Managing Coastal Tourism Resorts: A Global Perspective

by Sheela Agarwal (Editor), Gareth Shaw (Editor)

Overview

The vast majority of existing academic research of coastal tourism resort management has been undertaken in northern and southern Europe at the expense of a wider global consideration. This book aims to address this deficit and develop a global perspective on the management issues facing coastal resorts. By drawing on examples, it incorporates a detailed analysis of a range of economic, socio-cultural, political and environmental issues which are being experienced, to differing extents, by coastal tourism resorts which are at different life-cycle stages of development. The major management themes highlighted include the processes of restructuring, attempts to develop sustainable agendas and environmental issues of developing resorts in sensitive areas. Written by key experts, this book provides a critical assessment of the key management issues facing coastal tourism resorts globally. In doing so, it represents more than a mere amalgamation of existing literature as it aims to advance conceptual understanding of resort evolution and change.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781845413590
Publisher:	Channel View Publications
Publication date:	10/19/2007
Series:	Aspects of Tourism , #34
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	288
File size:	5 MB

About the Author

Sheela Agarwal is current Senior Lecturer in Tourism Management at the University of Plymouth. She is a leading expert on coastal resorts and has published widely on resorts and, more especially, on the problems facing English seaside resorts, including social exclusion, and on resort restructuring.

Gareth Shaw is currently Professor of Retail and Tourism Management at the University of Exeter. He has published a number of key texts in tourism including; Critical Issues in Tourism (Blackwells 2002) and Tourism and Tourism Spaces (Sage 2004).

Sheela Agarwal is Professor in Tourism Management at the University of Plymouth, UK. Her research interests include socio-economic dynamics of seaside resorts, deprivation and disadvantage, heritage identities and dissonance, persuasion and crime prevention. 

Gareth Shaw is Professor in Retail and Tourism Management at the University of Exeter, UK. His current research interests include innovation and behaviour change, tourism and wellbeing, and ecosystems. 

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Managing Coastal Tourism Resorts

A Global Perspective

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By Sheela Agarwal, Gareth Shaw

Multilingual Matters

Copyright © 2007 Sheela Agarwal and Gareth Shaw and the authors of individual chapters
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-84541-359-0

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CHAPTER 1

Introduction: The Development and Management of Coastal Resorts: A Global Perspective

GARETH SHAW and SHEELA AGARWAL

Introduction: The Coastal Resort a Neglected Tourism Environment

Despite the fact that coastal resorts are still the main tourism destinations for many holidaymakers, academic interest in such environments has been limited compared with other forms of tourism. Certainly, within the tourism literature, with the exception of a handful of studies that have focused on specific coastal resorts (Agarwal, 1999, 2002; Gale, 2005; Pollard & Rodriguez, 1993; Priestley & Mundet, 1998; Shaw & Williams, 1997a; Smith, 2004), these environments have either been neglected, subsumed within analyses of coastal tourism regions (Coccossis & Parpairis, 1996; Goytia Prat, 1996; Jordon, 2001; Knowles & Curtis, 1999; Twining-Ward & Baum, 1998; Zanetto & Soriani, 1996) or viewed in relatively narrow economic and historical perspectives (Beatty & Fothergill, 2004; Clegg & Essex, 2000; Soane, 1992; Tunstall & Penning-Roswell, 1998; Urry, 2002; Walton, 1997, 2000). For example, with regards to the latter, within the British context, seaside resorts have been seen as old forms of tourism, catering for a Fordist form of consumption based around mass tourism. Indeed, Urry's (2002) discourse on the decline of the British resort epitomises such views, claiming seaside resorts have not shared in the growth of tourism. More tellingly, he argues that 'seaside resorts have also become less distinct because of the de-industrialisation of many towns and cities' (Urry, 2002: 36). This has occurred in contrast to other environments, which have become new leisure spaces, re-fixing the tourist gaze so that resorts 'are no longer extraordinary' (p. 36). In part however, such ideas are contested by Walton (2000: 196), who argues that instead of discussing resort decline, 'we should be trying to explain the British seaside's survival'.

