The Dynamics of Destinations and Tourism
Development
Pietro Beritelli and Christian Laesser
All tourism takes place on land; and yet how little attention is
paid to how that land is protected, planned, developed, and
managed for tourism—that land through which all visitors
ﬂow. (Gunn 1997, p. IX)
Abstract In the last decades, tourist destinations have been conceived as a geographic
area in which tourism takes place and which is supposed to be organized,
coordinated, be made competitive. Experiences from mature destinations such as in
Switzerland show that the territorial concept of the destination fails in practice,
limiting the actors in a self-made mental corset. Our lately applied approach that
sees the destination as a space in which several dynamic visitor ﬂows, each one in a
different maturity stage, take place, allows a more relaxed view on the complex
situation of the destination’s context. The corresponding techniques help entrepreneurs,
tourist organizations, and public authorities to jointly (1) understand the past
development and the current state of the destination, (2) articulate challenges and
identify possible solutions, and (3) prioritize on feasible and useful projects and
initiatives, including investments. In the ﬁrst part of the article we explain the
different perspectives and how the alternative viewpoint helps identify better the
needs of the demand and consequently the requirements for (re-)designing infrastructure
and services. The second part builds on experiences made in the tourist region of
Heidiland, Switzerland. With the help of the new techniques: (1) actors focused
speciﬁcally and unmistakably on the relevant areas of intervention, (2) rapidly agreed
upon key projects in the region, and (3) found how these projects contributed to
current and new visitor ﬂows in the destination. The case presents four different
projects in different maturity stages and highlights the linkages between market
needs, supply-sided collaboration, and the role of the organizations. In the end, the
approach argues for a shift away from ‘one (rather stable) functional space’ to ‘spaces
with multiple dynamic functions’. Consequently, and relating to investments, we
build a case to move from a land-related towards a ﬂow-based approach.
P. Beritelli (*) • C. Laesser
University of St. Gallen, St. Gallen, Switzerland
e-mail: pietro.beritelli@unisg.ch; christian.laesser@unisg.ch
© Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2017
D.R. Fesenmaier, Z. Xiang (eds.), Design Science in Tourism, Tourism on the
Verge, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-42773-7_13
195
Keywords Tourism organizations • Visitor ﬂows • Dynamic models
1 Introduction
What Clare A. Gunn stated in his seminal book “Vacationscape” is an insight that
too often remains uncared in destination management initiatives. Planning, developing,
and managing tourist destinations implies understanding the local and
regional context of the place as well as the dynamics of tourism demand (i.e. the
ﬂows), under which it is exposed to. In a recently developed approach called the
St. Gallen Model for Destination Management (SGDM), we have proposed a six
step heuristic that allows for a better understanding, planning, and for a more
effective management of tourist destinations (Beritelli et al. 2015). Its practical
application has changed our way of conceiving destination marketing and management.
In the past 4 years, we have recognized that even for a country like Switzerland,
one of the cradles of modern tourism in Europe, there is still much left to learn.
In fact, with regard to land use planning and development, the case of Switzerland
presents a very tight, ﬁne-meshed and strictly pursued regulatory environment.
Federal, state (i.e. cantonal), and municipal legislation provides the cornerstones for
structure and land-use plans, all being coordinated with water, landscape, and
nature protection, with homeland preservation, and several other domains that
have to be considered in such a small, diverse, and densely populated country.
Finally, the power of veto against development plans, allows not only adjacent
neighbors but also associations of different kinds to block, delay, and even prevent
rezoning or new constructions (e.g. buildings, leisure areas, attractions).
