A systems approach to island tourism destination management

Tourism destination management is an increasingly competitive and complex b usiness involving the coordination of economic, social and geographic eleme nts within a designated tourist area. Traditional research in tourism desti nation management has tended to use a reductionist approach in order to mon itor certain flow variables (visitor numbers, expenditure) or to measure di screte relationships between variables (tourist expenditure and employment, visitor numbers and social impacts). The limitations of this approach in r esearch are now becoming apparent, as tourism development impinges on many elements within a destination, and a new approach to research in tourism de stination management is needed. This paper will provide an overview of systems approaches to tourism destin ation planning and management and describe a systems research approach to i sland tourism destination management. A systems approach to tourism managem ent in small island tourist destinations (less than one million population) using soft systems methodology (SSM) is discussed. It is envisaged that SS M would best be applied to management of island tourism destinations becaus e it can accommodate social and environmental processes, as well as the eco nomic factors that have been the foci of previous research. Furthermore, it is argued that the tourism system is an open system in that it responds to changes in social, natural and economic factors and is evolving toward an increasing state of complexity. Copyright (C) 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.