Part of the literature on coastal resorts is therefore concerned with the failure or decline of such environments. This in turn is also often linked with the so-called Butler life-cycle or resort life-cycle model (Butler, 1980; see Agarwal (2002) for a recent review and Butler (2005) for a much broader perspective). In this context, the resort is often viewed almost as an attachment to the mechanisms of the model in its different variations. Often what such studies have exposed is how little is known in detail about the functioning of coastal resorts due to inadequate levels of information at the resort level (Agarwal, 2005; Cooper, 1990; Prideaux, 2000; Shaw & Williams, 2002). In contrast, early tourism studies gave much more emphasis to coastal resorts, focussing especially on their layout and morphology, resulting in a range of structural models (see Pearce, 1995 for a review). Such representations however have focused mainly on physical features and land use patterns, neglecting the sociocultural aspects of coastal resorts or indeed details of development processes.

Based on the existing literature, our contention is that coastal resorts have received somewhat inadequate attention and have largely been neglected, relative to other tourism destinations. To date, surprisingly few books have been published that focus on coastal tourism resorts and consequently there has been little critical assessment of their development and management. Moreover, the majority of academic research undertaken in this area has very largely been completed within Northern and Southern Europe, at the expense of a wider global consideration. Given this lacuna, our aim is to readdress the balance by providing a global perspective on aspects of coastal resort development and management. In this chapter, we start by considering the growth and diffusion of the coastal resort, along with the development of international competition and the resort as a global tourism product, before going on to outline possible management issues and the organisation of this book.

The Development and Diffusion of the Coastal Resort: The Growth of International Competition

The historiography of the coastal resort has been relatively well researched despite the claims of Walton (2000). Lencek and Bosker (1998) have provided a general perspective on the development of the coastal resort, whilst Shaw and Williams (2004) and Gale (2005) have set such growth within a more socioeconomic framework. According to Walton (2000), the origins of coastal resorts may be traced back to Britain, when during the latter part of the 18th century, more organised and fashionable sea-bathing developed in England, thereby marking the institutionalisation of the beach. The creation of distinctive coastal resorts centred around the royal patronage given to Brighton on the south coast of England was confirmed by the completion of the Royal Pavilion in 1820 (Gilbert, 1954). This signalled a process of the 'architecturalisation' of the seaside (Lencek & Bosker, 1998: 90), creating new public leisure spaces including the promenade.

Despite Walton's (2000) claims that British coastal resorts were a 'cultural export', in the absence of concrete evidence, combined with the proliferation of inland spas across Continental Europe, it seems likely that the ideas behind the coastal resort diffused rapidly across Northern Europe at similar times. This resulted in the creation of a range of English resorts and, equally importantly, numerous Continental equivalents. Resorts began to appear on the French Channel coast and into what became Belgium and the Netherlands by the late 18th century. By the early 19th century, coastal resorts were developing in Normandy and Southwest France, along the North German coast and in parts of Scandinavia. The early 19th century also witnessed the creation of resorts in North America, notably along Florida's Gold Coast (for example, Miami and Fort Lauderdale) and in New Jersey, with Newport (Rhode Island) and Cape May in New Jersey catering for the wealthier classes (Lewis, 1980). Later, in the mid-19th century, seaside resorts began to be developed on the Spanish Atlantic coast and along the French and Italian Riviera; Rimini and Ostia were among several Italian coastal resorts that developed during this period, along with an increasing German and Austrian presence. By the end of the 19th century, coastal resorts were being created along the Adriatic coastline and in parts of the colonies, especially on South Africa's Western Cape (for example, Simonstown, St. James and Mulzenberg) and on the coast of Queensland in Australia. In Sydney, for example, the development of a new pier at Coogee Beach in the 1920s epitomises the Victorian seaside era (Walton, 2000). It was also during this time that coastal resorts developed in Latin America and the Caribbean, with the creation of Costa Rica's San Jose, the Dominican Republic's Puerto Plata and Argentina's Mar del Plata.

