The Essay On Sustainable Operations And Destinations Highlights Their Importance.

How do I feel about sustainability, my home country and future? A good way to start to write about our feelings is to complete the following sentences:

1. a) When I see / hear about this it makes me feel ….
2. b) It is not fair that … because it makes me feel …
3. c) Learning about my activities and impact … makes me feel …

Think about what you already know about the topic?

• When you complete your final draft, carefully edit the content and proof read the grammar
• Set up a study group with other students
• Find several writing resources (librarian will help)
• Find a range of useful online writing resources

Personal Insight:

Individual exercise divided into three (3) parts with focus on:

• personal insight and sustainability
• global challenges in the tourism and hospitality
• the relationship between economics, people & environment
• destination cycle assessment, management & global issues.

Destination Insight:

Case-study and Personal Reflection. Individual task focusing on global & destination issues including:

• how destination managers (council/city/ Regional TourismOrganisation) manage operations, resources & brand image
• personal insights of sustainable management and consumption

Personal Insight

The purpose of this study intends to analyze on the importance of sustainable operations and destinations. Now- a- days, there has been huge concern internationally about the best way to direct sustainable management of the tourism destinations. Sustainable destinations make huge effort to protect the region and its destinations. It mainly assures that the destinations do not lose all of the resources and is damaged for the future earnings. Sustainable operations and destinations management mainly focuses on individual performance of the business, organizations and local authority. Sustainable operations looks towards holistic as well as integrated level in which performance of individual contributes to larger goal of destination (Lohmann & Duval, 2014). The first section reflects on the issues and challenges in sustainable management of National Park in terms of operations, resources and brand image. This section also discusses about how National Park successfully manage relationship between profit, people and planet by using principles of sustainable development. The next section reflects on the insights about future action within Tourism and Hospitality Industry based on the case study ‘Sorry Rocks’. It also highlights on my personal insights about two problems that include sustainable management and responsible consumption.

The traditional owners of Uluru- Kata Tjuta National Park – the Anangu people and Parks Australia usually share decision-making for management of park that is identified as World Heritage area. This joint management of park usually brings together scientific as well as cultural knowledge, various governance processes and interweaves law systems of non-indigenous and indigenous people. The management plan and partnership embraces challenge, builds lessons and also identifies goodwill of joint management partners for looking after park. The management plan usually covers certain issues that include- cultural heritage as well as natural resource management, visitors to this park and mutitjulu community and administrative matters (Mitchell, Wooliscroft & Higham, 2013). The vital problems and challenges that the operators face in managing this National Park are described below-

Operations-The operators of this park face several issues relating to sustainable operations and management of Uluru- Kata Tjuta National Park. The staffs of park obtains instructions in form of social behavior, which in turn impact work practices of Anangu. The operators face limitations regarding traditional use of this park. For the aboriginal park operators who view aboriginal culture as responsive as well as adaptable but values conservation as means to provide basis for sustainable utilization of resources that includes- traditional assumptions about the protected areas increases complex issues (Mowforth & Munt, 2015). They also faces issues regarding management of cultural property of this park. The joint management face issues regarding managing visitors and maintaining law. For keeping law straight, the operators are pressurized to provide assurance that the knowledge is not conveyed to wrong persons and visitors do not attain that accessibility to scared sites. The park management face problems on issuing and cancelling of permits if the operators do not meet necessary conditions.

Destination Insight

Resources-Several problems also occur for the Anangu regarding management of park resources. The Anangu faces problems in making the visitors understand about the importance of landscape and provide information regarding features of landscape, ecology, plants and proper utilization of park areas (Getzner et al., 2014). These operators believe that the visitors understanding park could be enhanced by giving information about how traditional owners utilize resources of park. The Park management face issues relating to proper integration of land management models. They uses ecosystem models that seek in preserving biological communities involving humans and natural process namely fire. Adoption of this land management model create challenges behind present system of zoning the protected areas.

Brand Image- Nelson and Serafin (2013) opines that branding can be utilized as strategic tool to reposition the destination. Any destination that requires to rebrand usually has to deal with issues relating to brand image before any activities of rebranding take place. Branding includes development of new commodities, positioning as well as repositioning of existing commodities with respect to existing target markets, thereby reviving destination image for appealing to existing markets. The management of this park face issues regarding development of policies as well as regulations in such a way so as to emphasize the behavior of visitors. However, following such policies as well as guidelines becomes difficult for the mangers to maintain brand image of this national park.

