London Tourism Action Plan

Federation University Australia

Tourism Planning and Development

BUTSM 3701

Assessment Task 1: Individual paper

London Tourism Action Plan 2009-13

By: Fung Cheuk Wang, Sherwin                                                        (Word Count: 1247)

1. Executive Summary
2. Brief Description of the plan
3. Who develop the plan and the method used
4. Planning approaches
5. The impact caused by the plan
6. Future aspect
7. References

1. Executive Summary

This report will be focused on the analysis of the London Action Plan 2009-13. In the first part, some basic information about the planner and planning approach will be stated. Suggestions are included on how to enhance the comprehensiveness of the whole action plan. In the second part, I am going to discuss some impacts that the plan ignored. Some ideas on how to address these issues are discussed as well. In the last part, the future aspect and measurement of the plan are described.

1. Brief Description of the plan

As a part of a bigger plan, London Tourism Action Plan 2009-13 is the second phase of the 10-year Tourism Vision. To continue with the establishment from the first action plan, this phase will focus on delivering the proper tourism elements to ensure a successful 2012 London Olympic and Paralympic Games as well as laying the foundations for a post-game tourism legacy.

There are five key themes under the vision:

• A global city
• A high quality visitor experience
• A sustainable and inclusive city
• Professionalism at every level
• Industry support and partnership

The Olympic Game is the key of the whole planning vision since it provides the chance to reinforce its position as a popular global destination. London has the chance to showcase the city to visitors in order to advance London’s brand through the media to the massive global visitors.

1. Who develop the plan and the method used

The Action plan involves a number of governmental organizations, private companies and local authorities in the process of planning, coordinating and delivering tourism activity across London.

[pic 1]

The top layer of the diagram is the highest authorities of the tourism planning in London which includes Promote London Council, Mayor of London and Greater London Authority (GLA). They are responsible for work coordination, capital distribution and strategy monitoring. The lower layers are in charge of the delivery of all marketing and promotional activities related to the Action Plans. The London Development Agency (LDA) is one of the nine Regional Development Agencies in England Funded by central government. The LDA plays the most important role in the process as they manage the jobs, skills and growth. All the marketing campaigns for the capital are funded by the LDA to a not-for-profit public private partnership named London & Partners (a.k.a. Visit London). The LDA had also involve different local authorities in the action plan as some of them lead the local tourism agenda by dedicated staff and budget while others see tourism as part of their wider regeneration or cultural services role. Although tourism industry and partner such as hotel, transportation is providing aid and opinions for the action plan, it did not mention any community consultation from the local residents. The responses from local community on tourist like the issue of carrying capacity and culture shock could affect the core strategy and direction. Changes on the action plan may be made to ease those cultural-social impacts.

Both statutory and non-statutory strategies and plans are created by the Mayor of London. Policy frameworks are delivered to lower layer such as LDA, Visit London and local authorities. Specific marketing, economic, public relation and human resource strategies are developed by relative department or companies following the guideline of the bigger plan. Plan like this could be very economical reasonable but other negative impacts might be omitted. Voices from the local community, environmental organization and tourism labor-force should be consulted in order to enhance its comprehensiveness and sustainability.

1. Planning approaches

The London Tourism Action Plan 2009-13 used mainly economic approach referring to the budget plan below.[pic 2]

Amongst the five key themes in the plan, four of them are focus on how to increase the branding and position as a global tourism destination so that the local economy can be boosted. The only sustainable measure mentioned is to improve the sustainability and environmental performance of London’s visitor economy by advising tourism businesses to support Green Tourism programme. Apart from this measure, it is a purely economic plan created by experts. It aims to maximize the income and jobs opportunity from the 2012 London Olympic Game. The local government highly concerns both the pre-arrival and post-departure strategies. They plan to attract mass tourism by a large campaign of marketing promotion before 2012, making sure tourists receive professional services while in stay and leave with a pleasant experience. However, lacking of sustainability and comprehensiveness become its greatest weakness. Tourism development planning should integrate with other planning so the negative impacts could be minimized. Cultural, social and environmental problems usually arise with tourism development. Understanding systems like political status, local needs and environmental needs is required as a planner.