Tosun Timothy

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increasing the tangibility of an intangible tourism product and improving tourist satisfaction by creating a reasonable consensus between tourism and the host community, which may motivate local people to be more hospitable. In other words, participation in tourism planning may create a sense of ownership among residents - that it was their own decision to develop tourism in its present form. Public involvement may also be used to maintain a unique lifestyle, fulfil residents' aspirations, and prevent alteration of destination qualities to suit tourist expectations. Thus, visitor satisfaction will increase as they seek places that are unique and different from their own communities. In brief, this discussion suggests that building mutually desirable and beneficial relationships through participatory development may increase satisfaction of both hosts and guests during their temporary encounter. Proposition 4: Community participation helps tourism professionals design better tourism plans. It has been noted that the tendency of professional self-interests to produce bureaucracy is by now a setpiece of sociology. (Tillotson, 1994, p. 512) Thus, reordering priorities within the planning and economic development professions may be necessary. Planning for people is now old fashioned, while planning with and by people is in style (Robinson & Shaw, 1991). Public participation provides additional local insight for architects, planners, and administrators directly involved in development projects. Low-income groups and other traditionally marginalised groups in society can give their middle and upper class counterparts new insights. This is not an easy task, for after years of technical training, the planning specialist sometimes loses his/her capacity to empathise with the viewpoints of other social classes. Professional training of elite specialists commonly engenders an attitude of knowing best, but, by failing to involve the ordinary people, these developers impose external solutions and foster paternalism; they also frequently make mistakes that are monumentally costly and wasteful. (Midgley, 1987, p. 10) Thus, people's participation might rectify planning errors by making it possible for clients to explain to technicians-managers what will work and what will not in local conditions. It is a wise listener who takes these points seriously and evaluates plans and programs accordingly (Boaden e t a l., 1982). What an Australian Aboriginal woman said is relevant to the issue: If you have come to help me; You can go home again; But if you see my struggle; as part of your own survival; Then perhaps we can work together. (ANGOC, 1989, p. 4, quoted in Colchester, 1994, p. 69) Since the emergence of tourism as an economic phenomenon in many developing countries, tourism developers have pushed the process to maximise economic benefits by attracting the highest possible numbers of visitors and building tourism infrastructure (Tosun, 2001). Particularly in developing countries, tourism plans have been prepared by central governments as though local communities do not exist, resulting in a missing, but critical, ingredient (Timothy, 1999; Timothy & White, 1999; Tosun, 2000). This may be a result of the fact that tourism planners are generally persons with qualifications in urban and regional planning, urban design, or landscape architecture who have evolved a specialisation in tourism and resort planning through experience. (Inskeep, 1988, p. 370) Inskeep (1988, p. 370) states that The planners or the government should involve the residents in the decision making process of developing tourism and give them sufficient opportunities to receive its benefits through employment at all levels, easy access to tourist facilities and attractions, and equity ownership of facilities and services... Planners should develop tourism gradually so that residents have sufficient time to understand and adapt to it, and the scale of tourism should remain at a level that allows the society to cope with it. Grassroots participation as a catalyst instrument builds a relationship among planners, decision makers and local communities. It creates opportunities for tourism professionals to go beyond traditional bureaucratic paternalism, wherein agencies and technocrats believe they understand the desires of community members, and they alone know what is best for destination residents. On the other hand, tourism professionals can use community views generated through empowering activities as input for tourism plans and as a base to persuade decision-makers to implement participatory tourism development. The above argument suggests that central to this communitydriven tourism planning is an explicit recognition that experts cannot judge the perceptions, preferences or priorities of host communities. (Pearce, Moscardo & Ross, 1996, pp. 10-11) THE JOURNAL OF TOURISM STUDIES Vol. 14, No. 2, DEC. ‘03 7
A present-oriented mentality makes it difficult for tourism professionals to project beyond current needs and problems. Hence, public participation may generate invaluable input for planners to prepare a better development plan for sustainable tourism development. Proposition 5: Public participation contributes to a fair distribution of costs and benefits among community members. Tourism development generates social, cultural, economic and environmental costs and benefits. However, these have not been distributed fairly among stakeholders because of the disconnection between local people, tourism, and power structures among interest groups. Eadington and Smith (1992) argued that the current style of tourism development has already created 'winners' and 'losers' among local people. Furthermore, many of the 'winners' in third world resort communities are outsiders who may be viewed as exploiters of the native population and rapists of the land. There may be, as the International Institute of Tourism Studies (1991, p. 9) reported, a need to recognise that tourism must benefit the local community and that there must be broad-based participation in tourism development decisions at the community level. Several scholars have recognised that local residents have received limited and unequal benefits from tourism although they must live with its negative consequences (e.g., Brohman, 1996; Timothy, 1999; Tosun, 2001; Tsartas, 1992). Contributing to this situation, tourism entrepreneurs within a community may not actually be part of that community. They may be 'off-comers', strangers who import qualities which do not and cannot stem from the group itself, or they may be in some ways marginal, perhaps better equipped to profit from tourist enterprises. (Taylor, 1995, p. 488) In some destinations, the environmental and socio-cultural costs of tourism development outweigh its economic benefits. The following statement provides evidence in this regard. Having ruined their own environment, having either used up or destroyed all that is natural people from the advanced consumer societies are compelled to look for natural wildlife, cleaner air, lush greenery and golden beaches elsewhere. In others words, they look for other environments to consume. Thus armed with their bags, tourists proceed to consume the environment in countries of the Third World - the last unspoiled corner of earth. (Hong, 1985, p. 12, quoted in Brohman, 1996, p. 58-59). We don't want tourism. We don't want you. We don't want to be degraded as servants and dancers. This is cultural prostitution. I don't want to see a single one of you in Hawaii. There are no innocent tourists. (Pfafflin, 1987, p. 577) This quote and the previous one show that local people in many tourist destinations perceive tourism negatively. Moreover, often international tourists are seen as exploitative, lavish, and hedonic foreigners who lack crosscultural understanding and communication skills (Din, 1989; Dogan, 1989). Tourism development diversifies previously homogeneous communities, and these communities exhibit different responses to the growth of the industry (Dogan, 1989). Indeed, tourism not only creates heterogeneous communities, it also changes power structures in tourist destinations commonly at the expense of 8 THE JOURNAL OF TOURISM STUDIES Vol. 14, No. 2, DEC. ‘03 indigenous people who may be excluded from tourism development and decision making altogether. In this context, Hall and Jenkins (1995, p. 77) argue that awareness of the political dimensions of tourism, and more particularly the uneven allocation of power in a society or a community, should caution us about the representativeness of outcomes of tourism planning exercises. In some countries, particularly at the beginnings of tourism development, the domain of bargaining quickly becomes focused narrowly upon certain material reciprocities. Entrepreneurs seek an exaction fee for public space, an abatement of property tax and other development incentives. The rounds of negotiation continue without regard for long-term consequences: distributional inequities and externalities. For example, Tosun (2001) claims that the Turkish tourism industry received generous incentives during the 1980s, which may be partly due to pressures by private entrepreneurs on decision-makers, which has resulted in inequalities in the early 2000s. In many ways, tourism development has created a get rich mentality. The end product may be that local people increasingly come to feel alienated, and consider that tourists’ needs are catered to ahead of local needs, and that infrastructure and facilities are not available to locals (D'Amore, 1983). These arguments suggest that many tourist destinations need an alternative approach to tourism development, which may spread both its costs and benefits equitably and which would be more sensitive to its sociocultural impacts. Moreover, a large proportion of local people should benefit from tourism rather than merely bearing its residual burdens. Community-
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Tosun Timothy

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