Lecturer’s Notes and Instructions on

Sustainable Urban Tourism

Tourism offers art cities huge opportunities for social and economic
growth. However, these smaller and often vulnerable cities should
be using these potentials ‘wisely’. Tourism development in art cities
generates both huge benefits and important costs. If the use of
these assets is simply left to the forces of the market, these costs
can become unbearable and in some cases the net result rather
damages the local economy and society at large than sustain them.
In short, art cities ought to find a sensible balance between
utilization and conservation. This can only be guaranteed leaving the
traditional attitude of improvisation and embrace an explicit policy
that ensures tourism development in cities to be truly maximizing
benefits and minimizing costs. The second module aims at
explaining how the concept of sustainable tourism development
should become a powerful alternative paradigm to simply leaving
tourism development to improvisation and market forces

CONTENT

Lecture Overview

It is evident from the analysis developed in the first lesson of this course, that the market alone and,
hence, a tourism policy that is merely based on improvisation do not guaranty an optimal allocation
of tourism resources. The heritage in cities is absolutely unique and non-reproducible and therefore
virtually priceless. Moreover, these resources are public goods and the absence of some kind of a
market price make it that visitors do not perceive any scarcity and are not paying the full cost of their
behaviour. In fact, the majority of these costs are often spread over the local society. An alternative
paradigm to the market that allows destination to make an optimal use of their resources is therefore
urgently needed. This has been found in the concept of sustainable tourism development.

Sustainability has become a central issue in much of today's tourism development literature.
However, the practical application of the concept of sustainable tourism development has
traditionally been limited to non-urban or rural areas. Only recently has it been fully recognised that it
can be applied as well to urban environments in general and to historical settlements of different
dimensions in particular. But what is actually meant with sustainable tourism development?

Several authors have stated that tourism permanently changes a local society subject to tourism
flows and that sustainability is very much connected with such changes or, more precisely, with
'acceptable' change. But not only does the local society continuously undergo modifications, tourism
in the destination itself tends to change over time. The development process of any tourist location
may be represented cyclically. This "life cycle theory" of tourist destinations is an elaboration of the
product life cycle used by business economists to describe the fluctuations in the sales volume of a
product. Instead of the quantity of products sold, the life cycle theory of tourist locations uses the
number of visitors as the indicator.

The life cycle theory of tourist locations tells us that, in the absence of drastic external interventions,
the number of visitors changes cyclically. Initially, the locality that stimulates tourism experiences a
very slow rise in the number of visitors. In the second stage, tourism is booming, while in the third
stage growth stagnates and turns into decline (the fourth stage). Not only has the volume of the
visitor flow changed over the cycle, but also its composition (i.e. the mix of tourists and
excursionists). Since different types of visitors generate different positive and negative impacts,
costs and benefits vary over the different stages of the cycle. Growth in tourism demand will
positively affect income and employment levels of a relevant part of the population. At the same
time, increasing numbers of visitors will generate negative effects, or 'costs' borne by the physical
and cultural environment, the local population and the visitors themselves.

By comparing benefits and costs in each heritage city, it is possible to determine whether tourist
flows are either insufficiently voluminous or excessive. In reality, the assessment of the benefits and
the costs of tourism is difficult because there are several 'parties' involved, which perceive benefits
and costs in a different manner. The concept of sustainability and the life-cycle of the tourist
destination are closely related. If tourism development gets stuck in the initial stage, investments are
unable to trigger the social and economic change desired. There are too few visitors, and the
opportunities that tourism offers are not fully used. Tourism is costing the destination money. If
growth in tourism demand is such that the quality and accessibility of attractions are compromised,
the society and eventually even tourism suffer and change is no longer acceptable. Then, tourism
demand has become excessive, and, instead of delivering growth, it threatens the local society's
continuity.

Tourism management strategies for cities that face the problem of how to overcome the minimum
limit to sustainability have been described in Law (1993) and Van den Berg, Van der Borg and Van
der Meer (1995). In the case of heritage cities, the maximum limit to tourism development, very
much related to what is more generally known as the carrying capacity, that is the most relevant.
Developing tourism in a sustainable manner means using the scarce resources a destination
possesses in an optimal manner for tourism purposes, safeguarding not only the interests of today's
tourists and the tourism industry, but also of tomorrow's. An optimal use of these resources implies
that the net impact of tourism development for the local society is being maximised over the different
stages of tourism development.