The transformation of coastal resorts from the preserves of the wealthy to mass holiday centres took place in the second part of the 19th century and continued into the early 20th century. This democratisation of leisure travel and holidaymaking, according to Walton (2000), stemmed from aspects of industrialisation along with the creation of 'new modes by which pleasure was organised and structured' (Urry, 2002: 17). Across Northern and Southern Europe and North America, a combination of factors helped transform these resorts into centres of mass pleasure. Such factors as improved access, via rail travel, improvements in social access to leisure time and the recognition of new investment opportunities in creating these coastal resorts, produced a series of inter-related movements (Walton, 1983). The trends are summed up by Lencek and Bosker (1998: 115), who claimed that coastal resorts were 'children of cities'.

The creation of such centres of mass pleasure also involved the construction of new forms of 'high' and 'low' entertainment (Urry, 2002), including theatres and opera houses, Punch and Judy shows, minstrel shows, end-of-pier shows, beach entertainers and military and German 'oompah' bands (Walton, 2000). At Coney Island near New York for example, between 1897 and 1904, three large-scale amusement parks were built at a cost of $5 million (Snow & Wright, 1976). According to Lewis (1980: 48), 'this was the "New Coney Island" with lavish display and family entertainment', the aim of which 'was to manufacture a carnival spirit and offer fast-moving elaborated children's play' (the words of Thompson in 1908, the developer of Luna Park quoted in Lewis, 1980). Similar features were developed, albeit on a smaller scale, in many European resorts, reaching a larger scale in Blackpool in Northwest England, Southend-on-Sea in Southeast England and Berck in Southwest France, with the development of 'pleasure palaces' (Walton, 2000).

Coastal resorts also took different pathways to development seeking, to some degree, differing segments of the holiday market, or what Walton (2000) terms social tone. In Britain, such variations in social tone reflected the relationships between patterns of land ownership and attractive scenery (Perkin, 1976; Travis, 1992; Urry, 2002). This produced a complex hierarchy of coastal resorts that by the 20th century 'satisfied a wide range of aesthetic preferences ... and catered for almost a complete cross section of society' (Walton, 2000: 27). Within North America such differences of social tone were also very visible as a 'world of difference separated the beach experience of urban workers from that of the wealthy entrepreneur' (Lencek & Bosker, 1998: 149). Thus, the very wealthy visited resorts such as Newport and Rhode Island, whilst places such as Atlantic City, initially created for the wealthier people of Philadelphia, was, by the late 19th century, appealing to a more classless market (Towner, 1996). Within Continental Europe, meanwhile, the casino and the grand hotel began to redefine the resorts for the wealthier classes, especially along the French Riviera. Nice and Cannes, along with other Riviera resorts, very largely designed themselves after high-class spa towns such as Vichy and Aix-les-Bains (Towner, 1996). In the case of Nice, development was rapid as visitor numbers grew from just 5000 in 1861 to 150,000 by 1914 (Rudney, 1980). More generally, Towner (1996) has attempted to draw together the early development of resorts in Germany, France, Spain and America, providing one of the few comparative studies. This gives some limited perspectives and shows that across these cultures, the variations in the 'social tone' of resorts or resort type was a common feature.

The growth of resorts within Europe and North and Latin America up to the mid-20th century was very much based on the exploitation of domestic holiday demand. There were exceptions, such as the wealthy British visitor who 'came to the Mediterranean to cast their net of affluence around the pleasure ports of the French Riviera' (Lencek & Bosker, 1998: 131). In essence the resort systems that had evolved competed largely at the national level for domestic tourists. The most significant shift has been the strong and rapid growth of competition from international resorts since the 1960s. Urry (2002: 36) puts such changes within the context of 'the globalisation of contemporary tourism', which is a key theme of this book. The growth of the price-driven package holiday of the 1960s and 1970s has had a major impact on the traditional resorts of Europe and North America.

