Collaboration and Partnerships in Tourism Planning

Bill Bramwell Centre for Tourism, Sheffield Hallam University, UK

Bernard Lane Rural Tourism Unit, University of Bristol, UK

Introduction

Tourism, like so many modern industries, is essentially an assembly process. In few situations does one company or organisation control all the components, or all the stages and decision-making processes in the creation and delivery of the tourism product. Vertical integration is not a hallmark of most tourism operations. Equally, horizontal integration is relatively rare: single ownership of all the airlines, hotels or other forms of tourism product is unusual, even in one region.

The diffuse and fragmented nature of tourism development has long been recognised. Ways of overcoming the problems caused by fragmentation have also been long sought. Over the last fifty years, local tourism associations have promoted intra-industry cooperation, and national tourism offices have represented the enterprises of their country to the market (Pearce,1992). Internationally, groupings such as the Pacific Asia Travel Association (PATA) and the World Travel and Tourism Council (WTTC) typify cross-border tourism alliances.

Few or even none of the above is, however, a collaborative arrangement or partnership in the sense discussed in this book. The term partnership is used here to describe regular, cross-sectoral interactions between parties based on at least some agreed rules or norms, intended to address a common issue or to achieve a specific policy goal or goals. All the collaborative arrangements examined in this collection of papers are concerned with issues or policies that go beyond basic tourism questions, and have broader economic, social and environmental dimensions. The cross-sectoral reference is important: partnerships that seek to create sustainable tourism need to be holistic in outlook. A focus on cross-sectoral interactions also rules out the examination here of simplistic marketing groups or trading alliances.

Conceptual Background

The importance of involving diverse stakeholders in tourism planning and management is receiving growing recognition. This has led to increasing attention being directed to the use of collaborative arrangements or partnerships that bring together a range of interests in order to develop and sometimes also implement tourism policies. Collaborative arrangements for tourism planning involve face-to-face interactions between stakeholders who may be in the public, semi-public, private or voluntary sectors, including pressure and interest groups. Stakeholder collaboration has the potential to lead to dialogue, negotiation and the building of mutually acceptable proposals about how tourism should be developed. Partnerships involved in tourism planning usually bring together interests in the same destination but in different sectors, or else parties in different destinations but with mutual interests in one issue or related issues.

A key reason for the growing interest in partnerships in tourism development is the belief that tourist destination areas and organisations may be able to gain competitive advantage by bringing together the knowledge, expertise, capital and other resources of several stakeholders (Kotler et al., 1993). Some commentators also contend that decisions about tourism development should not be left to a few politicians, government officials or tourism entrepreneurs, suggesting that a wide range of stakeholders should have opportunities to participate in decision-making that affects their interests. These commentators claim that the broadly based ownership of tourism policies can bring democratic empowerment and equity, operational advantages, and an enhanced tourism product (Jamal and Getz, 1995; Joppe, 1996; Murphy, 1985; Timothy, 1999).

Partnership approaches to tourism planning are now widely endorsed by government and public agencies in many developed countries. The UK government's tourism policy document, Tomorrow's Tourism, includes a commitment to 'encourage tourism management partnerships between local authorities, tourism operators and local communities' (DCMS, 1999:53). Within the UK context, Charlton and Essex (1996:178) have noted that 'A striking feature of the contemporary tourism landscape is the wealth of collaborative initiatives and partnerships'. Across the Atlantic, Selin and Chavez (1995: 844-5) suggest that 'While tourism organizations have always been involved in partnerships to a certain degree, recent economic, political, and social forces in the United States and elsewhere, have combined to make partnerships an explicit priority of these agencies'. Beyond the English-speaking world, the concept of the partnership approach is also beginning to make headway. Spain's new tourism policy document, Spain: A Sustainable Tourism, speaks of 'the incorporation of long-term considerations and the integration of the environmental factor, along with the participation of all parties implicated' (Ministerio de Economia y Hacienda/Ministerio de Medio Ambiente, 1999:23).

