Tourism Policy-Making in the Context of Contested Wicked Problems: Politics, Paradigm Shifts and Transformation Processes: Volume 17B

Tourism and hospitality employment have long faced widely recognised challenges with regard to employment, its workforce and the workplace environment, issues that have been addressed by generations of policymakers and practitioners without evident success or solution. These wicked problems are frequently characterised by inherent paradoxes and, therefore, accepting the tenets of paradox theory provides the basis for recognising the need to accept contradictions as a reality which a search for solutions will not resolve. This chapter presents six examples of wicked problems in tourism and hospitality employment, which are underpinned by paradoxes as proxies for the much wider range of intractable problems that beset policy-making and practice in this vital area of tourism and hospitality. The chapter concludes by suggesting ways in which wicked problems can be accommodated, and stakeholders can learn to understand and live with paradoxes.

This chapter explores how new tourism policy paradigms can emerge and settle in a wicked-problems scenario characterised by high labour informality. Acknowledging the growing importance of the tourism sector in Argentina, where labour informality has long been a concern, the authors focus on an ambitious and unprecedented tourism policy: PreViaje. Established in 2020, PreViaje is a program that promotes the selling of tourism services in advance to residents travelling within Argentina. It is designed around incentives to encourage formality via both tourism supply and demand. After looking at the outcomes of PreViaje, relevant matters to consider for future program editions are identified. These relate to temporal and spatial dispersal concerns, and trade-offs regarding economic, social and environmental matters.

Heritage is widely regarded as an integral constituent of modern tourism and, accordingly, many destinations aspire to gain United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) World Heritage (WH) status. However, uncontrolled influxes of tourists, ongoing management challenges, competing interests amongst stakeholders and decision-makers, as well as the politicisation of regulatory processes, all threaten to undermine the implied protection of WH inscription. Adopting a ‘wicked problems’ lens effectively elucidates the complex, diverse, and interconnected nature of the WH Convention’s governance structure and how this impact and influences the management of WH Sites.

In Finland, tourism policymaking is centralised in the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Employment, without a specific tourism minister. Tourism policymaking and implementation are much influenced by networks and collaboration of tourism experts on governmental, regional, and local levels. Despite the efforts of involving different stakeholders in tourism policymaking, the process includes wicked problems and occasionally conflicts of interest between the levels. Finnish tourism policymaking relies on various ministries, indirect laws, and working groups on the governmental level; and on regional councils, cities, municipalities, and destination management or marketing organisations (DMO) on the regional level, before reaching the operative level in tourism organisations. At every level, workshops, and other means to engage stakeholders are utilised. On a regional and destination level tourism is governed based on the strategies of each city, municipality, and regional councils, with varying collaboration and stakeholder engagement. The coordinator may be a regional council, DMO, or another stakeholder, such as a cluster of tourism enterprises and institutions of higher education. The different levels of governance are finally followed by enterprises, with their own interests, strategies, and visions. This chapter discusses Finnish tourism policymaking, focussing on the region of Satakunta, the city of Pori, and the Yyteri coastal area. Furthermore, the chapter discusses the strategic decision to focus on developing the Yyteri coastal area to meet the needs of locals and visitors, and how appointing a Senior Advisor for Yyteri beach and coastal area is sought to provide practical improvements also on an enterprise level.

Thanks to a background of federal structures with varied jurisdictions, responsibilities and competencies, and a wide range of stakeholders active in tourism policy and the tourism industry, a high degree of complexity characterises tourism structures in Germany. These structures often present a great challenge in the sense of Head’s (2022) wicked problems, as policy success depends on identifying the relevant political level, the relevant tourism policy decision-makers and the relevant political institutions with whom to communicate and interact. One option for realising interests is tourism lobbying. In this context, the tourism lobbying model according to Pillmayer and Scherle (2014) serves as a starting point to visualise and ultimately implement the procedure.

Complexity and interconnections of the wicked problems constantly challenge policy-makers and public authorities. The tourism system, with its diverse nature and entangled connections among the stakeholders, provides a favourable ground for the emergence of numerous wicked issues. The Bulgarian tourism policy ecosystem has a well-developed legislative basis, envisaging most of the possible problems among the actors. Still, the decision-makers, service delivery managers, technical experts and social researchers need close coordination and a systematic approach to reach a coherent and acceptable solution. The current chapter reveals the gaps in the work of the tourism policy institutions in Bulgaria, caused mainly by the lack of coordination and limited communication among them.