In sharp contrast to the above, tourism demand in Switzerland faces a high
dynamism and dramatic change. The predominantly domestic visitors that fueled
until the 1990s the engine of rural and mountain tourism, particularly in the alpine
areas, has shifted in terms of generations, motives for leisure travel, activities, and
mobility (for an overview see Laesser and Riegler 2012). What—in terms of tourist
attractions, bed capacities, ski areas, and the like—has been developed and built in
the post-war decades (i.e. 1960–1980s) must be replaced or renewed according to
new needs and standards of the markets. However, relatively high investment and
supply provision costs (e.g. materials, food, salaries) compared to neighboring
countries further aggravate the turmoil of change. In the end, potential investors
may consider different, more attractive alternatives, because
• the regulatory environment is complex, appears lengthy and tedious, and suggests
uncertain outcomes,
• the market risks are considerable (e.g. dynamic demand, seasonality, site-related
context, local and regional history and prospects),
• other investments yield a higher proﬁtability.
In short, Switzerland is a country with mature or declining tourism forms that
faces a difﬁcult, historically grown planning framework. Just as Gunn stated:
“. . .Working with less land and greater restriction of sprawl, European designers
196 P. Beritelli and C. Laesser
and planners have had to use sites over and over again” (Gunn 1997, p. 111). We
believe that other regions of the world are increasingly facing this occurrence.
Hence, and for effective planning and development, the following exemplary
questions are key not only today but especially in the future:
• How can new tourist sites and attractions be planned and developed in a
complex, regulated, and dynamic environment?
• How can ideas and visions be shared and collaboratively realized, in coordination
with existing resources, with a given history of a place, ﬁtting to or even
matching with an incumbent constellation of organizations, businesses, and
actors?
The abovementioned heuristic of the SGDM (Beritelli et al. 2015) has helped in
answering these and more questions derived from the needs of tourist place
development and management.
In this chapter we present some guiding principles that were helpful in applying
the model, and a focus on one case (Heidiland). In so doing, we aim to explain that
1. developing and designing tourism places and destinations requires a detailed
understanding of the mechanisms driving tourist ﬂows,
2. achieving consensus about plans, projects, initiatives is founded on an objective
and speciﬁc way of analyzing and evaluating the current world and future
options,
3. realizing the above builds on shared but also divided, temporally staggered
responsibility of the actors in a tourist destination.
Some guiding principles
Gunn proposed in his book eleven design principles/topics (Gunn 1997, p. 106
ff):
1. functional design (considering structural, physical, and cultural/aesthetic
functionalism)
2. sites, buildings, and spaces (integrating building and landscape architecture,
engineering, interior design, etc.)
3. clustering (grouping of attractions, facilities, and services)
4. suitability (taking care of visitor’s and local’s interests)
5. exposed functionality (supporting the peculiarity of the experience)
6. efﬁciency in the experience (balancing the travel effort and costs with the
received value of experience)
7. sequence and satiety (requiring variety and dramaturgies)
8. order and relativity (causing cooperation among stakeholders)
9. reuse (granting more durability and resilience of the investments)
10. wholeness of human use (leading visitors to meaningful, pleasurable
experiences)
11. innovation and creativity (allowing “the fresh, the sparkling, the new” (Gunn
1997, p. 112).
The Dynamics of Destinations and Tourism Development 197
These design principles particularly ﬁt in with the development and the creation
of a new site or of a new attraction, possibly a new tourist resort or village. They
perfectly serve planners when they consider the main aspects relating to the
speciﬁcations of tourism. Since new sites and resorts may be embedded in a
macro environment of an existing society, a culture with its own history and a
given economic mix of several different activities, actors, and organizations, we
add three precursory ideas pertaining to the latter condition:
1. coincident demand and supply (tourist production)
2. polyvalence and variable geometry
3. ﬂow-based planning and management
It is with the help of these three additional principles that we have gained,
together with different institutions and organizations, a better understanding of
the tourist destination and how it can be further developed. Figure 1 illustrates
our argument. On the left, a planner faces a pure, clean space on which an attraction
with services is supposed to be developed. Applying the 11 principles presented in
“Vacationscape” (Gunn 1997) is a matter of technical performance in accordance to
legislation, local stakeholders’ expectations and, of course, the current and
prospected visitor needs. The complexity of the local and regional environment,
the dynamics of demand, the history of the community, and many more ‘disturbing’
variables such as gravitational effects from other sites, attractions, and destinations
produce a situation that looks more like the one on the right side of the ﬁgure:
varied, multiple, volatile and hence blurred, fuzzy, chaotic.
