STRATEGIES FOR DEVELOPMENT: THE ROLE OF PLANNING IN TOURISM

Planning is an act or process of drawing up plans or layout for some project or enterprise. It can also be viewed as an act of formulating a program to identify the course of action. However planning is a fundamental cause of management, it consists of selecting strategies from among alternative cause of action both for the enterprise as a whole and for very department or selection in it. It is in effect decided in advance what to do, how to do it, when to do it, and who is to do it. Planning is thus future oriented and it is a pre-determined cause of action which helps to provide the purpose and direction for members of an enterprise.

MAJOR TYPES OF PLANNING

Ø Economic development planning

Ø Physical Planning

Ø Infrastructural Planning for transportation facilities and services, water supply, electric power supply, telecommunication, sea-wage and solid disposals.

Ø Social facility planning; Education, medical and recreational facility services.

Ø Park and Conservation planning

Ø Co-operate planning

Ø Urban and Regional planning

PRINCIPLES OF PLANNING

Ø Planning should be based upon clearly defined objective and also make use of available information.

Ø Environmental factors should be considered in planning, which either will help or hinder organizational goals.

Ø  Monitoring of established and or performance should be included in the plan so as to maintain established standard

Ø Plan should be flexible to enable it adapt to changing circumstances.

Ø It should be preside practicable and simple to understand and operate.

TOURISM PLANNING

Tourism planning is the management function that establishes destination goals and or tourism objectives and creates a miss for accomplishing them. It also includes defined goal for establishing strategy and developing design to considerate activities. Tourism planning is also a process by which tourism policy is placed into a structure that enables implementation. Planning is necessary for tourism to develop in a way that is beneficiary sustainable and not dementia to the environment, culture and community. Tourism planning is a diagram to show how a tourism garden park and conservation area and or destination area has being or is to being

EVOLUTION OF TOURISM PLANNING

In the past and still a prevailing attitude in few places, tourism planning was seen as a simplistic process of encouraging new hotels to open, making sure that there was transportation access to the area, and organizing a tourist promotion campaign. The only systematic planning that might be done was to select a suitable hotel or resort site and apply site planning, landscaping, and engineering design standards to the development. This approach was often successful for development of individual hotels or small resorts in the era before mass tourism. However, during the World War II period, tourism developed rapidly, and several areas, especially in the Mediterranean region as well as in the early tourism areas of the Caribbean and some other places, encouraged mass tourism without planning it. These places have paid the social and environmental consequences of unplanned tourism development and regret not having taken the planned and controlled approach to development.

PRINCIPLES OF SUCCESSFUL TOURISM PLANNING AND DEVELOPMENT

The most fundamental principles of successful tourism planning and development are as follows:

v Creating visitor domain or visitors provenances: A planner should have in mind of a place or an area that contains a diversity of potential experiences, in other words the planner should have a scene of place that is unique or authentic. Development of gate way is also encouraged in the designing of tourist attraction. The gate way is a physical symbol of entrance to the tourist domain. The gate also marks the transition from ordinary into extra-ordinary place and experiences. Clustering and concentrating attractions and services is the technique of creating the visitor domain or visitor province which ultimately leads to critical mass of tourist product which establishes a place as a tourist destination in a tourist market. However, once the place is established, tourist becomes aware of the place and will purposely being to choose to go their.

v The application of market research technique of product/market max: This technique is a means to achieve a supply of the right tourism product, particularly attraction and services for the target quality of a tourist destination plan. Targeted tourists are statistically defined. The product suitable to their test is what should be developed at the destination. Statistical defined tourist segment usually come from defined geographical areas, and they fall into specified age and gender groups. They have specified education and income level and have specific preference for what they like to do, see and eat.

v A well design transportation linkage: This is necessary to easy the movement of people in the tourist domain where large crowd of people are concentrated during the tourist season. There is need for a well signed transport linkage route such activities attracts large crowd to the host areas and such needs a well singed transportation linkage.

v Protection of the environment: Be it social, natural and cultural is now an accepted main stay of successful tourism planning. These can be achieved by attracting quality tourist and by managing tourist flow and access while they are in the destination area. Also high/ low season for tourist flow into a given environment should be bills of tourism planner life and a test of his/her skills. In most cases tourism flows are seasonal but with heavy investment in service and attraction facilities they is generally a desire by the operators of these facilities to generate year round tourist and tour cash flow. The second principle is that the seasons with low tourist volumes give local residents or host community period of reduced stress and rest.

v Partnership: This is another principle to incorporate into tourism successful planning because of the pluralistic nature of tourism, there is need for destination partnership to be created or formed, which can be more effective taking advantage of the product offering of each member of the partnership. This is an idea were we can say that the total is more than the sum of the parts.

v Product life cycle: Another principle to be considered in tourism planning is the product life cycle. Tourism product like many other product grow in popularity and after a while they will demise in popularity. The key is to be prepared when the product being to go out of popularity and prepared to breathe a new life into the attraction or services.

v Economic benefits to be captured: The final principle for successful tourism planning is that the planners ensure that there is ample opportunity for economic benefit to be captured. Tourist are generally willing to spend money but in some areas they many be little plan opportunity for them to spend it. Such economic benefit may be captured to include provision of accommodation, food, gas/fuel station, local craft shop and galleries e.t.c

FRAME WORK FOR SUCCESSFUL TOURISM PLANNING AND DEVELOPMENT

To achieve a successful tourism planning and development certain factors need to be place under consideration and they are as follows:

v Integrated planning: Tourism stakeholders view should be integrated into tourism planning and development. Stakeholders are broadly defined to include all those who have interest and or are concerned/affected by tourism development. Among them are the government, public and private sector, organization, developers of tourism and heritage resources, local communities e.t.c. one should also bear in mind that tourism development must be part of planned strategy for overall development. It is therefore essential for one to achieve a successful planning; stakeholders should be involved in order to have suitable integrated planning.

v Local Participation: The indigenous people must be involved in the planning of tourism site, their involvement will however bring to lime light their social, cultural, economic as well as religious problems of which when tackled in the process of planning will ensure the successful tourism development, which will positively affect their way of life. In-cooperation of host community in tourism planning and development is another sure way of poverty alleviation.

v Tourism infrastructure: Could also be viewed as all the amenities that makes life what living, such as electricity, good drinking water, good access road/ road network, communication etc. all these are always obtainable within tourist domain, it is also recommended that planners should extend this facilities to the host communities to ensure sustainability in their planning. Hence what is good for the groves is also good for the gender.

v Sustainability in resource usage: Tourism should not increase pressure on local resources; alternative resources should be used in other to minimize pressure on the area under planning. Example of such alternative resources is timbers, electricity generation cooking with gas.

v Funding: An appropriate amount of money needed for execution of tourism project should be made available either by the state government or federal government in order to ensure overall improvement in the living standard of the host community.