Governments frequently utilise tourism as a means of enhancing the economic participation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples in Australia. Yet, the ‘systemic wickedness’ (Carson & Koster, 2012) of problems, purportedly addressed by government policies for Indigenous Australians more broadly, can arguably be seen as inhibiting the creation of a thriving and sustainable Indigenous tourism sector. For too long, authors have questioned the appropriateness and effectiveness of tourism policy developed for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples (Hudson, 2016; Whitford & Ruhanen, 2010), and importantly, over and above governments’ apparent poor understanding of what ‘works’ and under what conditions, is the absence of First Nations peoples voices in driving the development of the First Nations sector. Utilising a wicked policy lens, this chapter explores Indigenous tourism policy in Australia and discusses the extent to which one particular initiative, the inaugural Queensland First Nations Tourism Plan (QFNTP) 2020–2025 addresses a range of complex and wicked policy challenges.

This chapter analyses indigenous tourism as both a form of indigenous resistance and revindication and a public policy implemented jointly by public institutions, universities and non-governmental organisations (NGOs). The concept of indigenous tourism has a relatively short history in Chile. However, it has acquired particular importance in light of the country’s constitutional process, triggered by the social uprising of 18 October 2019. This process incorporates the recognition of indigenous peoples and their rights as transversal areas.

To explain the process, this chapter examines indigenous tourism from the standpoint of indigenous initiatives, considering the context in which it has developed while also looking at how this concept is incorporated into the public institutional framework. It also examines the different influences and political context of the concept’s installation and how it has acquired increasing importance and complexity in public affairs. Given that it requires a multidimensional and multilevel approach, it can be analysed as a wicked problem.

Finally, this chapter discusses how indigenous tourism takes a political form of revindication of rights and territorial control and as an alternative to the neoliberal and extractivist model of other types of tourism.

This case study from The Gambia is based on the research project ‘Transnational Relationship Establishment: Diaspora Tourism and Circular Migration’. It introduces the development and problems of migration in West Africa and specifically in The Gambia. Beyond migration policy, it looks at the structures and motives of migration in one of the poorest countries in Africa, which is characterised by extreme dependence on remittances from the diaspora. Furthermore, The Gambia has a very high share of tourism in gross domestic product (GDP), which leads to a high dependence on tourists and tour operators from Europe. Taken together, these aspects pose major challenges to the country’s tourism policy in terms of contested ‘wicked problems’. The purpose of this chapter is to use qualitative analysis to describe the significance and impact of diaspora tourism and transnational relationships and circular migration of Gambians on their homeland. One focus is on examining the development potential of forms of tourism associated with members of the diaspora and their home countries. Another focus is on how plurilocal familial, economic and sociocultural ties can be shaped and maintained and remigration processes initiated through the study of transnational relations.

This chapter aims to analyse how tourism has oscillated from a wicked problem and a geopolitical strategy tool in Brazilian federal tourism public tourism policies (PTP) over the past century (spanning from 1921 to 2022). Recently tourism has garnered significant relevance, emerging as an alternative avenue for development within the constraints and resource limitations faced by the National States. The empirical study collected secondary data from the government official press, encompassing records from the Senate, the House of Representatives, as well as the executive and judiciary branches. Considering this timeframe, a corpus comprising more than 31,000 documents TNAs (‘Tourism Normative Acts’) was meticulously gathered and systematically analysed. Our analytical framework integrates classical geopolitics, with a primary focus on State actors and the nation-building process, and the public policy approach, which is focussed on the degrees of wickedness. Our findings show that (a) the number of international tourists as well as the number of NAT have increased in a considerable way recently, but we cannot directly connect both; (b) three are the periods (1970–1980, 1990–2000, and 2002–2016) in which we can see a tourism geopolitical strategy has been more explicitly and effectively mobilized, and it is not necessarily reflected in the number of NAT, but in the actions generated in each period; and (c) the wicked degree of the tourism policies seem to be reduced according to the more explicit geopolitical strategy is. Despite, the importance tourism has reached, the support system underpinning this endeavour remains deficient, notably in terms of material and financial resources essential for its efficacious execution.