Saarinen (2013) states that sustainability relates to triple bottom line with the environmental dimension, social dimension and economic dimension. The sustainable cultural landscapes refers to those that are economically, socially and environmentally durable. The objective of every national park service is to achieve its mission by such a manner as to leave resources of park unimpaired for enjoyment of the future generation. As the interests of this park management is to make significant place of learning as well as knowledge, the services of this national park is to position sustainable landscape stewardship as well as communicate all these practices to the professionals, visitors and other employees. This Uluru- Kata Tjuta National Park Plan mainly outlines the vision as well as strategy for national park service for reducing the environmental affects, combat the impact of change in climate and implement sustainable practices into various operational aspect. This plan mainly emphasizes community engagement, communication and collaboration to widen the opportunities for fostering change (Haynes, 2013).

Nelson and Serafin, (2013) cites that, sustaining national parks with the “triple bottom line” is the major concern of the public park agencies across the globe. This has been the main concern for the public park agencies as they are facing increasing funding challenges, aging infrastructure and higher demand of user. The triple bottom line is the framework that integrates three different dimensions of performance that include- environmental, social and financial. This triple bottom line dimensions are mainly referred to as 3P’s that are- people, profit and planet. This dimension generally captures the core of sustainability by estimating the effect of the park management activities involving both shareholders value and profitability and its environmental, human and social capital. One way by which the park management can manage this landscape is through preserving maintenance and rehabilitation treatment for higher resilience to impact of climate change. Palmer (2016) states that resilience relates to the capacity to endure change or recover from the unexpected affect. The landscape managers can seek to increase ability of this park in order to endure disturbances, stressors and change in environment. The various components of the resilient system including-redundancy, modularity, adaptability, diversity and network connectivity are the key tools that can help to examine vulnerability of landscape and attempt to reduce effect of climate change. It is mainly intended to motivate the people’s thought about sustainable practices and different ways where cultural landscapes can be administered through rehabilitation treatment and preserving maintenance for larger resilience. Its importance can be assessed on the basis of the physical integrity as well as connection with people. Moreover, this aspect can also help the park managers to maximize profitability from increase in visitors (Altman & Allen, 2018).

The Challenges of Sustainable Management of National Park

The economic measures indicate those variables which deal with money flow and bottom line. It focuses on income and expenditure, business climate factors, employment and so on. However, the employment arrangements for the Anangu operating in park can con consider other obligations apart from social and religious by permitting flexibility in the work hours. The environmental measures must represent natural resource measurements and highlight potential impact of its viability (Wearing, Schweinsberg & Tower, 2016). The park management can focus on reducing hazardous waste from parks and bring about change in land utilization. Social variables indicates the social dimensiosn of the region and involve equity and accessibility to social resources. The park management can increase female workforce participation rate for influencing society.

“Sorry Rocks and Tourism of regret” case study has given me the opportunity to investigate the tourists behavior and also certain challenges  that the managers might encounter.   The present challenges generally recommends that we require to reconsider our role as visitors and also our basic understanding about how the future operators might effectively administer sustainable future of destination along with the host community (Stanford & Guiver, 2016). This present case study also provides us the view to focus on landscape, understand about various ways of interaction with visitors, and care for natural world.        

It has been predicted by few economists that tourism and hospitality sector in Australia will have high growth  over the next two decades (Tolkach, King & Whitelaw, 2016).  On the contrary, the employment in this industry is forecasted to increase significantly over the next few years. In addition to this, the enterprises operating in this tourism and hospitality industry in Australia is expected to experience shortage of labor in face of industry growth. However, the Australian government must take future actions in order to enhance both retention as well as supply of laborers and skills of these workforce. Besides this, there might be some issues regarding providing skills training specially vocational education and training (VET). For this reasons, the Australian government and the education providers require to collaborate on the actions for providing  suitable skilled laborforce. The park management should focus on promoting this sector through advertisements and provide educational programs to the tourist and hospitality service providers.

Sustainable management

As global tourism sector continues to increase with foreign tourist member has been predicted to reach about 1.5 billion by the year 2020. Sustainable tourism mainly guides the management of resources in that way in which economic, aesthetic and social requirements might be fulfilled while administering ecological processes, cultural integrity and biological diversity. Park Australia face issues regarding sustainable management of tourism and hospitality industry. For this jointly managed park, the park managers face problems in providing business as well as employment opportunities for the relevant aboriginal persons. In fact, they also face problems in managing tourists facilities and services to best standard that highlights status of park and considers national as well as international benchmarks. However, Park Australia should develop as well as adopt management strategies for addressing objectives of sustainable tourism management (Cheng & Wu, 2015). These objectives involve- providing high quality tourists experiences, minimizing tourists impact on cultural values of the commonwealth reserves, achieving economic benefits via tourism for aboriginal people in this jointly managed National Park.