The following paragraphs present the three principles, supported by various
practical cases.
2 Coincident Demand and Supply: Tourist Production
Demand and supply form together a productive process that results in tourist
experiences. The ﬁrst conceptual approaches on this claim were presented
40 years ago (e.g. Gunn 1972; Leiper 1979; Miossec 1977; Pearce 1979). Later,
Fig. 1 Clean, new, static, controllable (left) versus exploited, complex, dynamic, ﬂuid (right)
environment. Source: own illustration
198 P. Beritelli and C. Laesser
related thoughts hypothesized a tourist as a producer (Smith 1994), the conditional
presence of the visitor that generates tourism (Kaspar 1995), or the incorporation of
the tourist factor in (tourist)-economic production (Maggi 2014). Yet, what today in
practice and research is commonly understood as tourist co-production does not
seem to be consequently applied. We think that prevalent mental models (Gentner
and Stevens 1983), thus forms of presenting and visualizing how demand and
supply meet or how tourist production occurs, do not really get to the heart of the
matter and lead to problematic interpretations. Figure 2 illustrates three different
examples of mental models.
– The ﬁrst one originates from micro-economics and serves as an explanation of
quantitative demand and supply side properties, eventually producing a point of
encounter with a speciﬁc price. The underlying aspects of demand preferences
and the utility (value) provided by the supply remain a generic, undifferentiated
domain.
– The second one reﬂects a marketer-based view. Here, products or services are
created, assembled, or formed in advance. The supplier then seeks ﬁnding a
matching market or segment; ideally at a proﬁt generating price, through an
effective distribution, and with a convincing communication strategy. Obviously,
matching works both ways, i.e. when a supplier recognizes a need from
potential customers and then develops a new product or service responding to
those needs. Anyway, in this conception, supply and demand constitute two parts
of the market, two sides of the coin.
We think that these mental models suggest two false implications; namely,
(1) that supply and demand could be seen separately and (2) that matching supply
with demand is a matter of best-ﬁtting management and marketing on the
supply side.
Fig. 2 Three different pictures, three different mental models, three different worlds of implications.
Source: own illustration
The Dynamics of Destinations and Tourism Development 199
Yet, tourism experiences only occur when the visitor is at his destination,
generating ‘his product’ and when consumption takes place, causing transactions
and other side effects such as social and environmental impacts. The foundation of
when and where consumption takes place lies essentially in individual spatial
behavior (Hyde and Laesser 2009). Tourist co-production requires a representation
that directly visualizes the coincidence between supply and demand, and—since
travel experiences assemble a fragmented service and value chain—on an interorganizational
scale. The example at the right side of Fig. 2 ﬁts better to what really
happens in tourism. Visitors activate a chain of services and experiences, causing
ﬂows (Reinhold et al. 2015) that connect networks of traveler activities, for
instance, with sales and distribution (economic transactions), partnership and
coordination (local supply), and marketing and promotion (communication) networks
(Stienmetz and Fesenmaier 2015). Figure 2 illustrates three different mental
models that lead to three completely different ways of understanding how supply
and demand are supposed to relate to each other.
Particularly, the example at the right side differs fundamentally, because it
implies in a dynamic and complex environment that:
– Demand is the source of production—Supply responds accordingly and ideally
as a perfect stage for production.
– Demand (repeatedly) conﬁgures supply chains—Supply chains are the result of
effective and efﬁcient collaboration in response to the visitors.
– Demand and supply cannot really be seen as given, ﬁxed constructs. Neither can
they be intentionally matched with each other. In contrast, supply ﬂourishes as
demand evolves and stabilizes for a particular time (Cohen 1972; Plog 1973)—
Visitor ﬂows are temporary in nature.