The functionalities of tourist destinations as regional innovation systems (RIS) still show substantial deficits. Especially for destinations in developing countries (DC), this incurs a wicked problem when it comes to unfolding the potentials of tourism for social innovation and sustainable regional development. Determining factors for these weaknesses are manifold, complex, multi-causal and prone to inherent system-dynamics making it difficult for destination management organisations to proactively monitor and control them in the long term. Backed by empirical comparative findings from rural destinations in Azerbaijan and Ecuador, this chapter tracks down selected major drivers of this wicked problem both from a monocausal-linear and multi-causal-dynamic analytical perspective. As a primary outcome, a set of suitable indicators will be presented to serve as a monitoring framework for a social innovation governance of DC destinations.

Even though the idea of citizen participation in tourism planning and policy-making is anything but new (Keogh, 1990; Murphy, 1985) its implementation becomes increasingly important as citizens play a key role for a socially sustainable tourism development (Bramwell & Lane, 2011; Moscardo, 2011; Papachristou & Rosas-Casals, 2019; Spil et al., 2017). Nonetheless, despite the consensus on the importance and urgency, the plethora of collaborative concepts has hardly been translated into reality. In this chapter, it will be questioned why citizen involvement in tourism policy is such a wicked problem. Further, the issue will be framed with the 10 characteristics of wicked problems by Rittel and Webber (1973) as well as Head’s (2022) governmental responses to wicked problems. Based on empirical data of two urban case studies, namely Munich (Germany) and Copenhagen (Denmark), citizens’ perspectives on their role in tourism have been disclosed to expand the past debate. Contrasting empirical findings and the outlined theoretical frame, various solution approaches could be identified from the so far neglected perspective of those at the heart of the wicked problem – the destination citizens.

In this chapter, the authors present a theoretical framework to not only better understand the wicked nature of the Airbnb phenomenon but also, using case examples from around the world, to illustrate how governments have attempted to mitigate Airbnb’s negative impacts.

Analysing the sharing economy, specifically the Airbnb platform, through the lens of Karl Polanyi’s Double Movement Theory, brings growing tension between markets and society into sharp relief. In the ensuing sections of this chapter, the authors will then adopt a ‘wicked problem’ perspective to provide some analytical insights into how governments across the world have attempted to respond to this wicked policy problem and explore different policy responses and regulatory frameworks in greater depth. Through the review of exemplary cases from around the world, considerable variation in governance and policy responses could be identified.

This chapter analyses the situation of gender research and education in tourism. It describes gender inequity as a wicked problem resulting from a deep embeddedness of gender stereotypes in social norms, values, and attitudes. Drawing on sociological theories, this chapter demonstrates that invisible power structures and interests of certain groups in society, in combination with prevailing gender-based stereotypes, result in vicious cycles of adapting behaviour to stereotypes and enforcing them by doing so. With its clear focus on appearance and easy-going lifestyle, the tourism industry still does not address gender issues, including sexual exploitation, appropriately. There is a need to systematically integrate gender-related topics into tourism studies and education curricula on a university level to create awareness among students and acknowledge how they can contribute to gender justice.

Recently, the tourism and hospitality industry has been increasingly hit by serious crises. In particular, the implications of the COVID-19 pandemic and phenomena such as a shortage of skilled workers and overtourism are presenting numerous destinations and their key stakeholders with new, increasingly complex challenges. In addition, the continued development of meta-processes such as demographic change and digitalisation in many respects implies an ‘end of tourism as we know it’ (Destinationthink.com, 2017). In order to successfully face these complex challenges, it is necessary – as with most wicked problems – to think and act ‘outside the box’. An increasing individualisation and pluralisation of lifestyles is taking place in most societies and represents another challenge that should not be underestimated. This implies that diversity and diversity management are becoming ever more important strategic success factors, both for human resource management and for the development of new markets and target groups. Unfortunately, however, far too few players in the tourism and hospitality sector value diversity management as part of their corporate strategy. This chapter therefore aims to raise awareness of diversity and diversity management as a concept that has become increasingly important in recent years but still only occupies a niche in tourism-specific contexts. The intensified strategic valorisation of diversity can actually sustainably increase the competitiveness of destinations and their key actors. Against this backdrop, this contribution explores conceptual understandings of diversity and diversity management from a theoretical perspective and uses specific case studies to illustrate how the corresponding management approach can be successfully valorised in tourist destinations.

