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UPGRADING TOURISTIC INITIATIVES IN ORDER TO ENHANCE REGIONAL DEVELOPMENT

Picture: The QR code as part of the tourist's overall experience when visiting a site in Piemonte-Sacra San Michele ((Italy)

Tourism as important sector for regional development

In no country economic opportunities are evenly spread over the whole territory. The reasons for this are multiple: geographical, historical, demographic. There is also an increasingly broader gap between rural areas and urban areas. However, the right to an adequate standard of living is enshrined in an International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights which is an output of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and every politician in a democracy should be committed to providing his fellow citizens with a dignified existence. In today's economies, tourism is often used as a means to provide areas with few structural employment opportunities with tools for economic development. Especially when the areas in question are attractive because of their natural resources or because of their cultural-historical background. The government finances and organizes then in the first place the disclosure of the area by building roads and infrastructure. The further economic development is often left to the private sector. And those entrepreneurs who respond to this are not always best equipped to offer high added value for a region. Indeed, they strive in the first place to provide their own family, relatives or clan with an income, without taking into account the wider regional ecosystem. As a result, the tourist offer is very fragmented and therefore not necessarily attractive for the more demanding visitor. I agree that tourism offers opportunities to social groups with less educational potential enabling them to build up a viable life thanks to hard work. But if a regional or local government coordinates initiatives with some competence, a complete region can enjoy a much higher added value, which by far exceeds the tourist aspect. This article is the result of a number of reflection moments held within the European Academy of Regions to set up a training program for regional tourism. It corroborates in its main conclusion with a study published on the blog of the World Bank: “Destinations and their stakeholders are responsible for ensuring that growth is well-managed; that benefits are maximized; and that any negative externalities are minimized. This requires a continuous process of planning and management that evolves and that can be measured over time.”[1]

3 main types of tourism.

For us there are 3 types of tourism in today's society: 1) the classic type, where we make a distinction between cultural tourism and recreational tourism or a combination of both, 2) event tourism, indicated with the acronym MICE (meetings, incentives , conventions, exhibitions), 3) educational tourism where summer schools, master classes for all kinds of skills and boot camps are eligible.

In classical tourism we make a distinction between cultural tourism and recreational tourism. Cultural tourism is based on the historical context of an area and links visits to historical buildings and sites to visits to museums in which artistic, cultural and / or historical objects are exhibited and discussed. Recreational tourism is much more spread out of focus. It can focus on pure recreation, enjoying the sun and the sea, or nature where ecotourism or rural tourism nowadays gets attention, on active recreation such as hiking or jogging in nature, or sports recreation in all sports such as skiing, sailing, surfing, horseback riding, diving. And more and more the gastronomic pleasures becomes an end in itself. People come to taste (local) dishes, taste wine or beers. People come to learn to cook. Creating recurrent cultural or sports events can be very beneficial for all parties in a region. The organisation of marathons for example become emblematic and increase the revenue for the entire city year after year: the touristic sector, the horeca sector, hotels, transportation business, the entertainment business welcome large quantities of visitors during the event’s period. Some figures: the marathons of New York attracted 50.000 participants in 2018, having to pay their participation fee on top of their hotel, meals etc. The marathon of Paris attracted 57.000 attendees, the one of Brussels 14.000. The financial benefit for a city is huge: 300 M. € for New York, 50 M € for Paris, 1,4 M € for Brussels.[2] Other events world while to mention attracting numerous tourists: the palio horse races in Siena Italy [3], the bi-annual flower carpet at the Brussels Grand’Place[4], the yearly movie festival of Cannes[5] etc.

