Here we go again

As I´ve mentioned in previous postings, Sweden is investing hundreds of millions of kronor in tourism development all over the country nowadays. It´s everything from building the worlds biggest wooden moose to indoor rapids, restored viking villages and witch hotels. Projects aimed to increase tourism in rural areas of Sweden. Sounds fine in days of recession, doesn´t it? Well, it would be great news if we didn´t repeat the same old mistakes.

Imagine you lead or own a company manufacturing whatever, be it cars, refrigerators or mobile phones. Or you offer services to your target group of choice. Let´s say you run an accounting firm, barbershop or a chain of restaurants. Traditional top-down management models and business practice works perfectly OK here. You have a vision, form your business plan, set your sales targets and implement the operational strategies.  It´s your money invested, you´re in charge of the entire business process and, if you succed, you get the profit.

Tourism is different. Why? Because nobody owns the whole product. For tourism services, you have to cooperate in production, marketing and distribution to reach the market. This makes tourism development somewhat tricky. Those who are responsible for the resources used, like roads, nature, transportation etc, don´t get much of the cake when the guests finally arrives. Therefore, tourism development planning requires an entirely different approach, bottoms-up. This means strategy work starts abroad, by the distributors and their clients defining the products and target groups, to be continued by people at operational level in Sweden forming the necessary cooperations and product development needed.

It´s a question of deciding who is doing what? In which order? On whose mandate? And with whose money?

Tourism development strategies follows as a result of this, in contrast to other industries where in most cases an executive group work out the business plan and then implement it in the organization. Tourism products is about cooperation and delivery in a series of moments-of-thruth, why it´s crucial that those who will be delivering the services are involved in the decisions and strategy work.

Nevertheless, a quick glance at a number of the current projects, if not all of them, shows that the development plans are written primarily to fit the rules for EU-funding, by tourism executives top-down, rather than what´s needed for successful development of tourism destinations.

It reminds me of Whitesnakes wonderful rock ballad, Here I Go Again. Enjoy!

Curt Landin