No Olympics in recent history have come in on or under budget, with past Olympics having overrun their budgets by an average of 172% (Flyvbjerg et al., 2021). Growing concerns among taxpayers about the expense have led many cities to drop out of the bidding process for the Olympics: for the 2024 Olympic Games, bids were withdrawn by Boston, Budapest, Hamburg, and Rome (Okada & Greyser, 2018). Sports infrastructure, including the main stadium, is a major cost category for the Olympic Games. Building or renovating venues to Olympic specifications can leave cities with heavy costs of long-term maintenance as well as the cost of initial construction (Baade & Matheson, 2016). In practice, cities tend to overestimate the size and suitability of existing venues, leading to underestimated costs and budget overruns (Preuß et al., 2019). The Brisbane 2032 Olympic bid says that Brisbane’s Olympics are confident of breaking even, and avoiding building stadiums that end up as white elephants. But does the choice of Olympic stadium make a difference to the final cost overrun? This study finds that cost overruns for past Olympics have been predicted using a few characteristics of the main stadium: its age, its distance from the city centre, and its seating capacity. This has important policy implications for selecting stadiums to be used at the Olympic Games and particularly for the Brisbane 2032 Olympic Games where a stadium has been earmarked for selection without data-driven evidence to support the decision.

In a world that is more competitive on a global scale, technologically advanced and demanding than ever before, global situations such as climate change, poverty and inequality, health, migration or security are challenging for decision-makers in political, social or environmental contexts. The interplay of these and other tendencies is referred to as wicked problems, as their increasing complexity can often not be understood or distinguished anymore. Too many different crises, such as climate, economic, political or societal crises, are challenging the vulnerability and resilience of political, economic and community-based systems. Accordingly, focussing on battling single challenges without considering the bigger picture or interconnected processes or circumstances has not led to satisfactory results throughout the past decades. In a tourism industry that is traditionally closely interlinked with numerous sectors or stakeholder groups and therefore often associated with these problems, those in responsibility are particularly required to consider various interests and utilise the synergy potentials between the tourism and non-tourism sector. Accordingly, integrative tourism policy-making needs to include many political areas that are relevant within tourism as well as beyond, such as urban or regional development. As a holistic spatial development approach, the ‘ecosystem of hospitality’ (EoH) can facilitate the identification of interfaces between tourism and these political areas and help to foster a cross-stakeholder collaboration.

Historically, governments have favoured the economic benefits associated with tourism development resulting in many tourism destinations being confronted with overdevelopment, crowding, environmental degradation as well as damage to the social and cultural fabric, especially pronounced in high attractivity destinations. The devastating consequences of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic for tourism have led to a realisation that actors participating in tourism are especially susceptible to major health and security crises or natural disasters, mainly because their services are location bound and cannot be sold elsewhere. The involuntary ‘pause’ in travel worldwide has led many governments to realise that tourism policies must be placed in a broader context and that stakeholders, including residents and the environment where the brunt of the negative consequences are most deeply felt, must be an intrinsic part in determining the outcomes to be achieved. To Snowclone John F. Kennedy: ‘Ask not what your destination can do for tourism, ask what tourism can do for your destination’. Indeed, the visitation process involves the demand-driven co-creation or co-production between visitors (resident, day and overnight) and hosts, mostly based on the use of public goods. The complexity of this visitation system with its myriad stakeholders means that there cannot be a single tourism or visitation policy, but that there must be different policies that intervene at different points in the system and create an impact. Thus, policy formulation must be context-specific, individualised and take into account the interdependence among policies to achieve the desired outcomes.

It is widely agreed that transformation processes that are triggered by crisis events can challenge conventional behavioural norms and stimulate new ideas and innovations that can assist in the preparations for future challenges. This impetus for transformation processes not only applies to the COVID-19 pandemic, but has also been seen in many other instances, such as the Global Financial Crisis in 2008 or the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster, which have sparked significant socio-political change processes often with a global reach. The multitude of wicked tourism policy problems discussed in our book often occur in parallel, are of growing complexities, are often not well understood and indistinguishable from one another and exert pressure on the resilience of vulnerable political, economic and community-based systems. These circumstances often present as tipping points which can trigger necessary long-term transformations. However, this process of long-term change must be well planned and strategically implemented. Thus, future transformative destination management should be built on a holistic approach, underpinned by adaptive political leadership in which tourism is not only seen as a driver for economic growth and employment, but as a strategy which successfully integrates social, cultural and ecological goals.