– Supply survives and generates proﬁt thanks to the ﬂows of demand—The more
numerous and diverse are the ﬂows, the broader is the income generation
portfolio (segments) for the suppliers.
– Demand can be inﬂuenced by supply only indirectly—Flows and destinations
are difﬁcult to manage (Pearce and Scha¨nzel 2013). It is more appropriate to
speak of creating, shaping, and adjusting experience stages and of stimulating
demand.
Recent empirical research supports this view by localizing visitor ﬂows and
experiences on maps (Espelt and Benito 2006; Leask 2010; Shoval and Raveh
2004; Van der Ark and Richards 2006). GPS-tracking aided research in tourism
allows further analyses of visitor proﬁles and activities (Shoval and Isaacson 2007,
2010). Every visitor ﬂow is to a certain degree homogeneous, in the sense that it
describes activities and proﬁles of visitors (Hwang et al. 2006; Shih 2006) for a
given time, in a particular space (Bowden 2003; Wu and Carson 2008). Figure 3
illustrates how different kinds of visitor ﬂows (left side) constitute the lion’s share
of tourism across the world. Tourists visit places and attractions; they activate
services and spend their time and money in (more or less) tourist places; and they do
this in signiﬁcant numbers, otherwise suppliers would not have the opportunity to
accordingly plan their capacities, to collaborate with other partners along the supply
200 P. Beritelli and C. Laesser
chain, and to foresee seasonal and segment-related demand requirements. As long
as numerous and different ﬂows of tourists comprising a signiﬁcant number of
individuals visit a place, an attraction, a resort, or else, the suppliers can plan,
develop, adapt, (re-)create, or retreat. Hence, putting oneself in the visitor’s shoes
and understanding the underlying social forces of visitor ﬂows, is the ﬁrst and
foremost task to do, in order to understand the current situation (actual visitor ﬂows)
and to envision a realistic future (new visitor ﬂows). While the resulting picture
may look chaotic and uncontrollable (right side), it allows a more speciﬁc understanding
of each ﬂow and of how it forms, multiplies, and eventually will die.
The SGDM heuristic asks ﬁve questions with the aim of distinguishing visitor
ﬂows and thus tourism forms in a particular space and time so that purposeful
actions by the actors and organizations can be derived.
– Who? Which visitors?
– Why? What motivates them? What stimulates them?
– What? What do they do?
– Where? Where do they come from? Where do they stay? Where do they
continue to?
– When? When does the ﬂow occur? How does it distribute, e.g. in a year?
A further relevant aspect is the stage of development of each ﬂow. In fact, every
ﬂow has its own dynamics of development and an own life-span. For instance, in
one place there may be tourists (even together with locals) who walk the same
hiking route or have visited the same festival for decades while in the same time of
the year there may be a niche of sport adventure tourists (e.g. bungee jumping,
canyoning) who appeared recently and seems to have quickly reached its maturity
stage in terms of visitor numbers and expenditures. Figure 4 presents some
Fig. 3 Signiﬁcant, repetitive, and hence strategic visitor ﬂows (SVF). Source: Beritelli
et al. (2013), 2013 Kanton Solothurn; Cnes/Spot Image; GeoContent; Google
The Dynamics of Destinations and Tourism Development 201
examples of reconstructed and validated ﬂows by local informants (i.e. front-line
employees in tourist enterprises and other organizations who intuitively know about
the visitors). The ﬂows visualize movements and tourist spaces, in some cases with
highlighted attractions or trails. The legends describe the ﬂows’ proﬁles. Starting
from this tool, actors can (1) discuss and evaluate the different forms of tourism
objectively and speciﬁcally, (2) derive implications for speciﬁc actions thanks to a
ﬁne-grained analysis, and (3) identify mechanisms that inﬂuence the demand ﬂows.
This last aspect is further detailed in Chap. 4.