Indeed some of the earliest impacts of competition and resort decline are to be found in North America, where some of the older resorts on the northeastern seaboard had begun to lose their appeal by the 1950s, resulting in a declining share of the holiday market. Atlantic City, for example, lost much of its main tourist market to the growing Miami Beach a completely planned and manufactured resort. Not only were its facilities more modern but it had a climatic advantage of being in Southern Florida. Within Britain, the percentage of people taking overseas holidays grew from 7.4% in 1955 to 16.7% by 1975 (British Tourist Authority, 1976). Similarly, consumer spending on domestic holidays grew by 80% between 1951 and 1968, but on overseas holidays spending increased by a massive 400% over the same period (Page, 2003). One of the major destination areas were the resorts of the Spanish Costa's and Spain's share of the British overseas holiday market grew from 6% in 1951 to 30% by 1968 (Page, 2003). Spain witnessed the growth of new purpose-built, mass coastal resorts offering affordable holidays based around the economics of the package tour (Barke & France, 1996; Bramwell, 1997a; Laws, 1997). Such resorts were not only created physically by the economics of mass tourism and the requirements of tour operators, but these organisations help shape the tourists' images of such places (Shaw & Williams, 2004).

Throughout the coastal resorts of the Mediterranean, there has been an increasing orientation of resorts as different market segments have been exploited in the face of increasing global competition. To a large extent the marketing of coastal resorts has mainly been controlled by the major tour operators selling some destinations to the youth market and others to families, along with the growing importance of the retirement market. Such activities have increasingly been characterised by the internationalisation of the coastal resort as part of the process of the globalisation of tourism.

The Coastal Resort as a Global Tourism Product

We argued in the previous section that coastal resorts and tourism practices switched to a more concentrated level of international growth after the 1960s. Within the context of the demands within the UK market, Evans and Stabler (1995) have identified three phases of growth:

(1) An introductory phase from the 1950s to around the mid-1960s, characterised by limited growth of new destination opportunities mainly for a few affluent tourists.

(2) A growth phase from the mid-1960s until the end of the 1980s, which saw the rapid development of mass tourism based around the inclusive package holiday. These changes were based on the growing power of tour operators that stimulated the growth of coastal resorts in a range of new destinations especially in parts of the Mediterranean.

(3) A so-called mature phase from the early 1990s, which witnessed the start of more flexible tourism products catering for changing market demands. In part, these have been signified by the transition from Fordist forms of consumption to post-Fordist ones, reflecting a move from the mass package holiday to more flexible patterns.

In terms of such phases, some commentators imply that the switch to post-Fordism forms of consumption is based on new forms of tourism away from the beach holiday (Urry, 2002). However, in a mature tourism market such as the UK, the evidence does not point to such a declining interest in the 3 S (sea-sun-sand) holiday product. Research suggests that in 2000 over 12 million UK tourists took a beach-based holiday (Mintel, 2001). More significantly, the market trends in beach holidays show a number of important features, including:

• an above average growth in tourist travel to long-haul destinations, with the top 20 of such destinations offering beach holidays;

• an increase in speciality market segments such as luxury all-inclusive resorts, with some specialising in weddings and honeymoons;

• the development of combination holidays in which the beach component is linked with some element of special interest tourism. (Meyer, 2003; Mintel, 2001)

In effect, such changing demands are part of globalisation trends in tourism and more particularly the development of the coastal resort as a global product. To understand such trends we need to examine two main inter-related processes. The first concerns the nature of tourism globalisation, whilst the second is associated with the impacts of the former on the development of coastal resorts.

