In the space available for this article, there is not the opportunity to explore all aspects of cultural tourism monitoring and evaluation. In order to focus the discussion, I have chosen to examine the job creation and economic development dimensions of the field given the central role these concerns play in public and private sector resource allocation decision making. In fact, I have focused my discussion on the use of indicators in the process. Monitoring the impact of visitors on sites, the success of particular forms of conservation treatments, the quality of interpretive techniques, and the effect of cultural tourism initiatives on local communities will have to be explored in other ICOMOS publications or forums.
Many areas of planning and development activity have not had the resources or the interest (often the case) to assess whether plans and policies when implemented have met their goals and objectives. In addition, unintended results have rarely been identified and assessed. This lack of monitoring and assessment is also true of many specialist forms of planning and policy making such as heritage resource management and cultural tourism. It is fair to say that based on this lack of monitoring and evaluation, little is learned from plan implementation.
The issue of monitoring and evaluation is becoming increasingly important in heritage conservation given the many ambitious claims made concerning the potential of cultural tourism to satisfy a range of cultural and societal goals:
Often claims of the benefits of heritage tourism have been based on anecdotal information or hope and not evidence produced from a scientific assessment process. (Exceptions exist particularly in Alberta where the provincial government has developed sophisticated impact assessment tools.)
In better financial times it was possible to make claims and not have to back them up. There is no doubt that in these difficult economic times, cultural tourism benefits will have to be well understood and documented if public and private sector funding is to be allocated for cultural preservation purposes. I would argue that it is essential for the ongoing health of the entire heritage conservation movement that it become more sophisticated in understanding and documenting the benefits and costs of using tourism as an important development tool in meeting the goals of the conservation movement, as well as the larger society.
While monitoring in all aspects of conservation is complex, monitoring and evaluation in cultural tourism is especially difficult given the wide range of actors and activities which must be considered. Not only do we have the traditional conservation specialists but in addition, we have entire communities and regions as well as a new series of specialists such as tourism planners, hospitality and tourism management workers, town planners, and economists. Each brings his/her particular concerns and methodologies to the exercise. The challenge here is to ensure that the form of assessment evolving is consistent with the needs of all affected by cultural tourism initiatives.
If we are to truly understand the impacts of cultural tourism we must develop and use tools which will allow the heritage conservation community to learn from its experience, using reliable methods and producing results which are comparable and produce lessons which can serve to influence future practice. The objective of any cultural tourism planning and development process must be to minimize negative impacts and ensure that the benefits are realized in an equitable manner. I recognize the problems associated with doing this but there are approaches which will assist in this impact assessment process.
The first major issue in assessing cultural tourism has to be a recognition of the wide range of possible impacts which must be considered if a comprehensive understanding of effects are to be understood. These impacts are both direct as well as indirect and have to be seen in local as well as regional terms. Very often the direct economic impact of a development may not be significant but when viewed from an overall community economic perspective can be seen to have significant overall benefits. The nature of these dimensions can be illustrated by looking at both the positive as well as negative effects.
There are a number of employment and economic development related potential benefits of cultural tourism. They include:
There are also a number of potential costs/disadvantages:
One of the difficulties in assessing the impacts of cultural tourism lies in the fact that it is but one form of tourism which many visitors participate in when they travel. Forms of tourism may include the following activity based on a series of demographic as well as motivational factors: aboriginal, ecotourism, sports related (skiing, swimming etc.), adventure, game/hunting, shopping, leisure, camping, and business associated travel activities conferences. Isolating the specific cultural dimensions of much of tourism is a challenge especially when one is considering local as well as regional economies and employment structures.
While job creation must be seen as an important objective, concern for the overall local economy must also be a major concern. This implies that jobs and economic benefits may be realized from a number of sources. It may also mean that jobs are created as the result of entrepreneurial activity as well as community initiative (i.e. cooperatives, development corporations, training opportunities as well as local support for tourism initiatives through the provision of infrastructure). Measuring the economic impact and job creation activities of cultural tourism must be carried out in an integrated fashion, taking into account direct and indirect job creation as well as the economic well being of the community (taxes, infrastructure development and provision, resources for education, etc.). There are techniques for estimating the impact of tourism which include such factors as tourism multiplier models, employment multipliers, input-output analysis, and the measurement of direct, induced, and indirect impacts.
While it may be possible to calculate with a level of certainty, the job potential of some areas of economic activity, the calculation of possible employment levels related to cultural tourism is difficult, at least in conventional terms. As discussed earlier, many employment opportunities may be seasonal and adjuncts to other forms of income generation. This situation in no way diminishes the importance of the job and income generation, but rather calls for other measurement tools and techniques.
