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significance contains historic and/or artistic importance.
There is a relatively large number of
local and regional sites that do not attract the
attention of many secular tourists; this is usually
the case when there are no buildings of architectural
or artistic value present. The largest and best
known of such shrines in Europe include San
Sebastian de Garabandal in northern Spain and
San Damiano in the Po valley in Italy.
placelessness
BORIS VUKONIC Â ,CROATIA
Placelessness refers to the absence of distinguishing
characteristics of places rendering them nonspecific,
and thus non-memorable, which may lead
to a disorientation of those experiencing them. It
exists particularly in locations designed to handle
efficiently large numbers of people in a standardised
manner, such as airport terminals and large
hotels, and hence is especially prevalent in mass
tourism.
planning
G.J. ASHWORTH, THE NETHERLANDS
Planning is a process of determining appropriate
future action through a sequence of choices or
organising the future to achieve certain objectives.
Planning occurs at a wide variety of scales from
individuals making plans for their vacations, to
destination areas plotting future strategies to
achieve community goals, to states charting
futures for the tourism industry, and to international
organisations preparing their own future
activities and assisting countries and others to look
ahead and prepare the way for desirable change.
Mostly it is used in the context of forms of urban
and regional planning from local to national levels.
Planning can have many different focuses. It can
have an economic, social or more comprehensive
orientation, it can be primarily concerned with
land uses or infrastructure such as transportation
facilities, electricity, water supply and waste
disposal, it may focus upon parks and protected
areas or the manpower required by an economic
planning 439
sector, it can be directed specifically at tourism or it
can view it as part of a broader set of activities. In
addition to the planning of tourism as a whole,
there is a substantial literature which is directed at
its particular aspects such as transportation, parks
and protected areas, conventions and festivals.
Planning has come to mean more than the
preparation of static planning documents with
increasing attention being paid to the processes by
which decisions concerning possible desirable
futures are made. Thus, there has been growing
concern to complement the roles of experts with
local inputs gained through public participation
and recognition that, although theoretically
desirable, it is not possible to be truly comprehensive
and that flexible, incremental approaches
provide more scope for adjusting to changing
circumstances and taking advantage of opportunities.
Tourism planning, like planning itself, has
evolved over the years. Getz �1991) has identified
five tourism planning traditions, each with its own
associated concepts, methods and biases. The first,
boosterism, is little more than the promotion of
development and thus is not really planning at
all. The second tradition views tourism as an
industry, analogous to other ones, and has a
predominantly economic focus with an emphasis
on development and marketing. The third
stresses the spatial aspects of tourism and physical
resource planning based upon careful resource
analysis and notions of accessibility. Community
planning requires that such places should
take control of the planning process, set their own
goals and plan accordingly, using concepts like
community planning and social carrying
capacity. The fifth tradition, an integrated and
systematic approach, suggests that goals, policies
and strategies should be based upon a fuller
understanding of how the tourism system works.
In developing countries, although there has
been an increase in the number of jurisdictions
incorporating a tourism component into more
general plans, this has often been based primarily
on control of development through building codes,
zoning systems, environmental impact assessment
and the like which are not specific to tourism.
Further, there has been a recent trend to turn more
authority and responsibility over to the private