The new prominence for collaborative approaches involving diverse parties reflects changes in governance as a whole in many western countries (Harvey, 1989; O'Toole, 1997; Thomas and Thomas, 1998). Notable among these changes are a blurring of the boundaries between the public and private sectors, a shift in the public sector from direct service provision to an 'enabling' function, and, as a result of these changes, the emergence of complex networks of agencies and partnerships (Goodwin, 1998; Rhodes, 1996). Several commentators have related these developments to fiscal problems for government from the late 1970s that have encouraged resource-sharing activities, to the rise of a politically effective critique of state activity that was developed by the 'New Right', and to a significant public disenchantment with government (Kickert et al., 1997). Some have also noted that political actors at the local level have themselves formed partnerships, although sometimes these have been promoted by higher tiers of government (Judge et al., 1995).

A variety of terms are used to describe different collaborative arrangements in tourism, including coalitions, forums, alliances, task forces and public-private partnerships. While the term collaboration is commonly used in the academic tourism literature, in government and practitioner circles the term partnerships is especially popular, and in practice these are taken to embrace many collaborative forms (Bailey, 1995). For example, Long and Arnold (1995:5) state that in the US 'The term "partnership" has become a part of the terminology of leaders concerned with environmental quality, resource conservation, and sustainable development'. As the partnership label is so widely used it is also used in this book to denote a collaborative arrangement.

Despite increasing interest in tourism partnerships, until recently there has been little systematic research on the internal processes and external impacts of these organisational forms. Information on tourism collaboration was often restricted to accounts by practitioners, and these can be limited by a tendency to condense complex processes into simple description, to avoid analysis and criticism, and to gloss over points of conflict in order to present a project in the best possible light. This book begins to bridge this research gap by providing a collection of theoretically informed empirical studies examining tourism partnerships that bring together a range of parties to develop tourism policies. Case studies examine the processes and impacts related to these collaborative arrangements in specific contexts. The issues papers discuss thematic, operational and ethical questions arising from this critical debate. It is important to stress, however, that no examination is made here of alliances involving parties in just one sector, such as marketing alliances between tourism businesses. All the case study cross-sectoral partnerships are engaged in developing policies and planning that go beyond basic tourism questions: they also deal with broader economic, social and environmental issues. All the issues papers also consider questions related to the wider concepts of partnerships for sustainable tourism.

Specific concerns highlighted in the case studies include the scope of the issues or 'problem domain' that is addressed and the range of stakeholders that participate in the collaborative process. Are there participants from government, business and non-profit sectors, and from national, regional and local policy arenas? A key issue in several chapters is the extent to which collaborative relations are inclusive. Are all participants in a partnership fully involved in the discussions, is there mutual respect and shared learning, and are all participants equally influential in the negotiations and decision-making? Further questions relate to the extent to which agreement is reached, if at all, about how to decide or act on the problem domain. Finally, there is consideration of the outputs or achievements of the collaborative arrangements. By studying these issues in specific circumstances it is possible to enhance our critical understanding of tourism partnerships and to assist practitioners to understand how collaborative approaches can succeed and fail.

One important intention of the book is to assess the potential for partnerships involved in tourism planning to contribute to the wider objectives of sustainable development. Although sustainable development is a contested concept with many potential interpretations, particularly with respect to the relationship between sustainability and development, some core principles have long been identified (Bramwell et al., 1996). Prominent among these is a recognition that the health and integrity of natural, built and human cultural resources is critical to our future well-being, and that this depends on those resources being conserved. Sustainable development is also often considered to involve concern for the welfare of future generations, so they benefit from a supply of resources, opportunities and choices at least as good as those inherited by the current generation. Another common theme is concern that there should be fairness in the distribution within society of the economic, social, cultural and environmental benefits and costs of development. Further, it is often suggested that socially equitable development depends on participation by all sectors of society in the decision-making about development options (Bramwell, 1998; LGMB, 1993). And it must not be forgotten that, in the seminal work on sustainable development, the Brundtland Report (WCED, 1987), the need for partnerships between stakeholders was identified as a key to implementing sustainable development.

