Tourism development in rural and remote areas: build it and they may not come!

Abstract

This paper provides an overview of tourism planning approaches for rural and remote areas. Tourism 'plans' applying to rural and remote destinations in Australia are analysed. The findings suggest that different, and often competing, approaches are applied to the same destinations by tourism marketing organisations, local government, and natural resource managers. There appears to be little flexibility in the approaches taken by each of these, resulting in 'one size fits all' planning templates. In particular, there are a limited range of methods used to gain and apply stakeholder input. There also appears to be poor application of research in the development of plans and regulations. A tourism planning model is proposed which seeks to achieve a more holistic approach to planning for tourism in rural and remote areas by balancing the demands of the tourists with the aspirations of a community and the protection of environmental values.