
HI6006 Competitive Strategy Editing Service
Delivery in day(s): 4
Tourism is one of the lucrative businesses worldwide and there is a need to analyze the different aspects of tourism development for better growth. This essay will focus on the Maldives as the tourist destination region under assessment in relation to the Leiper’s Whole Tourism System. The theories that will be used in the essay will be butler’s theory while the models that will be used will be the Whole TourismEngineering System Model. The essay will argue that the Leiper’s Whole Tourism System model is applicable in understanding the practical aspects of tourism development, operations and management at Maldives.
Tourism in Maldives has been in the global scene since 1970s and the first traveler resort was set up in 1972. Before then, the Maldives was practically obscure to the tourism industry. By the late 197Os, worldwide tourism had turned into an imperative source of funds for the Maldives region. The air travel expansion greatly helped in the expansion of tourism in Maldives. For effective advancement of the business, the government of the Republic of Maldives set up the Department of Tourism which is in charge of supervision, coordination and maintaining tourism standards in the region. Various small, uninhabited island were chosen and rented to resort financial investors to construct resorts. This was known as the resort islands tourist development policy (Carlsen, 2006).
As a result of this policy, the Maldives could lessen the social expense of tourism. For instance, prostitution, both male and female, was seen identified with tourism resorts. Moreover, it is guaranteed that the demonstration impacts of the consumption designs of tourists create new tastes and improves the local interest for outside buyer items which is not promptly quantifiable, but a deplete on the remote trade of a developing nation. In any case, it could be contended that this impact is insignificant on account of the Maldives as 70% of the populace lives outside Male atoll. In any case, it is possible that there might have been some exhibit impacts penetrating to Male. Absence of adequate information counteracts estimation of import spillages because of these demonstration impacts. Moreover, without this detachment, culture stun could have been normal from presenting travelers with various thoughts, propensities, and requirements. Social stun can prompt the crumbling of the social texture in a nation, a breakdown of lawfulness, and conceivable political and monetary fiasco. The strategy of confinement of remote visitors in the Maldives has decreased the danger of such a chain of event.
According to Backer and Hing (2016), tourists visit different locations to search for interactions with features of a place, the place characteristics and have leisure experiences. In Maldives, tourists are attracted by the warm and tropical climate of the region.The region has both low daytime and evening temperatures which results to cool evenings and warm daytimes. The sea breezes from the sea further contribute to the relaxing weather which most tourists seek. People also visit Maldives because of the sun since it provides a wide daylight area. The many allots makes the Maldives an enticing spot to visit in view of the expansive regions that are immaculate by man and sightseers can go to private atolls to see, feel and hear undisturbed nature, alone and without anyone else. The different fish species and other water creatures (more than 1000 species) are an extraordinary fascination and take into account the well-known tourism exercises of swimming, fishing and diving. The Indian Ocean tides during rainstorms have influenced this abundance of fish from minor shrimp beautiful sharks and fish (Shakeela, 2016). Maldives is also a peaceful region with no cases of political instability which is also another factor that attracts tourists. This is owing to the fact that most tourists visiting the region are often looking for a place to relax and enjoy nature. Moreover, the economy of the country is quite favorable which makes it affordable for most of the tourists.
Since Maldives is a travel generating region, a significant piece of the Maldivian tourist industry, particularly tour operations that are bundled, is organized by operators who are transnational. According to Leiper's model of Whole Tourism System, a travel generating region is a region that motivates individuals to develop the longing to travel (Backer and Hing, 2016). Packaged tour operations by agencies are a focal component in foreign tourism to the Republic of Maldives. The major tour operators have their home office in the developed nations. Maldives, as a less-developed nation (LDC) is subject to these mass traveler operators who have some capacity to guide the stream of tourists to a specific nation or area. Their watchfulness can influence the resort limit usage. Most resorts in the Maldives have specific connections with at least one of these global tour operators. These operators thusly decide the predominant nationalities utilizing a specific resort island.
Asia and the Pacific are the main provider of tourists to the Maldives, representing around 49% of tourists as indicated in Figure 1.0 below. Europe is also a main source of tourists with a percentage of 43%.Tourist entries from America, Africa and Middle East have declined significantly as of late. Asia is, alongside Europe, the most essential wellspring of vacationers for the Maldives. Most of the Asian tourist’s visit Maldives are small businesspeople who come to buy electrical and material things and after that exchanged at a benefit. Such guests do not remain on the resort islands but in Male, with companions or relatives, or in little visitor houses (frequently in unregistered spots to maintain a strategic distance from Maldivian government charges). While they do not bring much foreign exchange to the tourism part, they benefit the trade segment of the Maldives.
