As noted earlier, when Regional Tourism Organisations (RTOs) were established in the late 1980s to promote and market regions, they operated closely with TLAs. To begin with, many RTOs had broad ranging responsibilities and widely representative
30
Defined in the Local Government Act 2002 as the freedom to undertake any action or make any decision which is not specifically excluded by law or central authority.
31
This Act was amended in December 2012, under the Local Government Act 2002 Amendment Act 2012, and is addressed in greater depth in Chapter Nine of this thesis. Although this amendment occurred too late to be incorporated into this thesis, it is nonetheless important to acknowledge the implications of this Amendment Act for local government, and on the way in which local government may or may not undertake tourism-related activities within its constituencies. The purpose of the Amendment Act was to explicitly remove the ‘wellbeing powers’ of the 2002 Act, and to include a more prescriptive and fiscally focused ‘statement of purpose’ for local government in New Zealand. See Section 9.6 in Chapter Nine of this thesis for a more detailed discussion.
management boards including representatives from local government, the tourism industry, businesses and community groups. Subsequently, free-market influences during the 1990s saw RTOs restructured into smaller, more professional boards that tended to be independent of, but still accountable to, local authorities and chaired by
acknowledged leaders from tourism and other industries (Kearsley, 1997).
In 1997, under the guidance of the industry and government agencies, the roles and functions of RTOs were further clarified and 26 regional bodies were designated as RTOs, each with an associated lower tier of District Tourism Organisations (DTOs). Further revisions of the RTO roles and responsibilities followed in 2001 with the release of the New Zealand Tourism Strategy 2010. Contained within this national strategy were 15 recommendations relating directly to RTOs. This, in turn, prompted the formation of a national body for RTOs: Regional Tourism Organisations of New Zealand (RTONZ).
The release of the New Zealand Tourism Strategy 2010 in May 2001 provided RTOs (as well as other stakeholders) with a clearer directive regarding their collective roles and responsibilities in achieving the overarching objective of sustainable tourism. In June 2002, a ‘RTO Response to the NZTS 2010 – Stage 1’ was published with a focus on RTO roles, linkages with government and Māori tourism partnerships. This initial review has since been strengthened by a more recent review of the collective New Zealand RTO sector: ‘RTONZ Strategic Plan 2003–2006’. This review, commissioned by RTONZ, was completed in May 2003 and provided RTOs with a clearly articulated position from which to lead national tourism strategy implementation.
Although RTOs vary largely in scale and structure, nearly all are defined by the following common key goal: “to grow domestic and international visitor expenditure in the regions, [and] to provide sustainable economic, environmental, social and cultural benefits to [the] local community” (RTONZ Strategic Plan 2003–2006, May 2003: 3). Thus, the key mandate of RTOs has been to promote tourism at a regional level, with their primary responsibility being destination marketing. To achieve this, RTOs commonly liaise and
form alliances with tourism-related organisations both within and outside their region32. The potential cost efficiencies resulting from pooling of resources is a key benefit of this form of collaboration, and there are additional benefits in terms of strengthening the market profile of smaller RTO areas. As macro-regional marketing alliances continue to emerge, these tend to be based on touring routes, or ‘communities of interest’ rather than TLA boundaries. The utilisation of a macro-regional marketing alliance in the case study location, known under the moniker of the ‘Alpine Pacific Triangle’, is a defining feature of the Hurunui District tourism product throughout the 1990s and early 2000s.
To varying degrees the more active RTOs are now becoming increasingly involved in aspects of regional tourism planning, although these do not constitute comprehensive regional tourism planning strategies. RTOs are, by their very nature, promotional bodies rather than planning agencies. As such, there is an implicit requirement for a partnership approach to destination management in which the growth and development imperative of the industry is moderated by the planning and regulatory functions of TLAs. This requirement for TLA involvement in destination management is noted by Memon et al. (2005), who argue that although RTOs are clearly identifiable within the national tourism strategy as the key bodies with regional tourism as their core business, this does not necessarily make them the most appropriate base for addressing the wider requirements for regional destination management. Such responsibility falls more logically to TLAs, with whom organisational capacities, planning mechanisms and legislative authority exist presently.
4.8
Conclusion
As argued here, the role of government in tourism development was radically
restructured during the 1980s and 1990s. These changes were inspired by a neoliberal ideology to deregulate the New Zealand economy and to restructure the state sector and local government, ultimately including the tourism industry. While these reforms inspired by a neoliberal political ideology have proved beneficial in facilitating significantly
increasing international visitor numbers to New Zealand, the planning capability of central, regional and local government was hollowed out as a result of this period of
32
wide-ranging economic and political reforms. Consequently, the recent geography of tourism in New Zealand has been, until the late 1990s, shaped largely by market forces rather than by inter-sectoral collaborative strategic planning. More recently, however, public sector policy initiatives indicate an ideological shift towards a more active role for government, particularly at the local/regional level, in managing tourism development in partnership with the private sector. It is anticipated that this devolved tourism planning mandate will foster longer-term strategic and collaborative planning of the sector to steer the scale, type and contribution of tourism development to sustainable community wellbeing.
The multiscalar attribute of the new regionalism policies, however, also presents a complex and potentially unwieldy planning framework from the stance of stakeholders, planners and tourism practitioners. The challenge for regional tourism planning and development in the context of sustainable community development, therefore, is to reconcile issues of democracy and economic rationality in the planning process; overcome discrepant policy goals in the area of regional development; foster collaboration and co-operation between potential tourism rivals; and facilitate the alignment of multiple tourism ‘visions’ toward a common goal, so that broader regional development and sustainable community objectives can be achieved. Whether or not tourism is able to deliver on the promises of the new regionalism, and whether or not policies of the new regionalism are able to deliver on promises of regional economic development and sustainable communities, however, remains to be seen.
Chapter 5
Research Methods
5.1
Introduction
The purpose of this chapter is to describe and discuss the data gathering procedures utilised in this doctoral research. The research approach described in this chapter is focused on investigating decision-making and power relations relating to the changing role of local government and regional tourism development in the Hurunui District, New Zealand. This changing role of agency is examined within the context of neoliberalism- inspired public policy ideologies, and recognises the spatial and political contingency associated with the research environment. This chapter thus describes the research approach adopted within this thesis, details the reasons behind the selection of the research strategy, data collection techniques and procedures for analysis.
The research strategy selected to achieve this aim was a single case study of the use and potential of tourism to contribute to territorial authority (i.e., local government)
development objectives in the Hurunui District (North Canterbury, New Zealand). This case study setting includes the iconic North Canterbury tourist destination of Hanmer Springs. This case study approach is framed within an interpretative social sciences methodological paradigm, and seeks to integrate a New Regionalism and Foucauldian perspective for the purposes of analysis. As per the methodological literature, a qualitative research methodology is employed in order to accommodate the need for ‘empathetic understanding’ and ‘appreciative accuracy’ associated with the interpretative paradigm (Jennings, 2010). The primary research method was a series of 35 semi-
structured interviews with key informants from 19 agencies, organisations and
stakeholder groups. These interviews took place between July 2008 and June 2009. This was complemented with participant observation fieldwork and document analysis in order to address issues of reliability and validity.
This chapter is structured as follows. The initial sections of this chapter provide a critique of the case study approach as a research strategy, and a discussion of the interpretative
social sciences methodological paradigm utilised in this doctoral research. A discussion of qualitative methodology and its appropriateness for building grounded theory in case study settings is then presented. Finally, the specific research methods employed in this doctoral research are described and discussed.