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Tourism Planning & Development
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Integrating Communities into Tourism
Planning Through Social Innovation
Anahita Malek
a
& Carlos Costa
a
a
Research Unit on Governance, Competitiveness and Public
Policies, Department of Economics, Management and Industrial
Engineering, Universidade de Aveiro, Aveiro, Portugal
Published online: 03 Sep 2014.
To cite this article: Anahita Malek & Carlos Costa (2014): Integrating Communities into
Tourism Planning Through Social Innovation, Tourism Planning & Development, DOI:
10.1080/21568316.2014.951125
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/21568316.2014.951125
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Integrating Communities into Tourism
Planning Through Social Innovation
ANAHITA MALEK AND CARLOS COSTA
Research Unit on Governance, Competitiveness and Public Policies, Department of Economics,
Management and Industrial Engineering, Universidade de Aveiro, Aveiro, Portugal
A
BSTRACT This study proposes a framework that provides a new combined effective strategy for
implementation of community participation into tourism planning as a social innovation
phenomenon. The underlying idea is creation of innovative and appropriate development
strategies to involve local communities as a key agent in the decision-making and planning of
tourism destinations in order to ensure positive local attitudes and improvement in communities’
quality of life. Utilizing the information gathered from the (ECoC), Guimarães 2012, as the case
study, this paper discusses a complex concept that encapsulates the main dimensions of the
community tourism development and social innovation in practice. Community-based development
initiatives of the city of Guimarães included in the development programme for the ECoC 2012
are evaluated in the context of governance structure, networking and direct participation of local
communities. Results not only indicate operational constrains in governance arrangements and
flaws in community participation strategies, but also suggest the need for collaborative initiatives
and the need for application of a system perspective that includes all elements of sustainable
community involvement.
1. Introduction
The participation of citizens in decision-making and planning processes as a way to increase
and improve social wo rk practices can be traced back to the early twentieth century. Since
then, active citizen participation, a basic tenet of democratic theory (McLeod, Scheufele, &
Moy, 1999), has become the focus of attention among those aiming to build strong and
mutually beneficial links with stakeholders and local community members. Many public
and private agencies have adopted planning frameworks that attempt to build ties with
local stakeholders in order to encourage them to become actively involved in changing con-
ditions that affect the quality of their lives.
At the same time, the substantial development of the tourism industry, as the largest and
fastest growing industry in the world since the 1990s, has been accompanied by several
costs and issues, adversely affecting the lives of hosting communities and possessing a
threat to regions’ natural and cultural resources. Putting aside tourism businesses economic
benefits, natural and socio-cultural environments of many tourism destinations disappeared
Tourism Planning & Development, 2014
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/21568316.2014.951125
Correspondence Address: Anahita Malek, Research Unit on Governance, Competitiveness and Public Policies,
Department of Economics, Management and Industrial Engineering, Universidade de Aveiro, Aveiro 3810–
193, Portugal. Email: anahita.malek13@gmail.com
© 2014 Taylor & Francis
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or get strongly damaged due to tourism’s unplanned development process (Hall & Lew,
1998; Sautter & Leisen, 1999).
Community participation and conservation activities through sustainable development
and planning create appropriate development frameworks and strategies that ensure favour-
able local attitudes, protection of local resources and, more importantly, the protection and
improvement of the quality of life of communities influenced by tourism development
(Faulkner & Tideswell, 1997; Milne & Ewing, 2004; Tosun, 2006; Yoon, Gursoy, &
Chen, 2001). According to Sofield (2003), community-based tourism shows a progression,
from a development perspective, as it incorporates the ideas of participation, empowerment
and the importance of the social, rather than just economic or environmental aspects to
development. It is clear that without empowerment, sustainable tourism development by
communities is difficult to attain. Although many studies point out the need for empowering
local communities through participation in the tourism decision-making and planning
process, few practical tools for involving “the larger community in a meaningful way”
have been assessed (Reid, Mair, & George, 2004).