3 Polyvalence and Variable Geometry
Often, visitor ﬂows occur simultaneously and (sometimes partly, sometimes fully)
in the same places. “A simple activity such as camping has myriad offshoots,
including wilderness camping, backpack camping, boat camping, tent camping,
and RV camping” (Gunn 1997, p. 45). Other scholars have made similar observations
quite early (Dredge 1999; Miossec 1977; Tremblay 1998). Visualizing simultaneity,
co-occurrence, and overlaps poses, more than a technical problem, a
challenge for the reader and his interpreting and envisioning capacity. Or in other
words, actors, including planners and developers, must be receptive to multiplicity,
diversity, and a great amount of variability for any given project. This somehow
Fig. 4 Examples of strategic visitor ﬂows (SVF). Source: own illustrations; graphics ©2013, 2014
TerraMetrics, maps ©2013, 2014 Google
202 P. Beritelli and C. Laesser
contradicts a traditional planning philosophy that prefers to work in a clearly
delimited and static framework. Constructing the variable geometry
(i.e. overlapping some purposefully selected or even all the ﬂows for a given
place or destination) and using it as a further tool for strategic discussions, has
proven to be helpful (Beritelli et al. 2014). It allows
– highlighting polyvalent areas and spaces (e.g. attractions that serve different
ﬂows with different means),
– recognizing strategically less tourist areas (i.e. where no signiﬁcant ﬂows
appear),
– connecting the examined area with adjacent areas and destinations and therefore
taking into consideration the conditions of a wider environment.
Producing variable geometries and strategizing is the second step in the SGDMheuristic.
Figure 5 presents two examples of variable geometry with rather numerous
visitor ﬂows on the same map in a more top-down approach, Fig. 6 builds on
one new project connecting two major attractions and affecting the ﬂows of those
attractions (bottom-up approach). Points 1–4 in Fig. 5 present selected topics
discussed by the stakeholders in two Swiss destinations. In the mountain destination
of Leukerbad, for instance, the variable geometry of the current ﬂows in the village
pointed to an inconvenient routing of ﬂows around the village center caused by a
scant utilization of the land areas and a slow depletion of the shopping zone in the
village center (see dotted line, point 1). Another challenge is presented by point
2, where the quick access to the base terminal of the cable car was not possible, due
to a missing elevator from the parking lots to the base terminal. Instead, many skiers
used other routes to reach the terminal, including the one around the village. In the
city center of St. Gallen, the medieval town presents a multitude of ﬂows and
permanent and temporary attractions (major polyvalent area, southwest of point 4).
Fig. 5 Two examples of comprehensive variable geometry, Leukerbad village (left), St. Gallen
city center (right). Source: own illustrations; graphics ©2014, 2015 TerraMetrics, maps ©2014,
2015 Google
The Dynamics of Destinations and Tourism Development 203
The variable geometry with current ﬂows of various forms of culture tourism points
to a strict separation between the medieval town and the museum district (see area
around point 4), due to a major road with frequent trafﬁc. Also, the two areas are
even more contained because two major routes with heavy trafﬁc cut the center with
the northern and with the southern hill areas (upper and lower dotted lines, points
3). The necessary land use and intervention measures, the development of sites and
possible new attractions, purposeful information and visitor guidance, are speciﬁc
implications drawn from analyzing the variable geometry and consulting the single
maps with the visitor ﬂows.
To understand better the place-related contingencies affecting projects and
development plans, analyzing existing visitor ﬂows and their synergies is a useful
task. Figure 6 illustrates on the left side a more comprehensive view of current
visitor ﬂows and how a hypothesized cable-car connection between the Dinosaur
Museum Aathal (www.sauriermuseum.ch) and Juckerfarm (www.juckerfarm.ch).
Selecting only the ﬂows that concern either one or both attractions and producing
the variable geometry (right side), highlights the connections, roads, and further
sites and attractions, and consequently the value chains, that could indirectly proﬁt
or be affected from the project.