Event tourism focuses on different aspects and different target groups. Congresses and conventions gather people with a common profession or a common goal to a certain location, but also offer them or their partners a recreational program. Trade fairs provide the latest insights in a specific field and offer people the way to find new opportunities and business partners. These come usually only for the fair, as a visitor or as exhibitor, but also have to be lodged, fed, have to hold business lunches etc. Incentives are usually purely recreational, but are organised with a very high level program. Incentive programs are usually the outcome of a commercial competition between different sales managers and reward the most successful sales people. The first aim is to spoil them in such a way that they will continue their effort in the following year. Annual meetings of large organisations also take place at annually changing locations. Here too, the useful results of the past year and the strategy of the following year are discussed in a combination with some very remarkable visits, and the organisation of large dinners or cocktails.

Educational tourism is of all times. Already in Roman times philosophers from different regions followed lessons with a greater philosopher. In the Renaissance, painters perfected their skills and inspiration by visiting Italy and its art cities. By improving the transport means such as railways and airplanes, these habits have increased exponentially this last century. Master classes with a famous musician, actor or artist, boot camps for ICT specialists, language classes with native speakers, perfection classes for ceramics, silk painting, modelling, it all is available nowadays. In this category we wish to integrate also the team building travel projects of larger companies and institutions for the benefit of their personnel. The gastronomic pleasures are nowadays even extended by the organisation of cooking courses, wine tasting courses etc.

These types of more sophisticated tourism have the advantage that they often attract a public from a higher price range willing to spend more money, putting more professions at work and generate more intense emotions and memories. And thus: more word-of-mouth advertising and more returners. However this type of more sophisticated tourism requires a systematic approach and strategy and should therefore be organized at regional level. In a next chapter I will discuss the various aspects that should be addressed when setting up each type of tourism.

Developing added value tourism: the various aspects

Every form of tourism requires investments. Some are small, others are more important, some are reserved only to consortia or to the wealthy. Cultural tourism requires important initiatives from the public authorities to restore buildings, to maintain them, to open them to the public, to make them accessible. Very striking examples can be found in the new economies in Eastern Europe such as Albania, where the entire centre of the 2000-years-old Berat, the city of the thousand windows, was renewed with government funds and grants from the Albanian-American Development foundation in 2016-17, resulting in the visit of 105,000 tourists in 2018[6]. Renovation of cultural heritage is a delicate matter. A "hard" renovation can completely negate the original character of the building. We discovered such an example in Prezë - Albania, where a site with ruins of a castle and a mosque was provided by the Turkish funds provider – the Turkish Cooperation and Coordination Agency- with a brand new modern-style minaret, which completely destroys the modesty of the area.[7]

Recreational tourism requires ski resorts, clean and accessible beaches, cycle paths, natural reserves with walking paths, clean resting places and fire protection, sailing harbours, diving facilities, riding schools etc. This often has to be done in joint consultation between public and private sector, because both have an interest in it. And all benefit from a well-functioning, high-quality catering sector, investments in comfortable and sustainable second homes etc. Restaurants with excellent chefs are to be attracted, hotels with restaurants & chefs are to be set up. But touristic cities or villages are also to be visually improved thanks to attractive new architecture, by introducing nice sculptures in parks and streets, by installing attractive pedestrian zones downtown. The Georgian port and coastal city of Batumi has become the scene of a daring approach in recent years. Whole new districts were laid out with architectural delights such as the Alphabet tower, attractive walking promenades along the beach and iconic sculptures such as the moving story of Ali and Nino.[8] (see picture)

In the case of event tourism, the investments are more extensive. A city needs a conference room, it needs one or several exhibition halls and it needs four and five star hotels in order to give an adequate answer to this strategy. In the case of sports events, a stadium is needed. Certain German cities such as Hannover acquired a well-known reputation thanks to the trade fair halls they constructed enabling them to organise the most frequented ICT-fair – CEBIT – in the world.