During the past decade, a distinctive set of techniques or approaches has been developed,
in order to enhance and strengthen citizen participation. These techniques open up oppor-
tunities for citizen to demand accountability, transparency and responsiveness from govern-
ment bodies. The underlying idea behind developing these techniques envisages a future
supported by citizen participation where citizens are users and choosers of involvement
designed by others (Cornwall & Gaventa, 2000). New perception about participation,
like the perspective suggested by Lister (1998), provide citizens with actual involvement
rights and defined them as “makers and shapers rather than as users and choosers of invol-
vements”. In this point of view, “the right of participation in decision-making in social,
economic, cultural and political life should be included in the nexus of basic human
rights” (p. 228). Therefore, citizens act as agents and local community can be transformed
into a human agency in which participation is an obligation rather than responsiveness
(Cornwall & Gaventa, 2001).
Applying the principles of such new thinking about citizen, participation and rights at
practical and operational levels in tourism development raises the question of how to
create new and innovative methods involving host communities as a critical agency in
the decision-making, planning and development of tourism destinations; how to create pro-
cesses that can generate opportunity for communities to be involved in a way as to enhance
responsibility as well as responsiveness.
This paper explores the main components of community participation from a planning
perspective with a fresh look into how to integrate communities into tourism planning
through social innovation. The paper first presents a review of literature on tourism plan-
ning, community participation and social innovation. After examining the relationships
between community-oriented planning strategies, elements of social innovation and
regional development, emphasis in the paper shifts to presentation of the case study of
the Guimarães development programme for the European Capital of Culture (ECoC). At
the end, a framework and some implications for developing community-integrated
tourism through social innovation are suggested.
2. Literature Review
2.1. Citizen Participation in Tourism Planning
The critical period in the rise of fundamental theoretical construct of community partici-
pation was in the beginning of the twentieth century, after the Second World War
2 A. Malek and C. Costa
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(Rifkin, Lewando-Hundt, & Draper, 2000). Western perception of technology gap and the
idea that poor people would become more developed by adapting new technologies took
over almost all theories of development in the late 1940s and 1950s. These resource-
based theories also known as “technocratic models” have been developed to understand
how organizations achieve sustainable competitive advantages (Conner, 1991). Techno-
cratic models emphasize deterministic and positive approaches and indicate a passive
role for most people in poor countries who would have technological innovations delivered
to them or be compelled by government to contribute to the national flows. As a result of
this point of view, community development was introduced as an important approach to
rural development and was mainly linked to government policies (Catley, 1999).On the
other hand, this approach had some serious disadvantages in practice, given that in commu-
nity development approaches, communities are assumed to be a homogenous group of
people who have similar needs, wants and demands, which form pluralist involvement in
communities whose diverse interest groups try to influence outcomes in a pluralist arena.
While in fact, community participation is a process that involves diverse social and cultural
groups in a common issue or project at the community level. This approach combines com-
mitment to “difference” and “unity” in the same community effort. It builds upon familiar
steps in the participat ion process but practices them in multicultural ways (Che ckoway &
Richards-Schuster, 2003). An additional shortcoming of this approach was the one-way,
top-down connection between government and rural populations. Eventually, community
participation lost its credibility as a development approach due to its narrow view of par-
ticipation and ineffectiveness in transforming rural communities (Cohen & Uphoff,
1980). Con sequently, tourism literature has called for implementation of an approach
that considers more active involvemen t of locals in development issues, since local resi-
dents are seen as a key resource in sustaining the product of tourism destinations particu-
larly in rural areas (Hardy, Beeton, & Pearson, 2002).
Long story short, the concept of community participation has been introduced in the
tourism development proces s from the western world, as a means to reject unfair
decision-making, attain more equal distribution of the benefits and satisfy the local commu-
nity in better ways (Brohman, 1996). The reasons behind emerging community partici-
pation in the tourism development process have been well discussed and rehearsed in the
tourism literature. For example, Cole (2006) clarified that tourism as a service-based indus-
try is extremely dependent on the support and co-operation of host communities. Dogra and
Gupta (2012) also believe that in the tourism development context, community partici-
pation acts like a backbone of a destination. Accordingly, Murphy (1985) and D’Amore
(1983) illustrated that service is the key to the hospitality atmosphere and community par-
ticipation can result in an increased social carrying capacity. Tosun and Timothy (2003)
further argue that community participation can add potential values to the democratization
process and has the ability to increase awareness, concern and interest in local and regional
issues, because the local community is more likely to know what will work and what will
not within local conditions.