Using Butler's life-cycle model, it can be shown that a development process of the destination
contains both sustainable and not sustainable stages. Typically, the first stage of tourism is hardly
profitable: investment costs are huge and benefits meager. Therefore, developing tourism only
makes sense if one may expect that after having invested in attractions and facilities the number of
visitors will rise sufficiently. The saturation stage tends to generate a net loss for the local society:
benefits no longer compensate for negative externalities, such as congestion and pollution. In
general, negative externalities appear when a limit to development has been surpassed. As already
said, the limit to tourism development is called the tourist carrying capacity that is the maximum
number of visitors a destination can host. Notwithstanding the criticism to which the carrying
capacity as a planning instrument has frequently been exposed, it is very difficult to deny that an
upper limit to tourism development actually exists; in fact, the concept has proven its value for visitor
management in Venice.

Residents are an important part of the tourism system around a destination. They form an important
ingredient of the "hospitality" of a destination. The reaction of the inhabitants of a tourism city to
tourism in general, and to tourists and excursionists in particular, determines the social impact of
tourism on the local society and thus the social-anthropological carrying capacity of the destination.
The problem of determining the social-economic carrying capacity for the centre of Venice has often
been formalised by translating the conflict between tourism and other functions into a fuzzy linear
programming model that maximises the income from tourism under capacity restrictions. These
restrictions take into account, for example, the availability of accommodation, catering facilities,
parking facilities, intra-urban transportation, waste disposal services and the space available in Saint
Mark's Cathedral.

The philosophy of the linear programming model is very close to the sustainability approach, namely
that of the quest for the optimal use of resources. Until now, the model has been applied with
success to different mature tourist resorts, such as Cambridge (urban environment), Crete, Capri
and Vis (islands) and Cortina d'Ampezzo (mountain resort). In the case of Venice, the historical
settlement in 1988 could support about 25,000 visitors in one day, of which about 15,000 tourists
(60% of tourism demand) and 11,000 excursionists (the remaining 40% of the total number of
visitors). Among the active restrictions were: the number of beds (the model tends to fill Venice first
of all with tourists and then starts to look whether there is still space available for excursionists); the
availability of local water transport (which determines the number of excursionists); and, relaxing this
restriction, Saint Mark's Cathedral. Although the model lacked an explicit temporal dimension, its
results were of great interest for visitor management. It taught the city first of all that the 'optimal'
visitor mix differs from the measured one. In fact, instead of a weight of 60%, tourists represented
slightly more than 20% of the actual total tourism demand. Secondly, one may conclude that given
these findings the overall pressure from tourism seemed close to being -at least in theory-
compatible with the total stress the social-economic texture of the city is able to support. In the
absence of fluctuations in demand, the total carrying capacity of Venice is slightly less than 10
million visitors, With respect to a few years ago, tourism demand is now structurally conflicting with
the most restrictive dimension of the carrying capacity.

Since 1991, the carrying capacity of Venice has been steadily expanding, mainly because of a
substantial increase in the number of tourist beds and of investments in a number of critical
subsystems, in particular local public transport and parking space. Moreover, an analysis of the
distribution of demand over the year shows that demand continues to be concentrated at weekends
and in the spring, autumn and particularly summer months. Two-thirds of the year, the number of
visitors easily surpasses the social-economic carrying capacity. Thus, at present, sustainability of
tourism development in Venice depends on one hand on the mix of the visitor flow and on the other
on the seasonal fluctuations in tourism demand. In effect, the number of excursionists should be
reduced, while hat of tourists enhanced. At the same time, peaks in demand need to be smoothed
out and the low season utilized more intensively. Furthermore, a better distribution of demand over
space would be welcomed. These then become the two priorities of the visitor management strategy
of Venice and of any other heritage city and site that is confronted with excess tourism demand
during peak seasons. In the next module we will try to explain how to manage tourism in such a way
as to make or keep tourism development sustainable in the way that was explained before.

References

Ashworth, G. Heritage, Tourism and Sustainability: a Canadian Case. Proceedings of the expert
meeting on 'Sustainability in Tourism and Leisure', Department of Leisure Studies, Tilburg
University, 1994

Berg, L. van den, Van der Borg, J. and Van der Meer, J. Urban Tourism. Aldershot Avebury, 1995

Borg, J. van der Tourism and Urban Development. Amsterdam: Thesis Publishers, 1991

Borg, J. van der Demand for City Tourism in Europe. Tourism Management 15 (1), 66-69, 1994

Borg, J. van der. Tourism in Venice or How to deal with Success. In Managing Tourism in Cities,
Tyler, D. Guerrier, Y. and Robertson, M. (editors) Wiley and Sons, London, 1998

Borg, J. van der and Russo, P. La Gestione di un Heritage Site in Turismo: Una Tappa per la
Ricerca, Collantoni M. (editor) Patron Editore, Bologna, 1999

