Critical assessment of the theory and practice of strategic planning for tourism and leisure - Analysed on the basis of Disneyland Paris

Essay from the year 2005 in the subject Tourism - Miscellaneous, grade: 74%, University of Sunderland, language: English, abstract: Tourism is said to be the largest industry in the world. More and more people have the possibility to travel around the globe thanks to cheaper flights and increased leisure time. More than 760 million international tourist arrivals worldwide were counted in 2004 WTO, 2005). According to the WTO, international tourism revenue reached a new record high of US $ 622 billion in 2004. 52% of it was earned by Europe, 21% by the Americans, 20% by Asia and the Pacific, Africa and the Middle East contributed with 3% each (South African Tourism, 2005). Moreover, the tourism and travel industry supports directly and indirectly approximately 200 million jobs worldwide, this is 8% of the total employment at present, which is expected to grow to 260 million jobs in 2011 (Hall and Page, 2002). These figures give us a short impression of the importance of this sector. However, the tourism industry is very volatile. Political changes, the opening of former communism countries like China or Cuba, permanent economic fluctuation as well as social, environmental and technological changes influence the tourism industry. Nowadays tourists prefer high quality standards, safety environments and interesting locations and are more concerned of environmental impacts (Gunn and Var, 2002). All the above mentioned facts show the necessity of effective and sustainable tourism planning. This assignment will assess the theories of strategic planning and will investigate its application in practice on the basis of two case studies. One case, The White Paper Plan South Africa, is an example for good practice and the other, Disneyland Paris, is an example for bad practice.