Insights for Future Actions within Tourism and Hospitality Industry

Responsible Consumption

As per Strickland-Munro and Moore (2013), the public sector has the responsibility to motivate responsible visitors consumer behavior and at same time to give target guidance for the park service providers provide service sustainably. As consumption are mutually dependent on production patterns, park operators face problems to produce or provide service in sustainable way. The barriers that occur for the park operators are increase in additional cost of maintaining park resources, lack of proper service quality. The park operators face issues relating to physical infrastructure, resource management and changing behavior of consumers. Owing to this, the park operators must focus on selecting sustainable path of maintaining resources in order to identify and commitment to sustainable consumption path.  They should also concentrate on adopting policy for managing park resources so that the park operators avoid exploitation of resources. In addition to this, they must also focus on advertising methods for shaping the behavior of consumers (Chiu, Lee & Chen, 2014).

Conclusion

From the above discussion, it can be concluded that Anangu and Park management must focus on adopting strategies and policies in order to make sustainable destinations. The park operators have been finding several ways to make sustainable operations in protecting this National park. The joint management are working together in finding innovative ways of interpreting landscape as well as its people. They are also promoting different messages and providing educational programs to the park operators so that they can understand about the importance of park resources. They also adopting policies under the Australian law in order to combat with complex managerial problems relating to sustainable management of destination.  Furthermore, they are also implementing management models for improving sustainable operations.

References

Altman, J., & Allen, L. M. (2018). Living off the land in national parks: issues for Aboriginal Australians. Canberra, ACT: Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research (CAEPR), Research School of Social Sciences, College of Arts and Social Sciences, The Australian National University.

Cheng, T. M., & Wu, H. C. (2015). How do environmental knowledge, environmental sensitivity, and place attachment affect environmentally responsible behavior? An integrated approach for sustainable island tourism. Journal of Sustainable Tourism, 23(4), 557-576.

Chiu, Y. T. H., Lee, W. I., & Chen, T. H. (2014). Environmentally responsible behavior in ecotourism: Antecedents and implications. Tourism management, 40, 321-329.

Getzner, M., Vik, M. L., Brendehaug, E., & Lane, B. (2014). Governance and management strategies in national parks: Implications for sustainable regional development. International Journal of Sustainable Society, 6(1-2), 82-101.

Haynes, C. (2013). Seeking control: Disentangling the difficult sociality of Kakadu National Park’s joint management. Journal of sociology, 49(2-3), 194-209.

Lohmann, G., & Duval, D. T. (2014). Destination morphology: A new framework to understand tourism–transport issues?.

Mitchell, R., Wooliscroft, B., & Higham, J. E. (2013). Applying sustainability in national park management: balancing public and private interests using a sustainable market orientation model. Journal of Sustainable Tourism, 21(5), 695-715.

Mowforth, M., & Munt, I. (2015). Tourism and sustainability: Development, globalisation and new tourism in the third world. Routledge.

Nelson, J. G., & Serafin, R. (Eds.). (2013). National parks and protected areas: keystones to conservation and sustainable development (Vol. 40). Springer Science & Business Media.

Nelson, J. G., & Serafin, R. (Eds.). (2013). National parks and protected areas: keystones to conservation and sustainable development (Vol. 40). Springer Science & Business Media.

Palmer, M. (2016). Sustaining indigenous geographies through world heritage: a study of Ulu?u-Kata Tju?a National Park. Sustainability Science, 11(1), 13-24.

Saarinen, J. (2013). Critical sustainability: Setting the limits to growth and responsibility in tourism. Sustainability, 6(1), 1-17.

Stanford, D., & Guiver, J. (2016). Driving pro-environmental change in tourist destinations: encouraging sustainable travel in National Parks via partnership project creation and implementation. Journal of Sustainable Tourism, 24(3), 484-505.

Strickland-Munro, J., & Moore, S. (2013). Indigenous involvement and benefits from tourism in protected areas: a study of Purnululu National Park and Warmun Community, Australia. Journal of Sustainable Tourism, 21(1), 26-41.

Tolkach, D., King, B., & Whitelaw, P. A. (2016). Creating Australia's National Landscapes: Issues of collaborative destination management. Journal of destination marketing & management, 5(2), 117-132.

Wearing, S. L., Schweinsberg, S., & Tower, J. (2016). Marketing national parks for sustainable tourism. Channel View Publications.