Borg, J. van der Tourism Management and Carrying Capacity in Heritage Cities in Challenges of
Tourism Carrying Capacity Assessment, H. Coccosis and Alexandra Mexa (eds) Ashgate, Avebury,
2004

Butler, R. W. The Concept of a Tourist Area Cycle Evolution: Implications for the Management of
Resources. Canadian Geographer 24 (1), 5-12, 1980

Canestrelli, E. and Costa, P. Tourist Carrying Capacity: a Fuzzy Approach. Annals of Tourism
Research 18 (2), 295-311, 1991

Coccosis, H. and Nijkamp, P. (editors) Planning for our Cultural Heritage, Aldershot, Avebury, 1995

Costa, P. and Van der Borg, J. Un Modello Lineare per la Programmazione del Turismo. CoSES
Informazioni 32/33, 1988

Costa, P. and Van der Borg, J. The Management of Tourism in Cities of Art. Vrije Tijd en
Samenleving 10 (2/3), 45-57, 1992

Ermolli, B. and Guidotti, B. Un’Ipotesi Progettuale per il Monitoraggio e il Governo dei Flussi Turistici
a Venezia. Rivista Veneta, 38, 103-114, 199

Glasson, J., Godfrey, K. and Goodey Approaches to Carrying Capacity and Visitor Management.
Aldershot: Avebury, 1995 Law, C. M. Urban Tourism. London: Mansell, 1993

Lindberg, K., McCool, S. and Stanley, G. Rethinking Carrying Capacity. Annals of Tourism Research
24 (2), 461-465, 1997

Mill, R. C. and Morrison, A.M. The Tourism System. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall, 1985

Russo, A.P., Boniface P., and Shoval N. Tourism Management in Heritage Cities. Annals of Tourism
Research 28(3), 824-826, 2001

Russo A.P. Crowding, Carrying Capacity and the TALC Model. In The Tourist Area Life Cycle:
Conceptual And Theoretical Issues, ed. by R. Butler. Channel View Publications, Clevedon, 2004

Wall, G. Change, Impact and Opportunities: Turning Victims into Victors. Proceedings of the expert
meeting on 'Sustainability in Tourism and Leisure', Department of Leisure Studies, Tilburg
University, 1994

Lecture’s Profile

Prof. Dr. Jan van der Borg is visiting professor Tourism Management at the KU Leuven (Division of
Geography and Tourism, Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences) and professor in
Tourism Economics at the University Ca'Foscari of Venice (Department of Economics). He directs
both the master in tourism of the KU Leuven as well as the master in intercultural development of
tourism systems of the University of Venice. He is advisor to Visit Flanders and chairs the executive
board of EURICUR. He obtained his MSc in Regional Economics and PhD in Economics at the
Erasmus University Rotterdam. His research focuses on the sustainability of tourism in general and
on the impact of tourism for local and regional economies in particular. Special attention in his
research has been paid, in particular when he was advising UNESCO and the Council of Europe, to
sustainable tourism development in heritage cities. He has conducted numerous European projects
addressing different challenging issues, among which the importance of tourism routes for
destinations, the demand for human capital by tourism firms, the material and immaterial factors that
determine the attractiveness of European regions, the role of innovation in tourism, and, more
recently, the sustainability of tourism development in coastal areas. Many of the insights that were
obtained through these project and his research have been implemented by local, regional en
national governments that asked him to advise them on issues regarding destination management
and tourism policy.

ABOUT THE INSTITUTE

The Institute for Housing and Urban Development Studies (IHS) is an international centre of
excellence of the School of Economics (ESE) and the Faculty of Social Sciences (FSS) of the
Erasmus University Rotterdam, The Netherlands, operating on a global scale by offering post-
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The SUSTAIN project aims to improve the quality of tertiary education in Sustainable
Urban Development in Europe and partner universities in Asia; develop standardized
education modules related to SUD and furthermore enriching them with international
perspectives and academic and vocational skills and competencies; promote
collaboration and international cooperation between European and Asian Higher
Education Institutions in SUD but also collaboration and sharing between Erasmus
Mundus programmes; establish links and bridge European Higher Education and
practice in SUD; increase the visibility and access to European Higher Education in
Asia in the field of SUD, attracting prospective Asian and international students.

The SUSTAIN project is co-ordinated by the Institute for Housing and Urban
Development Studies (IHS) with the Dutch Research Institute for Transitions, the
Netherlands, the Rotterdam School of Management, the Netherlands, Darmstadt
University of Technology, Germany; National Technical University of Athens, Greece;
European Academy of Bolzano, Italy; Ca' Foscari University of Venice, Italy; Gadjah
Mada University, Indonesia; Centre for Environmental Planning and Technology,
India; Beijing University of Civil Engineering and Architecture, China; and
International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives, Germany.

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