While the discussions and decisions arising from working with the variable
geometry often point to well-known problems and issues, stakeholders have
(1) an objective and more precisely appraisable tool, and (2) a picture that includes
the local and regional context. Particularly thanks to the latter aspect, planners and
developers lean on a more realistic embedding of the projects at hand. Finally,
polyvalent areas and zones intuitively point to nuclei for further development. In
fact, it is easier from these areas to derive or deduce diversiﬁcations of new visitor
ﬂows, since it is more likely to create something new from something existing than
something completely new out of nothing.
Fig. 6 Comparison between comprehensive (left) and selected variable geometry (right), mountain
railway connection between Juckerfarm and Dino Museum Aathal with affected visitor ﬂows
(Region Z€urich Oberland, CH). Source: own illustrations; graphics ©2014 TerraMetrics, maps
©2014 Google
204 P. Beritelli and C. Laesser
4 Flow-Based Planning and Management
Visualizing and describing visitor ﬂows reveals only little information on how the
ﬂows function (i.e. the inherent demand and supply mechanisms) and on which
organization and actor holds which roles and tasks to make those ﬂows happen
(steps three and four in the SGDM-heuristic). Figure 7 presents a scheme that lists
per strategic visitor ﬂow (SVF) the mechanisms of inﬂuence on the supply side
(identifying system heads) and on the demand side (identifying market mavens).
System heads are the main attractors for the ﬂows. Other attractions, sites, service
providers depend on the system head. Market mavens (Clark and Goldsmith 2005)
inﬂuence and—in some cases—‘possess’ a great number of the individuals constituting
the visitor ﬂows. They can vary considerably and could range from tour
operators, travel agents, and inﬂuential media to opinion leaders, inﬂuential role
models in communities or neighborhoods. The right side of the table (see processes)
relates to aspects pertaining to the marketing and management processes (analysis,
product development and cultivation, information and communication, distribution
and sales, system minder). Stakeholders are required (1) to complete the lists with
their partial knowledge, (2) pose questions and address challenges, and (3) suggest
solutions, projects, actions. In order to do so, they read the table horizontally (see
arrow 1), i.e. along the single ﬂow and vertically (see arrow 2), i.e. across the ﬂows.
Challenges/problems and actions/initiatives/projects are seen from two different
viewpoints: a speciﬁc, ﬂow-based view (horizontal) and a development and planning
perspective on a higher, superordinate level (vertical).
The practical applications to date have produced the following insights:
– Actors and organizations easily spot their area of interest and focus ﬁrst on what
is in their direct domain of inﬂuence. Individual projects and actions are
Fig. 7 Structure table with networks and interdependencies and marketing and management
processes per visitor ﬂow. Source: own illustration, adapted from Beritelli et al. (2015, p. 54)
The Dynamics of Destinations and Tourism Development 205
established quickly. What was unknown or uncertain becomes now clearly
visible and readable.
– Joint projects and collective actions, for instance, between private ﬁrms and
public institutions but also between several private ﬁrms are the second working
area. The actors pick the relevant ﬂows, return to the maps, work with speciﬁc
variable geometries and discuss conditions and implications of major initiatives,
regarding infrastructure, attractions, events, services, etc.
– Particularly for joint actions and projects the actors further evaluate who or
which organization is capable of leading the initiative and—if costs will arise—
how it could be funded.
In the end, the process allows integrating different stakeholder logics (Beritelli
2011a; Tkaczynski et al. 2009) under one intuitive and universally understandable
meta-framework that transcends explicit formal restrictions, local peculiarities, or
implicit norms and rules (Beritelli 2011b). This produces a (1) local, not central,
(2) distributed, not shared, and (3) time-staggered, not simultaneous leadership
(Beritelli and Bieger 2014).