The investments are the lowest in the educational sector. In that case, existing premises are often used optimally during summer or winter holidays, such as schools, boarding schools, castles etc. Since 22 years, every year, 13 days of master classes and 9 concerts take place in the prestigious setting of the castle of the little town of Enghien-Belgium. During this festival, musicians, teachers and pupils of very high level and of all nationalities meet to exchange their experiences and enrich themselves musically.[9] The technical university of Delft organises since 2013 its IDE Master classes focusing on innovative technology and design and with topics in 2018 like Lean Innovation, Design Visualization and Design for the Circular Economy. They take place in the venues of the university.[10]

Planning is a second extremely important aspect in the tourism sector. Cultural excursions do not tolerate improvisation and also require competent guides. The audience of the twenty-first century went to school and is no longer interested in fairy tales and half-hearted stories! Ski classes, ski competitions, sail classes, sail competitions, surf classes, surf competitions, surf demonstrations, horseback classes, jumping competitions: all this has to be planned, organized and maintained at a high quality level. In the MICE sphere trade fair organisers specialise in trade topics, make specialised exhibitions, as well for large public (cars, construction, holiday destinations) as for business sectors (fish & fisheries, horeca, ICT, HVAC, …). In the incentive business special tours are to be organised (cultural, gastronomic, recreational), venues for meetings with local entrepreneurs have to be considered, company visits are to be organized. And in the educational tourism sector the presence of top musicians and good instruments has to be considered as well as the organisation of a final concert with the participants and the maestro. Planning requires also a strategy of the city or region in order to provide the visitors, passive and active, also with evening entertainment[11], with city entertainment [12]such as markets of all kind[13], with high quality restaurants with separate venues for groups.

What has undergone the strongest change in recent years is the marketing and communication aspect. Too often we find in tourist offices the individual folders of restaurants, B & B facilities or local events. In an era ruled nowadays by global networks such as booking.com, Trivago, Uber, with global appreciation updates, cooperation is a must. A region should offer an app that covers all aspects of the region: travel, accommodation, events, exhibitions, recreational aspects, visits to cultural sites etc. One of the most interesting developments of the last decade is the ticket reservation system for exhibitions, opera, theatre performances, etc. Because cultural tourism is not limited to viewing, the new tourists also want to participate. The picture above the article shows another interesting development: how visitors with a smart phone can systematically decipher QR codes and receive the necessary information about an exhibition or a site on their smartphone. This should also be coordinated with GPS in the car, so that one receives information about the sites that one passes by. In the MICE sector, global websites already exist and it is important for an organiser to get to them or integrate his own website in the global portal and attract the necessary attention. Fortunately, there are local specialists at every place in the world who have these kinds of capacities in their fingers.

A very important aspect is then finally the logistics. Government and business partners have a common goal here. How does one make a region accessible and attractive? Road works, good public transport, quality control over new transport initiatives such as the American Uber or the Russian Yandex or the Estonian Taxify. Walking maps such as Citymapper or Ulmon City Maps. Integration of all forms of public transport in 1 offer: funicular, buses, trams, metro, trolleys, minibuses, train, ferry services ..., walking and cycling paths in the city, in rural areas and in natural reserves. And also: good (luxury) private buses, toll boots wirelessly connected to smart phones, apps enabling drivers to reserve parking space in a street, apps based upon GPS explaining the touristic offer of the environment to drivers., such as Detour, Lonely Planet, … For the MICE, stand builders are to be added.

Strategic planning and measurement

To get the best results from the tourism efforts a city or region undertakes, all parties involved must work together, managed by the local government. The task is to make choices in which tourist category the city or region wishes to differentiate from the others. This choice is based on the nature and number of stakeholders who are represented in a city or region and on the resources available to a city to realize the necessary investments. This choice is then described in a baseline that a city adds to its name and that characterizes it. This exercise is called branding. The strategic exercise is then translated into implementation steps: which tourist products are offered, to which target audience do we focus, which communication tools do we use to acquire a reputation, how do potential visitors continue to recognize us? Finally, objectives are also to be set and these must be measurable. What is important: number of visitors, their spending in the city or region and on which items, the number of days they stayed, the way they gave feedback via social media? The measuring effort is to be a common effort between public and private sector. Apps should be set up enabling even small enterprises to contribute to the useful information gathering without too much red tape.

