Tourism is one of the most fast developing sectors in the world. Many countries that have good beaches have found the need to develop tourism destinations that will assist in marketing their attraction sites. The research below shows the development of New Brighton tourism destination. It offers an introduction to tourism followed by the background information on New Brighton. A review on different researches conducted on the same topic is analyzed in order to come up with the research gaps. Moreover, the proposal gives the recommended method of data collection. Primary data collection method is preferred for this research.
1.0 Introduction and background
1.1 Introduction
Many countries strive to acquire the biggest share in the tourism sector due the increasing competition in the tourism industry. Tourism industry managers are developing sophisticated and adaptive management strategies that ensure they realize their business objectives in order to cope with the stiff business environment. In order to address the issue of tourism, the group has decided to choose the best alternative that is capable of delivering marketing goals and objectives. This research is of great importance because it provides any entrepreneur wishing to start a tourism business especially in New Brighton with an opportunity to make the right decision. Moreover the topic will assist people willing to travel to this destination in locating the most attractive sites that offer a relaxing holiday environment. According to Advance Tourism (2008), the tourism businesses trade at a loss when visitors go elsewhere apart from the designated location. Most destinations possessing high profiles and busy travel routes always enjoy a big percentage of customers’ turn over. In some cases, customers fail to give details of their destination since they are not aware of what the destination has to offer.
1.2 New Brighton Background information
New Brighton is the best managed destination management organization in New Zealand. It is located along the southern coast of Pegasus Bay where it is divided into 3 sections. These are; North New Brighton, New Brighton, and South New Brighton. The place offers excellent tourist accommodating sites organized by well experienced staff with excellent expertise in the every field that forms the organization. Its location is at the centre of the Wirral Waterfront whereby the Floral Pavilion is being reviewed into a complete makeover with plans of constructing new hotels, improved beach activities, and quality restaurants and bars for tourist destinations. New Brighton has an historic promenade that attracts many tourists who visit the beach during their holidays. The organization believes in developing perfect consultation on all departments concerning any change to be implemented. Full participation in all the programs developed by the organization will give it success to acquire the necessary resources aimed at achieving total customer satisfaction. Figure 1 shows the location of New Brighton tourist destination.
Developing a perfect tourism and destination market strategy gives an organization an opportunity to build firm foundations for consultation, and development of an excellent relationship with other potential partners (Weaver & Lawton, 2010). The major markets for tourism in New Brighton are visiting friends and relatives (VFR), business travel, and those travelling for holidays or leisure. VFR consists of tourists who visit friends or relatives as the main reason for travel. In New Brighton, VRF tourists occupy an average of 45&% in a year of tourists in New Zealand. On the other hand, some people travel on business purposes. According to Tourism Queensland statistics, this group of tourists occupies 60% of the total number of tourists in a year. In New Zealand, the commercial performance of a tourism industry is guided by two major factors. To start with the industry must develop a successful destination market place in all the designated regions. Secondly, the Tourism State Councils who governs the tourism industry controls the performance of various organizations within the region. In order for a tourism industry to achieve its goals, it has to trade profitably through achieving stable income at lower costs (iKnow, 2012).
2.0 Objectives
To come up with a tourist development plan for the New Brighton beach and its facilities.
To understand the concept of master planning in tourism development
To identify the main elements of tourism destination plan
To understand factors influencing the tourism planning process
3.0 Literature review
3.1 Tourism planning process
There are many countries that have developed tourist destination sites all over the world and some have succeeded in their plans. The industry has contributed to major economic development in many countries, and a way of improving people’s livelihoods. Planning is a major factor that influences many tourism industries, both in private and public sectors since it assists in achieving a sustainable business. In developing a tourist destination, someone should ensure it obeys the culture and ethics of the local community, it offers good employment opportunities, is environmentally friendly, and gives visitors quality experience. These factors are easier to comply with but many tourism destinations find it difficult to achieve them and end up losing a number of visitors each year (School of Travel Industry Management, n.d). The proposed plan aims at incorporating all these factors in order to come up with the best tourism destination in New Brighton.
Planning for a tourism destination requires several levels starting with the general level to the local level. This research deals with the local level since it involves having a detailed plan for a specific location, which in this case is New Brighton. According to Weaver (2010), tourism planning process must be integrated in all levels in order to ensure the plan follows all the tourism requirement policies. On the international level, more than one country collaborates in developing destination whereby visitors from involved countries will be given priorities over others. This process is concerned with developing for transportation services, combined tourism marketing, and various cooperative issues. The local planning level involves coming up with a plan as a town or city to start a tourism destination. This level focuses most on area planning, land use in making the resorts, and plans for other tourist attractions and facilities. Business planning entails knowledge of customer’s lifestyle. In the tourism industry, different customers have different lifestyles, the same way different destinations offer different customer satisfactions. Lifestyle is important when designing the type consumers to attract in different regions.