5 Case Heidiland
Heidiland is a tourist region, comprising a major area of nineteen municipalities,
located in two state territories (cantons of St. Gallen and Graub€unden). The region
is represented by a destination marketing and management organization (DMO)
(www.heidiland.com). While there are tourist spots and attractions with communities
depending on tourism (e.g. Bad Ragaz, Flumserberg), many other areas of the
destination’s territory are characterized by agriculture (e.g. vineyards in the area of
B€undner Herrschaft) or various manufacturing industries. In 2013 the DMO started
a process based on the SGDM-heuristic, in order to identify the future areas of
priorities and actions, for the organization and for the stakeholders in the region.
The process has initiated several new initiatives, single and joint actions, new
partnerships and arrangements, and is still supporting various actors and organizations.
What is presented in the following paragraphs is one selected aspect.
5.1 Understanding the Situation
Through a series of workshops with informants and decision-makers more than
35 strategic visitor ﬂows were identiﬁed. In Fig. 8, we see at a ﬁrst glance the
difference between a more static and delimited territory (left side) and the variable
geometry of selected existing SVFs (right side). Even though the method was
previously based on rather large circles and ellipses, pointing more generally to
tourist zones, the picture allows identifying four major polyvalent areas (with
according attractions):
206 P. Beritelli and C. Laesser
1. Walensee (Lake Walen), including picturesque villages like Quinten and
Weesen, served by a lake navigation company,
2. Flumserberg, a winter and summer mountain destination, accessed by two feeder
cable-cars, one of them directly from the Swiss Federal Railway station at
Unterterzen (connecting with the metropolitan area of Z€urich, via urban mass
transit trains), at the lakeside of Walensee,
3. Pizol area, hosting a second mountain accessed by other two feeder cable-cars;
the heart of Pizol area is constituted by the village of Bad Ragaz, a thermal spa
destination close to the historic Tamina Gorge; Bad Ragaz is also home of the
largest 5* resort structure in Switzerland, the Grand Resort Bad Ragaz, including
three major hotels, two golf courses, a medical health center with clinic, an own
spa, and one casino,
4. B€undner Herrschaft, comprising four rural communities located in the canton of
Graub€unden; one of them is the little city of Maienfeld, according to the novel,
the setting of the story of Heidi.
While the region is marketed under the umbrella brand of Heidiland, the
stakeholders are as varied as the tourism ﬂows are. In fact, locals and overnight
tourists from various establishments (from campsites to 5* hotels) enjoy skiing in
the ski areas, hiking and biking at different altitudes and with different means.
Tourists visit the region’s historic sites, enjoy wine tasting in the B€undner
Herrschaft, or undertake excursions to neighboring regions. Planning and developing
tourism in such an environment is particularly challenging because
• the region is cut by two important freeway and railway routes (north to south,
along the Rhine Valley and north-west to south forming the Linth plainWalensee-Sarganserland-Chur
axis),
• tourism spots alternate with agricultural and industrial zones,
• day tourism and short trips increase because intermodal transport and visitor
mobility improve.
As a consequence, the region’s stakeholders are investing in visitor management
and information strategies so that quick and convenient access to the various
Fig. 8 Territorial boundaries (left) versus variable geometry (right). Source: own illustration.
Maps © 2013 GeoBasis-De/BKG, Google
The Dynamics of Destinations and Tourism Development 207
tourism activities and attractions is granted. A second strategy derived from this
situation is to focus on some selected areas that are already visited by tourists and to
improve their value by investing in infrastructure and site development so that ﬂows
further diversify.
5.2 Focusing on Priority Areas
By the beginning of 2014, the stakeholders have identiﬁed, among others, four
major areas of joint intervention with strategic importance. Table 1 summarizes
them and how the underlying dynamics resulting from the supportive process
described beforehand led the stakeholders to recognizing the relevant challenges
and eventually deciding upon the actions and initiatives (Figure 9 locates the
initiatives/interventions on the map).
6 Shifting Perspectives and Changing Procedures
The initiatives presented in the previous paragraph are at different stages of
implementation. While the ