1. Tools and techniques used in tourism planning include education through interpretation to visitors, the role of tour guides in informing and educating visitors, and self-regulation through tourism codes of conduct. 2. Information technology is increasingly used in tourism planning through tools like GIS which can process geographical and other tourism-related data to produce maps and statistics. 3. Tourism planning aims for sustainability through frameworks like environmentally-led tourism where a high quality tourism experience depends on a high quality environment. The UN provides guidance on measuring and policy instruments to help make tourism more sustainable.

1. TOOLS AND TECHNIQUES
IN TOURISM PLANNING

2. Education
• Used often in relation to providing
information to visitors: lecture like in an on-
board cruise ship, a guide
• Also takes place when a prospective tourist
reads a guidebook or even reads signs in a
museum or zoo for e.g.
• It is conventional to discuss the presentation
of information to visitors in a tourism context
using the term ‘interpretation’

3. INTERPRETATION
• Prentice (1995) defined interpretation as a process of
communicating to people the significance of a place so
that they can enjoy it more, understand its importance
and develop a positive attitude to conservation.
• Interpretation is used to enhance the enjoyment of
place, to convey symbolic meaning and to facilitate
attitudinal or behavioral change.
• More specific aims of an interpretation program are to
‘stimulate, facilitate and extend people’s understanding
of place so that empathy towards conservation,
heritage, culture and landscape is developed’

4. The role of tour guide and
interpretation
• May be the most maligned people in the world of
travel for they are blamed for the problems of travel
(bad weather, traffic jams, etc)
• Shepherds of the industry as they herd tourists around
safely and try to ensure that they return with fond
memories of their holiday
• As Ang (1990) indicated ‘ they exist not merely as a
mouthpiece, mindlessly rattling information or as a
merciless shopping sales person… the job calls for
commitment, enthusiasm and integrity as the entire
experience of the tourist lies in their hands’

5. • Pond (1993) suggested that a tour guide has 5 roles:
leader, educator, public relations representative, host
and conduit.
• Tour guiding, with its key role to inform and educate
visitors, is a part of the process of interpretation
• Guide’s role in relation to the visitor is as follows: telling
(provision of information), selling (interactive
communication that explains and clarifies), participating
(being a part of activity) and delegating (giving
responsibility to some future behavior).
• It is through interpretation process that tour guides can
provide important educational experience for tourists.

6. Self-regulation
Codes, ethics and morals
• Tourism codes involved not just the provision
of information, but are concerned with the
behavior of tourists
• Ethics is concerned with people making
choices and acting in a reasonable manner
and is closely linked to morality where
morality is taken to mean moral judgments,
standards and rules of conduct

7. • Historically, tourism and ethics have not been closely
linked. However tourism appears to be a very
appropriate candidate for ethical scrutiny for it involves
many different players representing different
viewpoints: social, economic, political and
environmental dimensions.
• Ethical dilemmas and conflicts are generally the result
of the interaction of the main players in tourism, that is
the tourist themselves, inhabitants of visited local
areas and the tourism brokers or members of the
tourism industry.
• Tourism codes of conduct have been created as a
response to these ethical dilemmas and the perceived
negative consequences of tourism.

8. Information Technology
• Increasing use of IT in tourism
• IT has been defined as the collective term given to the
most recent developments in the mode (electronic)
and the mechanisms (computers and communication
technologies) used for the acquisition, processing,
analysis, storage, retrieval, dissemination and
application of information (Poon 1993)
• IT covers a larger range of electronic devices including
videotext, teletext, faxes, telephones, teleconferencing,
satellites, mobile phones, computer network and the
Internet (Cooper et al. 1998)

9. • GIS
– basically computerized systems for handling and processing
data
– deal with geographical and other types of data, processing it
to produce maps, graphs, tables and statistics
– can deal with information on the natural resources, human
settlement and cultural resources for tourism (Doswell
1997).
– can show how activities, both tourism and non-tourism are
able to coexist or may be in conflict
– can stimulate a number of possible future scenarios that
can assist in the planning and management process
– particularly useful for data analysis, modeling and
forecasting, MacAdam (1999)

10. Tourism Planning and Sustainability
• Sustainability is often linked to terms such as
green’ tourism and/or ‘ecotourism’
• One perspective of the meaning of sustainable
tourism is that of a sustainable industry of
tourism. In this view, the development of
tourism is one alternative and seen as more
acceptable than other more environmentally
damaging activities such as logging or mining.

11. • Hunter (1996) suggested another form of
sustainable tourism that he termed
‘environmentally-led tourism’ where a quality
tourism experience is equated with a high-quality
environment.
• Hunter suggested another scenario that he termed
‘neotenous’ tourism in which very little or actually
no tourism is permitted. This would be in relation
to particularly environmentally sensitive areas.

12. • The United Nations Environment Programme working in
conjunction with the WTO produced a major document
‘Making Tourism More Sustainable: a Guide for Policy
Makers’ in 2005 which is important because not only
does it provide advice to the tourism planning process
but also gives advice on the actual tools or instruments
that governments can use to help bring about
sustainable tourism
1. Measuring instruments
– Benchmarking
– Identifying the limits of tourism: carrying capacity,
limits of acceptable change

13. 2. Command and control instruments
– Legislation, regulation and licensing
– Land use planning and development control
3. Economic instruments
– Taxes and charges intended to influence behavior of
tourists
– Financial incentives and agreements
4. Voluntary instruments
– Guidelines and codes of conduct
– Auditing and reporting
– Voluntary certification
– Voluntary contributions
5. Supporting instruments
– Infrastructure provision and management
– Capacity building
– Marketing and information services