In order to understand the nature of possible impacts, it is important to acknowledge that employment and business development opportunities exist in a number of areas within the tourism sector. Since monitoring and evaluation are forward looking there will be a need to scan and understand the role of cultural tourism in all these areas. These employment opportunities include the following:
Opportunities exist in the public sector in tourism planning and management. Planning and management are critical areas for ensuring successful tourism initiatives. This is a sector of the tourism industry which often does not receive sufficient attention. Control, facilitation, and regulation of the environment are essential to the industry and trained professionals and officials (e.g. municipal officers, town managers, tourist information officers, economic development officers, main street coordinators, planners).
This sector is the best understood within the industry. It requires a wide range of skills and knowledge including personnel for the accommodation sector (hotels, motels, B & Bs) as well as restaurants. The major challenge is to develop the managerial capacity within the community as opposed to importing skills and knowledge.
Guided tours, equipment rentals, and maintenance facilities offer significant opportunities. For many rural areas, little effort has been made to offer these services in a proactive manner. Guided tours, such as walking, cycling, hiking, back-country tripping, cross-country ski trips, and canoe and boat trips, offer a means for encouraging the tourist to spend a longer period of time in an area.
Cultural experiences and activities are also important trends in tourism. The development of ventures which involve traditional activities, such as food, dance, music, festivals, plays, and re-enactments can be important attractions. Historic sites, museums, and museum villages require trained interpreters, site managers, designers, and crafts people.
The development of cottage industries for arts and handicrafts is an important source of full or part-time employment.
Working holidays on farms and in fishing villages have great potential. Farm holidays have been developed and have achieved some success in Ontario, Quebec and the Prairie provinces. "Living on the Land" with an Aboriginal family – a cultural day or week long experience, such as attending a fishing camp in the Arctic – offers opportunities for unique experiences. A tour company in Inuvik handles the booking of tours for cultural day tours to be spent with a local family in Tuktoyatuk. The day includes a tour of Tuktoyatuk and stories of local experiences as well as a traditional meal. The company also provides links with other operators offering river tours, visits to a reindeer station, and nature tours.
It is important to understand that there are a number of obstacles to creating employment related to cultural tourism. These include: the market and its receptivity to the heritage attractions; community acceptance of tourism and its treatment of tourists; the need to meet environmental standards and respect carrying capacities; the lack of integration within the industry in general, as well as in the heritage industry, in particular governmental and institutional roadblocks both in terms of regulation as well as facilitation, and the lack of trained personnel in a wide range of tourism areas.
One of the important first steps in ensuring quality monitoring and evaluation in cultural tourism is to establish indicators which can be used to measure success and failures. Given the interdisciplinary and wide ranging impacts of cultural tourism, it is impossible to deal with all variables and therefore reliable indicators will help the assessment process. I would like to extract a few principles for the purpose of this article.
Some of the factors to be considered in developing and using indicators include: (1)
The development of indicators will have to be undertaken as a serious first step in being able to make the case for the role that cultural tourism plays in both heritage conservation, as well as community economic development.
This indicator design process must be followed by an agreement on the need to collect and share the data in order to allow collective experiences to guide practice and make the case for investment in cultural tourism. The use of indicator data and its dissemination will not always demonstrate the effectiveness of cultural tourism in economic development since situations will exist where investment cannot be seen to be justified on strictly job and wealth creation grounds. In these situations a full impact assessment might demonstrate other societal and heritage conservation benefits.
For the assessment process to have any influence, it must be future oriented and tied into the plan making and policy process. It must include the skills and knowledge of other specialists not normally seen as crucial to the conservation world. The impact process will require the following:
The ICOMOS Canada Cultural Tourism Committee, in concert with other committees, must begin to assist the conservation community in developing a full range of indicators and monitoring techniques which are of immediate use as well as capable of producing comparable data sets which can be used in heritage development and planning exercises in other parts of the country as an important first step.
Walter Jamieson, Ph.D., ACP, MCIP Centre for Livable Communities Faculty of Environmental Design The University of Calgary Calgary, AB T2N 1N4 403.220.8669 Fax: 403.284.4608 Email: wjamieson@eworld.com
Walter Jamieson, Ph.D., ACP, MCIP Director, Centre for Livable Communities Director, Historical Resources Intern Programme Vice Chair, World Tourism Education and Research Centre The University of Calgary Chair, ICOMOS Canada Scientific Committee Chair, ICOMOS Canada Cultural Tourism Committee.
1 This section was developed in part using material prepared by Dr. Dixon Thompson of the Faculty of Environmental Design, University of Calgary and discussed in Thompson and Schipperus in "State of the Environment Reporting and Environmental Performance Indicators (1994).