THEORY AND PRACTICE OF STRATEGIC PLANNING FOR TOURISM.

To critically assess the theory and practice of strategic planning for tourism

To critically assess the theory and practice of strategic planning for tourism

Introduction

To properly define strategic planning as it relates to the hospitality and tourism industry presents a rather formidable challenge since strategic management is a recent development in the hospitality industry as previously hospitality and tourism was not defined as a product and strategic planning was generally used only where tangible products were concerned (Buttle, 1993). Despite…the amount of attention devoted to the topic, tourism and hospitality has been substantially under-represented in the strategic marketing literature (Gilbert and Kapur, 1990; Athiyaman, 1995 in Knowles, Diamantis and El-Mourhabi 2001 The Globalization of Tourism and Hospitality: A Strategic Perspective).

It would appear that marketing plays an important role in the strategic planning process as all literature on the subject refer to marketing when defining strategic planning in business. This project will attempt to define strategy and strategic planning using a case study of London's Strategic Plans as relates to tourism to make a critical assessment. This will be done by use of the Internet, journals, books, and an attempt to speak to someone at county hall and the London Development Agency. The limitations are time constraints, lack of material at public libraries and limited computer facilities.

Strategic Planning

First, the most important and defining decision in strategic planning is the selection of targets. The main objective of the company called the mission. Based on the general problem, the company formulates its other strategic goals should be specific and measurable, well-balanced, with a focus in time and achievable, resource support, and those who support each other. The first important step is to study the environment - is a continuous process of observation, study and control of external factors with respect to the enterprise in order to promptly and comprehensively to identify opportunities and threats for enterprises, ie positive and negative effects of external factors - political, economic, scientific, technical, social, international, etc (O'Connor, 2000).

To develop and implement a strategy is very important analysis of market factors, which, through its constant and high variability may directly affect the success or failure of the enterprise. This is a microeconomic analysis of supply, demand and competition level. Methods of choosing the general strategy can be divided into two groups: the first - for monoprofilnoi activity or a narrow range of tourist services offered to consumers, the second - for diversified production. The analysis shows that tourism organizations, firms, companies that compete successfully in the tourism sector, guided by three strategic methods that are used both separately and in combination (O'Connor, 2000).

There are many definitions of what is strategic planning, but more accepted is considered that consists of designing a desirable future and establish real means to get there. What sets the strategic planning other types of planning is that it is a process to action: Traditional planning draws expectations, while strategic planning combined ...