An interesting example of a touristic strategy is the one of the Republic of Rwanda in Africa. A small country upon the Equator, broken by a civil war and a genocide of 1 million victims in 1994, which has no natural resources. The government, lead since 2000 by president Paul Kagame developed strategies in order to improve the precarious conditions of the population. This implied not only a more developed agricultural sector and a developing agro-industry, but also a focus on the service industry. Since the country has a stable regime, it could attract foreign direct investments in selected sectors. Rwanda had to become the ICT-hub of Africa. Moreover, over the coming years Rwanda wants to attract the private banking sector and its customers. And Rwanda should also become a MICE centre. This last option required the construction of a state of the art Conference centre and the attraction of four and five stars hotels. And the president and his government stabilised the economy, reduced the inflation to less than 10% and succeeded their challenges. Nowadays, the Kigali conference centre attracts conferences in all types of business and non profit sectors. Attendees can stay in 5 five and 13 four stars hotels in the city. And they can benefit from the natural scenery the country offers in its other provinces: the Kivu lake, the Nyanza King’s palace museum, the Akagera National park, the Volcanoes National park and of course, for 2500 €, an hour’s visit to the mountain gorillas in Nyungwe park, in the south-west of the country. Rwanda promotes itself as a touristic destination nowadays on the shirts of soccer team of Arsenal and now focuses also on recreational tourism such as mountain biking from the Kivu Lake till the Nile in Uganda.

Picture: Kigali Congress center, modern reminder of the Rwandan Mwami Palace in Nyanza

Added value tourism: who are the stakeholders?

As I have mentioned before, added value tourism exceeds the purely tourist sector. That is why it is also important, in the interest of the development of a complete region, to detect which stakeholders there are and how they too can contribute to the economic disclosure of a region thanks to added value tourism. To give a complete list would bring us too far in the context of this article. That is why I indicate only very valued partners with bullet points:

· regional products (food, pottery, jewellery, knitwear, leatherwork, woodwork, artistic souvenirs, pastry & cookies, fresh fruit juices, …) made by farmers, artists, bakers, cooks

· farmers for regional ingredients (fish, meat, vegetables, specialities such as bread, truffles, foie gras, wine, rice cakes, cheeses) but also: farmers with rooms for visitors, with animals to be cuddled by children

· animation at night: cafes and bars, restaurants with traditional singing and dancing, jazz and pop clubs

· stand builders for exhibition booths

· restaurants with top chefs and others

· B&B owners, hotel –restaurant-bar owners

The combination is often attractive. For example, the famous Perlan museum in Reykjavik makes stands available for home-made handicraft. The same happens in Bergen, Norway, where the city rents the Hanza warehouses in the port for a very reasonable price to jewelery designers, clothing designers, knitwear makers, local food manufacturers, finger food restaurants etc. In the summer this extra attraction is very welcome for the thousands of visitors who visit the city and port half a day via cruise ships.

On top of these stakeholders, there are other important groups to consider. The local and regional authorities increase the attractiveness of their city or region by improving roads, biking lanes, hiking trails in natural reserves, signing inside the city and indicating explicitly and repeatedly important visiting spots such as roman or medieval ruins, waterfalls, etc. The technical colleges and universities should offer studies and training programs that would enable entrepreneurs, small and large, to make decisions with more insight and be more ambitious for their region.

Another important group that is considered too often as homogeneous, but that is not not are the visitors. Children have different needs from adults, passive visitors have other expectations than active ones. Events are often organised in cities to attract visitors who will also be tempted to shop. The Zoute Rallye in the Belgian posh coast city of Knokke attracted more than 200.000 visitors during its 2017 edition during its 4 days and more than 250.000 during its 2018 edition, with an impressive shopping result for all the shops in the city.[14] The Antwerp Zoo organises a whole year long special animation for children in its aquarium.