Figure 1.0.Maldvine Tourists Market Share
(Retrieved from: https://www.hoteliermaldives.com/tourism-markers the-maldivian-tourism-industry-2015-in-survey/)
Role of resorts in the Maldives
Tourists visiting Maldives are particularly impressed by the convenience offered by the resorts. These resorts serve as the tourism industries which according to Leiper’s WTS model, are the organizations that influence the activities of tourists. The rooms in every resort are for the most part designed to look like local lodging, with coral for the dividers and palm leaves for the material. Restaurants, bars, and different facilities, built comparably, are in a focal complex in the resort. Facilities are self-contained since each resort has its own generator, water supply, radio-phone, a little harbor for mooring, and its own speedboats to transport visitors to Male, to the air terminal, or to different islands (Ahmed, 2018). Since the resorts were at first possessed by the government, the funding to support resorts' development came fundamentally from the government’s financial plan. In any case, from 1978 onwards, recently settled private business endeavours began giving working and value money to tourism. Foreign investment is as often as possible requested by local resort owners, but profit settlements by foreign financial decision making investors are uncontrolled. The development of resorts is linked to butler’s theory which argues that in the involvement stage, there is emergence of tourism facilities that directly affect tourism although they may not be the main tourist attraction aspects (Butler, 2015). This may include guest houses.
Although Maldives has a long way to go in attaining sustainable tourism, the environmental sustainability principle is evident in the region. The Government of the Maldives has created enactment so as to control resorts development in the region. While setting up a resort, an Environmental Impact Assessment ought to be done with a specific end goal to evaluate the ecological impacts the advancement may have on the indigenous habitat. However, this is frequently directed by the engineers as opposed to a government official, resulting to numerous conceivably harsh resort outlines being endorsed without investigation (Scheyvens, 2011). Enactment restricts the most extreme developed zone to 20% of the aggregate land zone and all rooms should face the shoreline, five straight meters of shoreline line must be allocated to every visitor in front of their rooms where just 68 percent of the shoreline length can be allotted to visitor rooms as 20 percent must be apportioned to public use and twelve percent left as public space. This has resulted to the dissatisfaction of the local people since they are made to experience physical changes that they may not approve of. This is in line with butler’s theory of evolution of tourism where he states that such occurrences are bound to happen in the development stage. The local people therefore end up not benefitting which is also linked to butler’s theory (Butler, 2015).
Tourism is one of the main sources of income for many countries particularly when foreign tourists are involved. Based on the content discussed in this essay, it is evident that Maldives attracts many foreign tourists with a reduced number of local tourists. Moreover, the natural factors are the major aspects increasing the attractiveness of the region to tourists. This implies that there are no secondary tourism attractions in the region. Tourism in Maldives also lacks social and economic significance since the local people do not benefit from the tourism. There is also an emergence of secondary tourism facilities which are the resorts. The findings also indicate that Maldives is a resource Island. Resort tourism in a small island can restrain opportunities for local financial advancement as communities cannot simply profit by the introduced infrastructure or create small businesses which directly tap into the business. Islands likewise have limited natural resources which can without much of a stretch be abused and lessened if development is not naturally practical. The misuse of the indigenous habitat can in the long haul, bring about expanding financial misfortune. On account of the Maldives, desalination and bottled water imports have had to substitute the drained crisp water supplies, which can turn out to be highly costly. With this main findings, it is evident that butler’s theory is applicable for Maldives region since the Maldives region exhibits the characteristics of the stages of the tourism evolution as discussed in butler’s theory.
1. Ahmed, M. (2018). Guesthouses in the Maldives: Towards Community-Based Tourism. International journal of innovation and economic development, 4(1), 44-50.
2. Backer, E., & Hing, N. (2016). Whole tourism systems: an academic portrait of Neil Leiper. Anatolia, 28(2), 320-325. doi:10.1080/13032917.2016.1212300
3. Butler, R. (2015). The evolution of tourism and tourism research. Tourism Recreation Research, 40(1), 16-27. doi:10.1080/02508281.2015.1007632
4. Carlsen, J. (2006). Post-Tsunami Tourism Strategies for the Maldives. Tourism Review International, 10(1), 69-79.
5. Scheyvens, R. (2011). The challenge of sustainable tourism development in the Maldives: Understanding the social work and political dimensions of sustainability. Asia Pacific Viewpoint, 52(2), 148-164.
6. Shakeela, A. (2016). The Maldives. Encyclopedia of Tourism, 575-576.