendly tourism. In order to answer the main research question, the author of this paper resorted to using a quantitative deductive research design using a post-positivist research philosophy. The operating hypothesis suggests that the visitors of Westminster, London’s tourist destinations’ perceptions on sustainable, responsible, and environmental friendly tourism are more positive than negative. This means that the author expects to see results suggesting that there is a significant part of the sample population that show both positive and negative perceptions on the said variables but that it would be the former that would constitute a bigger percentage share. A thorough review of related literatures was conducted in order to supply the body of knowledge required to make meaningful, educated, and evidenced-based assumptions, inferences, interpretations and comparisons. Ultimately, the goal of the literature review that was conducted was for it to be used as a basis of comparison when the results of the study’s implementation phase already came out—this was stated as one of the goals and objectives in a previous section of this paper. So far, the consensus in the review of related literatures suggest that the tourism industry (from an international perspective) is far from being fully sustainable, responsible, and environmental friendly. It has to be noted; however, that majority of the previously published studies and reports that were reviewed tend to agree on one thing—that there is an emerging trend that favors the development of a sustainable, responsible, and environmental friendly tourism industry. However, for that to happen, the public, policy makers, and most importantly, the for-profit companies operating in the tourism industry have to be aware and be educated first. This implies that a great majority of the practices and operations in the tourism industry today are still not sustainable. This can pose as both an already existing problem and a risk for the development of even bigger problems, especially in countries and more specific locations where the income generated by the tourism industry plays a major role in keeping the local economy afloat. One has already been enlightened about the fact that non-sustainable, responsible, and environmental friendly tourism practices and operations can lead to the degradation and even destruction of various tourist sites. This principle can be directly applied in Westminster, London. If that happens, there may be certain social, economic, and cultural consequences. People relying on the tourism industry may permanently lose their jobs; tourism industry firms may be forced to downscale their operations or in severe cases close down. The social and cultural symbol of a community may also be damaged—as a popular travel landmark gets destroyed or damaged. These are just some of the possible things that could happen. The next question that one should be able to successfully answer at this point would be whether the consensuses from the literature review coincide with the results of the study.
So far, from a general point of view of all the three sections included in the survey questionnaire namely: sustainability, responsibility, and environmental friendliness, a good 49% (composed of individuals who answered with 4 and 5 or SA and A) of the respondents said that their perceptions on sustainable, responsible, and environmental friendly tourism are more positive than negative. 4% were undecided. The remaining 46% were on the negative side of it. Notably, there was a 3% difference between the positive and the negative side. However, this is still a statistically significant finding and so even though the results were largely mixed, the population of those who say that they have a positive set of perceptions on sustainable, responsible, and environmental friendly tourism are still bigger. Moreover, if one is going to base the counting on the number of sections that each side got, the results (of the examination of the visitors’ perception) were largely positive in the first two sections (i.e. sustainability and responsibility). The only section where the ones who said they have a negative set of perceptions on sustainable, responsible, and environmental friendly tourism were on the third one (i.e. environmental friendliness).
The most important thing that the author of this paper has learned from this research is that sustainable tourism is indeed on the rise but not a lot of people are adapting. It is an ongoing trend but more tourism industry businesses still hold on the non-sustainable and conventional tourism-related business ideas. This can be proven by both the primary and secondary sources used in the study. The implication of this of course would have something to do with the future trends in the industry—conventional tourism practices would continue to exist and may even prevail for some time before being fully replaced with more sustainable ones.
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