Free Custom «Sustainable Tourism Development» Essay Paper

Task 2

Key Steps of Tourism Development Planning Process

Tourism development planning process is performed on national, regional and local levels. In general, the planning process involves a range of key steps. The first step is evaluation of tourist demand and support. Most of the country’s travelers are from the United Kingdom (almost 30%) (MTA, 2014). Besides, Malta is popular among customers from Italy, Germany, Scandinavia, and other countries. Travelers normally choose airplanes for getting to Malta; particularly, they prefer air companies Air Malta and Ryanair. The country has built 1970 hotels that are able to satisfy varied customer needs (Ministry for Tourism, Culture and the Environment, 2012).

The second step is setting objectives. According to MTA (2014), travelers, primarily, choose Malta because of its climate, history/culture and desire of new experience (new places to visit). The least common motivators to choose Malta are the country’s hospitality, recommendations of friends and family, and prior experience. This means that the country’s needs to improve its hospitality and customer service in order to have more new and repeat customers.

 

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Other steps of planning process are territorial planning, infrastructure, financial planning, HR planning, administrative structure, marketing and promotion, as well as progress evaluation. On the national level, the country needs to encourage airlines from other countries to fly to Malta. Besides, the country needs new approaches to marketing and promotion to address the problem of seasonality. On the local and the regional level, Malta should work on enhancing its hospitality thorough HR training 

Tourism Impacts and Measuring Tools

There are three categories of tourism impacts, such as economical, environmental, and social-cultural. In addition, government and political decisions can affect the tourism development of a country. Overall, Malta has more positive economic effects than negative ones. First, tourism became the major economic driver for the country as it caused trade growth, communications, and transportations (The Government of Malta, 2002). It also generated new employment opportunities, especially in catering, transport, wholesale, recreation, manufacturing and entertainment (The Government of Malta, 2002). Employment generation is followed by increasing of personal income, improving of quality of life and living standards. Moreover, these aspects continue to enhance due to addressing the seasonality of tourism in Malta. Apart from that, growth of the amount of independent travelers has led to developing of public transportation system (Ministry for Tourism, 2012). The rural areas also benefit from tourism. For example, Gozo has reduced employment and diversified economy (Ministry for Tourism, 2012). Urban areas received finances for conservation projects (Ministry for Tourism, 2012).

As for negative economic impacts, Malta has fewer possibilities for large-scale production and earning unlimited incomes. The tourism industry has caused dependence on foreign import, especially energy, consumer goods, and industry supplies. Besides, other industries receive fewer investments, because the focus is on tourism and industries that are connected with it. This makes the country dependable on tourism income and global economic situation. The cost of living increases, which is negative for the local population. Tourism also associated with leakages. Nevertheless, Malta enjoys low unemployment (6.4 percent in 2011) and low inflation (2.7 percent in 2011) (Blasi, 2013).

Tourism also causes environmental impacts. Thus, Malta has varied initiatives for environmental protection. Rural tourism enhances farm environment. The environmental education and awareness improves. At the same time, tourism has reduced the amount of natural resources (e.g. water, land, and clear air). The significant number of tourists has caused further increase of littering. Besides, tourist activities and transport create noise. Constant building of new facilities is a threat to natural environment, residential areas and lands used for agriculture (Blasi 2013). Finally, Malta suffers from overcrowding of natural environment, exploitation of animals and increased threats to rare species (The Government of Malta, 2002).

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In addition, tourism has positive social-cultural impacts on Malta. Thus, the country increases interaction with other cultures, which allowed to improve its tolerance towards others nations. At the same time, population of Malta begins to value its own traditions and cultural heritages too. Cultural and historic places receive investment for conservation projects. New recreation facilities benefit the local population. Women as well as young and unskilled labor have better access to labor market (NSO, 2014). On the other hand, Malta suffers from overcrowding, congestion, and loss of privacy. The culture faces the process of comodification (NSO, 2014). Moral values of local people deteriorate; particularly some of them are involved in crime, prostitution, substance abuse, and disrespectful conduct. Finally, the country has more illegal immigrants (Blasi, 2013).

Political positive impacts greatly prevail over negative ones. In particular, tourism improved marketing destination, financing projects, planning and regulating of the tourism industry. The country has become more democratic. Local interest to current issues appeared. At the same time, Malta suffers from such negative political impacts as inefficient administrative system, inefficient decision-making, and passive population (Blasi, 213).

To measure the economic impact of tourism, the Cambridge Economic Impact Model is applied. It focuses on such indicators as the total amount spent by travelers, the amount of income for local populations and businesses generated by this spending, as well as the number of work positions created by traveler spending. Studying all these factors allows making the total evaluation of the impact of tourism on a country’s economy. In our case, Malta’s economy clearly benefits from tourism.