The nature of tourism globalisation

Much confusion still surrounds the debates on tourism globalisation, especially in recognising the term and the processes associated with it, and in ascertaining its meaning for tourist destinations (Agarwal, 2005). Within the tourism literature, the globalisation of tourism has been represented by what Mowforth and Munt (1998: 12) view as 'an ever tightening network of connections which cut across national boundaries'. These connections operate in terms of a growing globalisation of consumer demand, which Levitt (1983) first identified as a 'global-village'. In general terms, such ideas represent a trend towards increased homogeneity, with consumer demand across different national markets becoming similar. In addition, Mowforth and Munt's (1998) interconnections are represented economically through global flows of capital, the activities of transnational companies and increased levels of competition (Shaw & Williams, 2004). In more general economic contexts, some organisations have constructed a globalisation index based around such key variables as foreign direct investment, capital flows, trade and levels of international travel and tourism (Foreign Policy, 2003). However, as the authors of the index explain, such 'key indicators only scratch the surface of globalization's complexity' (Kearney and Foreign Policy, 2001: 2).

(Continues...)

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Table of Contents

Preface and Acknowledgements
Book Contributors
1 Introduction: The Development and Management of Coastal Resorts: A Global Perspective - Gareth Shaw and Sheela Agarwal
Section 1: Coastal Resorts in Transition
2 The Problems and Dilemmas of Northern European Post-Mature Coastal Tourism Resorts - Tim Gale
3 The Resort Economy: Changing Structures and Management Issues in British Resorts - Gareth Shaw and Tim Coles
4 Institutional Change and Resort Capacity: The Case of Southwest English Coastal Resorts - Sheela Agarwal
Section 2: The Diversification and Sustainable Development of Coastal Resorts
5 Complexity, Interdisciplinarity and Growth Management: The Case of Maltese Coastal Resorts - Bill Bramwell
6 Planning for Sustainable Development in Spanish Coastal Resorts - Gerda Priestley and Joan Carles Llurdés
7 A Tale of Two Islands: Sustainable Resort Development in Cyprus and Tenerife - Richard Sharpley
Section 3: The Pleasure-Periphery and Managing the Post-Modern Coastal Resort
8 The Post-modern Resort and the Pleasure Periphery: The Case of Australia’s Coastal Tourism Resorts - Brian King
9 Malaysia’s Pleasure Periphery: Coastal Resort Development and its Consequences - Joan Henderson
10 Natural Heritage as Place Identity: Tofino, Canada, a Coastal Resort on the Periphery - Alison M. Gill and Erin Welk
Section 4: Coastal Resort Structures: Variation Versus Standardisation
11 The Development of South Africa’s Coastal Tourism Resorts - Robert Preston-Whyte and Catherine Oelofse
12 Resort Structure and ‘Plantation’ Dynamics in Antigua and Coastal South Carolina - David B. Weaver
13 Re-Engineering Coastal Resorts in Mexico: Some Management Issues - Sheela Agarwal and Gareth Shaw
Section 5: State Intervention and the Planning and Development of Coastal Resorts
14 The Role of the State and the Rise of the Red Sea Resorts in Egypt and Israel - Noam Shoval and Kobi Cohen-Hattab
15 Clientelist Relationships: Implications for Tourism Development in the Declining Coastal Resort of Kusadasi, Turkey - Fisun Yuksel and Atila Yuksel
16 Conclusion: Future Implications for the Development and Management of Coastal Resorts - Sheela Agarwal and Gareth Shaw
References

Editorial Reviews

One might have thought that there was little new to be written about a topic as old as coastal resort management, but this volume succeeds admirably in adding some challenging and informative material to the existing body of literature. It ranges widely in settings examined and provides invaluable analysis rather than description which has tended to be the pattern in the past. This book has a great deal to recommend it, not only the wide range of examples covered but perhaps even more the analytical approach, along with the fact that the chapters are well integrated by means of good introductory and concluding essays placing them in context. A very valuable addition to the coastal resort management literature, covering a good number of well integrated examples from varied settings, bringing a contemporary outlook and approach to the material.

Richard Butler

A timely critique from established, acknowledged experts, this text draws together (in a cogent, accessible and rewardingly worthwhile manner) a carefully selected range of contemporary empirical material. With its international perspectives and theoretical dimension, sensibly, the text locates the coastal resort in the global context and, as such, makes a welcomed and valued contribution to our understanding of the phenomenon.

Brian Wheeller