In Hawaii tourism is the major economic activity that begun in early 1970’s. Even though the country receives quite a number of tourists in a year, there was a lack of a proper tourism destination that leads to poor coordination of visitors. After consulting with several experts, the state later came up with a tourism development and planning idea of establishing various destinations in different locations. In order to have a good plan, all levels of the government must be active in order to manage a balanced tourism growth approach. Hawaii government took less concern on development of tourism destinations that led to poor visitors’ turnover, and decreased returns affecting the country economy. On the other hand, infrastructure has a great effect on tourism destination development and planning. The infrastructure include electricity availability, source of clean and adequate water supply, good transport facilities, housing, and any other element that result into support of the new resort.
3.2 The impact of infrastructure to tourism destination
A tourism attraction centre cannot be effective without the availability of good infrastructure. Investing in supporting businesses (like hotels, and transport companies), soft infrastructure (learning institution, and trading centers), and hard infrastructure (airports, roads, and water-ways) plays a significant role in developing a successful tourism attraction site. Departments of planning and infrastructure are the most involved in coordinating and implementing programs agreed on towards sustainable development projects in infrastructure (Smith 2006). A successful tourism infrastructure project involves various stake holders; thus, agreements play a vital role in enabling effective measures in the changes being implemented. An agreement towards these development and implementation methods, together with possible effects to other sectors is also important. Areas of accountability between governments and other financiers, agrees on the best criteria to be followed. Long-term and short-term planning approaches are likely to influence the performance that anticipates the growing population needs.
Infrastructure has an impact on the number of tourist capable of visiting the destination. According to Murphy, Pritchard and Smith (2000), various destination components interfere with the demand and supply of the tourism industry infrastructure being one of them. Information, transportation, accommodation, and recreational facilities improve the quality of a tourism destination through encouraging visitors in the area. New Brighton is well served by feeder roads and good water transport making it easier for tourists to access the area. Road transport is one of the most important infrastructures because many people use vehicles while travelling from one location to the next. Research conducted by Tourism Task force in Australia 2003 found out that transport plays a significant role in development and growth of a tourism destination. On the other hand, tourists prefer places that are easier to access and offer good sites.
3.3 Factors affecting the development of a tourism destination
Competition is one of the factors that affect the development of a tourism destination. Tourism Research Australia has destinations in southern Great Barrier Reef that makes other destinations occupy the area since Tourism Research Australia has almost dominated the whole area. Most government officials and their families use this destination in order to promote TRA as it is a government organization. All efforts and activities in a business should have unity and focus on giving customers what they demand. If customers prefer to have constancy in service, the business should ensure that, if the customers are price sensitive, the businesses should offer fair prices, if customers focus, or are delighted more on reliability and variety, then the businesses should unify its efforts and resources toward delivering that. New Brighton organization should take a number of processes in a bid to attain competitive advantage while serving its customers. The processes range from communicating to the prospective markets about the services offered and getting the target customer interested, approaching them and presenting on what the business offers, answering questions and handling customer objections, making sales and providing after sale service. According to Weaver & Lawton (2010), organizations working under the Destination Marketing Organization should establish strategies that ensure they give high quality services to their customers needs through offering competitive prices, attracting investments in the industry, and increasing tourism operations.
3.4 Contribution of technology in planning and developing a tourism destination
Many tourism destinations are currently facing a lot of challenges when it comes to communication. The current technology has enabled organizations to communicate with their clients through the internet and deliver quality information in a fast and efficient way. Destination websites play a great role in improving communications among customers and organizations from different locations all over the world. With the latest introduction of many social communication channels like Face Book, Twitter, My Space, and many others, most people are questioning the application of these websites. Following this advancement in communication the new destinations should adapt to the customers’ desires and incorporate the use of these social channels in their websites. Developing company websites play an important role in communicating tourist destinations. The website gives a map showing various locations, their distances from main towns, and services offered. On the other hand, with the high rate of technology customers can have a live chat with the hotel staff members and get the first hand information regarding their questions. In addition, internet assists in advertising various destinations within a country. Internet advertising is the most efficient since almost every individual has access to the internet, either through the phone, Personal Computers, or Notebooks (Pisierra, McKinney & Chawla, 1999). New Brighton for instance has a website giving all the details of the organization that assist in advertising its services to the local and international tourists
Understanding the policies that govern the success of a tourism industry is very essential in making various decisions associated with the industry. Many destinations focus on international operations through encouraging foreigners into their destinations. According to Yuan et al (1995), a tourism organization should not ignore local tourist segment in their marketing strategies since local travelers bring more funds to the industry compared to foreign travelers. In addition, the segment has less impact to the nation’s economy. Carrying out a tourism impact analysis is very crucial in developing a destination. The most important tourism impacts are the environmental impact and social-cultural impact. The prevailing environment has a great impact on tourism destinations. Tourism is considered environmentally friendly since areas with tourist attraction sites have prevailing environment with appropriate land use, quality water preservation services, beautiful natural sceneries, and good waste disposal techniques. The most important factor in developing a tourism destination is ensuring that the natural setting of the location is maintained without exploiting the natural resources. Through this, developers carryout the capacity of the destination in order to determine its capacity on the level of visitors it is capable of accommodating. On the other hand, tourist brings about changes to the social and culture of the surrounding people. This indicates that tourism has both positive and negative effects on the local people, but the destination developers should ensure that visitors are educated on the people’s culture.