Meanwhile, it is notable that among the supporters of participatory planning in tourism
development, Murphy (1985) is the favourite point of intersection with the literature.
Murphy’s(1985) argument is concerned with the notion that authorities and experts
cannot determine the host community’s interests, opinions and priorities. He also believed
that the potential social benefits of tourism development can be simply overcome by invol-
ving communities in the consultation and planning process of tourism destinations. There-
fore, in order to reduce tourism planning flaws, more focus should be put on the inhabitants
of a destination.
Integrating Communities into Tourism Planning 3
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This article adds further support to the necessity of participatory planning in tourism,
arguing that although citizen participation is an indispensable instrument in social, political,
economic and administrative affairs, it is especially important for tourism, taking into
account the industry and its distinguished characteristics. Community participation is a
vital element in the implementation of tourism plans and strategies first of all because
tourism is fragmented; it is made up of various sectors and sub-industries and since no
business or governmental establishment can operate in isolation (Gunn, 1988,p.272),devel-
opment of collaboration and coordination mechanisms among government organizations,
between the public and the private sectors, and with local community is essential for the
highly fragmented tourism industry (Inskeep, 1991). Second, planning for physical tourism
development and for the use and conservation of natural resources increases the potential
for community conflict and a participatory method can eliminate constraints and barriers to
growth and to provide a better problem-solving and implementation process by properly
including community perspectives (Mcdonough, Russell, Nancarrow, & Burban, 2002;
Thompson, Elmendorf, McDonough, & Burban, 2005). The socio-economic dynamic of
tourism is another important distinguished characteristic of this industry, which has proven
to be one of the most effective means to drive job creation and economic development in
local communities (World Tourism Organisation, 2011).
The community-oriented approach is a widely accepted theory (Gunn, 1994; Inskeep,
1994) that facilitates the implementation of principles of sustainable development by dis-
tributing local control of development, consensus-based decision-making and fair flow of
benefits to all those affected (Tosun, 2006). Frameworks have been also developed to
extend the approach of community participation in tourism development, which can be
used to assist to decide on appropriate plan for enhancing community involvement
(Okazaki, 2008). Beside s, attempts were also made by various scholars (Franklin &
Ebdon, 2004; Glaser & Denhardt, 1999; Gurwitt, 1992; Saltzstein, 2003, Simonsen &
Robbins, 2000) to illustrate how the community approach might be achieved in practice.
In this regard, various academics and practitioners acknowledge that community partici-
pation can be viewed from at least two perspectives: participation in the decision-making
process and participation in tourism benefits sharing (Höckert, 2009; Michael, 2009;
Wang & Wall, 2006). However, the relationships between these two perspectives are far
from clear (Okazaki, 2008; Tosun, 2006). According to Timothy (1999), participation in
the decision-making process generally refers to balanc ing power in decision-making,
which means empowering local residents to decide their expectations and concerns for
tourism. On the other hand, participation in tourism benefits sharing is related to spreading
the benefi ts of tourism development projects such as increasing incomes, employment and
education of locals (Brohman, 1996). Yet, it is worth mentioning that participation in
decision-making does not guarantee benefits (Blackstock, 2005; Li, 2006). Besides, a com-
munity can receive fair and satisfactory benefits from tourism even with no active partici-
pation in decision-making (Li, 2006 ; Wang & Wall, 2005).
A
glance through the literature has described a variety of potential challenges faced by
the concept of community-based tourism. To cope with such challenges, scholars have pro-
posed a range of alternative frameworks. The Community Benefit Tourism Initiative devel-
oped by Simpson (2008), for example, is a framework that focuses on the transformation of
benefits to a community regardless of size, location, wealth level, participation, involve-
ment, ownership or control (Iorio & Wall, 2012 ). Another effort was also made by the Euro-
pean Commission through the development of a European Tourism Indicators System for
sustainable management at destination level, wh ich is a set of indicators, a toolkit and a data
set designed to be used by tourism destinations as an instrument to monitor, manage and
enhance their sustainability performances. By following an action-based approach and a
4 A. Malek and C. Costa
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