Introduction to Tourism

10 Tourism policy, planning and development

Introduction

Planning for tourism development can take place at various levels. Some countries have national tourism development plans and it is not unusual within this national structure to find similar planning exercises having been made for subnational regions, towns, cities, etc. The concept of planning is very wide. Planning is essentially about the utilization of tourism assets and their development into a marketable state. So before the planning exercise begins it is necessary to set out tourism development objectives, i.e. what the development plan seeks to achieve.

These planning objectives are often formulated into a tourism policy statement which sets out parameters or guidelines which steer ...