4.0 Proposed methodology
4.1 Method of data collection
The research will undertake a comprehensive study relating to the development of new destination taking into consideration the strategic management and planning. Secondly, the research will identify and integrate the critical success factors for the establishment of New Brighton destination facilities. Thirdly, a strategic planning in the tourism industry will be conducte2008d that involves analyzing the competitive tourism planning and marketing. Primary data collection method would be the most appropriate in the following research proposal. Primary data collection is most appropriate because it offers first hand information and avoids bias. In addition, many tourism destinations, for example Tourism
Queensland, used this method of data collection and came up with prevailing results. In the past research, organizations had problems with people giving false information after the management realized the research was being conducted. In this research, the data collection will target both management and customer, but with no information about the reasons for questioning them.
4.2 Ethical issues in carrying out the research
While conducting the research, it is important to understand the ethics of the local people. People’s cultural beliefs and should be upheld in the society. Primary data collection method involves interaction with the individuals requiring the research team to uphold people’s ethics to the highest level. Interfering with people norms might lead to inappropriate data. In so doing, research team should adopt and uphold the social settings of different respondents in order to avoid bias of information collected (Dutta, 2008).
4.3 Data Collection
The data will be collected through field observation method whereby the research team will visit the proposed destination and make observations on the available facilities capable of attracting tourists. The team will then come up with proposed plans on how to improve the site. Secondly, the group will carry out personal interviews. The interview method will involve both written and oral interview. Closed-ended questionnaires will be administered to the chosen interviewers. The questionnaire will have a specific time after which collection of questionnaire will take place. In addition to this, interviews will take place and the expected time duration is about thirty minutes. Open-ended questionnaires are discouraged because they might encourage people to give false information in fear of being intimidated by their leaders. Personal and telephone interview would be most appropriate. The research team will travel to other already destinations like Tourism Queensland in Australia and interview visitors and management of the destination. On the other hand, qualitative research will take place on a sample population of 100 people. The aim for this is to collect statistical data, such as a percentage of how many customers feel they should visit other well managed destination apart from that one. The sample of 100 tourists is reliable since it assists in minimizing bias of the data collected.
4.4 Data analysis method
The data analysis will employ the use of statistical tools for interpreting the collected information. A summary of all the respondents from different methods used will be analyzed. The data will then be grouped according to the responses and coded in SPSS program. The program analyzes the information and presents it in the form of graphs and charts. The dependent and independent variables will be established, and the team will then come up with a conclusion.
Works Cited
Advance Tourism. (2008). Understanding Australia’s Tourism Industry Organizations, Mt
Waverley Victoria. Retrieved from: http://www.advancetourism.com.au/files/TKFTG4GZBJ/GD_Understanding_Aust_tourism_orgs.pdf
Dutta, M. (2008). Communicating Health: A Culture-Centered Approach. Medical. Polity.
Six Ethical Philosophies. Retrieved from: http://commfaculty.fullerton.edu/lester/courses/ethicalphils.html
iKnow. (2012). New Brighton Tourist Information. Retrieved from: http://www.iknow-northwest.co.uk/tourist_information/merseyside/wirral/new_brighton.htm
Murphy, P., Pritchard, M., and Smith, B. (2000). The Destination Product and Its Impact on Traveler Perceptions. Tourism Management 21:43–52.
Pisierra, V.J, McKinney, W.B & Chawla, S.K. (1999). Tourism and cooperative advertising:do they mix? Journal of Professional Services Marketing, 19(1), 45-59
School of Travel Industry Management. (n.d). Tourism Destination Planning and Development. Retrieved from:
http://www.tim.hawaii.edu/dl/Document%20Library%20%20TO%20490%20Additional%20Materials/TO490_section-5_destination-planning.pdf
Smith, J. (2006). Living cities: an urban myth: government and sustainability in Australia. Rosenberg, Dural, N.S.W.
Weaver, D. B., & Lawton, L. (2010). Tourism management, Fourth Edition. Milton, Old, John Wiley & Sons Australia, pp. 25-30