Tourism is growing faster than the global economy. After surpassing 1 billion international visitors in 2012, we are expecting 1.8 billion by 2030. [15]During my numerous travels I have met thrilling individual private initiatives. People are willing to roll up their sleeves when tourism opportunities arise. But people are often dependent on family to realize something. Regional development through tourism should be organized in an effective way and the government, private companies and colleges and universities have an important role to play in this. The regional governments need to bring people together, ask about their expectations and make them ambitious. They should keep the larger picture of regional development in perspective. The private companies must take initiatives that benefit their own profit but also give neighbouring SMEs the opportunity to develop. The technical colleges and universities should offer studies and training programs that enable entrepreneurs, small and large, to make decisions with more insight and be more ambitious for their region. I was recently invited by a university in the Republic of Georgia to appreciate their Tourism for bachelor students program. Georgia is a country with many possibilities but with insufficient attention to innovation and improvement of their offer. This appeared in the offered program that reflected a twentieth century vision of tourism. I reworked their entire program based on the matrix that I set out in this article. Let us hope that it will be followed.

Louis Delcart, board member European Academy of the Regions, www.ear-aer.eu

[1]

John Perrottet & Beril Benli: The impact of tourism: How can we all do this better?, in The World Bank Blog, 18/2/2016.

[2] 19.30 h news of Belgian television (RTBF) of 28/10/2018

[3] Palio di Siena in Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palio_di_Siena

[4] Flower Carpet: an ephemeral show on the world’s most beautiful central square! In http://www.flowercarpet.brussels/. Over 500.000 flowers assembled.

[5] Cannes Film Festival in Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cannes_Film_Festival

[6] figures provided by the president of the region of Berat during our visit on 25-10-2018. See also Entrepreneurship Berat in: Website Albanian-American Development Foundation, http://www.aadf.org/project/business-improvement-districts/berat/

[7] Inauguration of Preze Castle Mosque in Albania, In: Website TIKA, Turkish Cooperation and Coordination Agency, 7-10-2016 http://www.tika.gov.tr/en/gallery/inauguration_of_preze_castle_in_albania-25763 & Prezë Castle in Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prez%C3%AB_Castle

[8] Ali and Nino, A literally moving statue of stacked metal giants just continually trying (and failing) to find love in: Website Atlas Obscura, https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/ali-and-nino

[9] Rencontres Musicales Internationales d'Enghien in : Website Wallonie Belgique Tourisme, http://walloniebelgiquetourisme.be/fr-be/content/rencontres-musicales-internationales-denghien

[10] In 2013, they launched the first series of IDE Master Classes. This successful first series was followed by 4 equally inspiring series. All the Master Classes in each series have been well attended and evaluated extremely positively. In total, about 300 different participants from more than 180 companies have attended the four series. The level of interest expressed by participants in new topics has given us more than enough reasons for hosting this sixth series, starting in March 2018. In: IDE Master Classes in: website TU Delft, https://www.tudelft.nl/en/ide/education/ide-master-classes/

[11] We went wining and dining in halls were food was served for hundreds of people assisting to a local –popular dances- show in Tbilisi, Georgia, ,in Shanghai, China and in Antalya, Turkey and we assisted to small very attractive live jazz performances in a small jazz club in Saint-Petersburg. Guess what we most liked?

[12] Opera, concerts, jazz performances, escape rooms, life music in bars and restaurants, street animation, theater, …

[13] We refer hereby not only to food markets such as in the Ramblas in Barcelona, but also to artistic markets such as alongside the river Saône in Lyon, regional products’ markets such as alongside the river Gironde in Bordeaux, etc.

[14] Junior Verbeeke: Zoute Grand Prix in Knokke-Heist genomineerd voor award in London (Zoute Grand Prix in Knokke-Heist nominated for award in London), in De Standaard, 2 oktober 2018

[15] John Perrottet & Beril Benli: The impact of tourism: How can we all do this better?, in The World Bank Blog, 18/2/2016.

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