In theory, at least, collaborative approaches should help to further the core principles of sustainable development. First, collaboration among a range of stakeholders including non-economic interests might promote more consideration of the varied natural, built and human resources that need to be sustained for present and future well being. Second, by involving stakeholders from several fields of activity and with many interests, there may be greater potential for the integrative or holistic approaches to policy-making that can help to promote sustainability (Jamal and Getz, 1995 and 1996; Lane, 1994). Partnerships can also reflect and help safeguard the interdependence that exists between tourism and other activities and policy fields (Butler, 1999). Third, if multiple stakeholders affected by tourism development were involved in the policy-making process, then this might lead to a more equitable distribution of the resulting benefits and costs. Participation should raise awareness of tourism impacts on all stakeholders, and this heightened awareness should lead to policies that are fairer in their outcomes. Fourth, broad participation in policy-making could help democratise decision-making, empower participants and lead to capacity building and skill acquisition amongst participants and those whom they represent (Benveniste, 1989; Roberts and Bradley, 1991).

What is Collaboration and What are Partnerships?

Collaboration involves relationships between stakeholders when those parties interact with each other in relation to a common issue or 'problem domain'. Each stakeholder controls resources, such as knowledge, expertise, constituency and capital, but on their own they are unlikely to possess all the resources necessary to achieve their objectives and to plan effectively for their future in relation to a significant tourism development issue. This is because of the complexity of tourism issues, often due to the fragmented nature of the industry and the multiple stakeholders who influence, or are affected by tourism development: both the resources and capacities to affect an issue can be dispersed among several stakeholders. Hence, a number of stakeholders may work together if they consider that their chances of realising their goals and creating new opportunities in a problem domain are greater by performing jointly rather than by acting alone. This resource dependency and stakeholder interdependence means there are potential mutual or collective benefits from stakeholders collaborating with each other (Gray, 1989; Selin and Beason, 1991). These potential mutual benefits include a collaborative process where the participants might learn from each other, learn from the process itself, develop innovative policies, and respond dynamically to a changing environment. There maybe, therefore, synergistic gains from sharing resources, risks and rewards and from the prioritisation of 'collaborative advantage' rather than individual 'competitive advantage' (Edgell and Haenisch, 1995; Huxham, 1996; Lowndes and Skelcher, 1998).

Interdependency is based on the distribution of resources between various actors, the goals they pursue and their perceptions of their resource dependencies. Collaboration can lead to the exchange of information, goals and resources. Because collaborative interactions are frequently repeated, then 'processes of institutionalisation occur: shared perceptions, participation patterns and interaction rules develop and are formalised' (Kickert et al., 1997:6). Normally collaborative interaction is considered to involve face-to-face dialogue, and this is an important feature distinguishing the processes of collaboration from some other types of participation in policy-making (Carr et al., 1998). This dialogue means there may also be potential for both mutual learning and shared decision-making, although one or both of these may not occur in practice.

According to Wood and Gray (1991:146), 'Collaboration occurs when a group of autonomous stakeholders of a problem domain engage in an interactive process, using shared rules, norms and structures, to act or decide on issues related to that domain'. Stakeholders are autonomous as they retain independent decision-making powers even when they agree to work with each other within a framework of rules or other expectations. Hence, mergers of formally independent organisations are excluded from this definition of collaboration, although stakeholders can agree to relinquish some autonomy to the collaborative alliance. Wood and Gray (1991:148) also suggest that 'Because a collaboration is directed toward an objective, the participants must intend to "decide or act". Note, however, that this definition does not imply that the intended objective must be reached for collaboration to occur; the collaboration may fail in its objective'. This means that interactions that are regular but do not have specific objectives in relation to addressing a problem will fall outside the definition. Regular meetings of members of a professional association would most likely fail the test. Wood and Gray's definition also suggests that participants must work within an agreed-upon set of norms and rules with at least the intention to develop a mutual orientation in response to an issue, perhaps to determine direction, organisation and action. Whether or not this mutual orientation emerges in practice needs to be established through empirical enquiry.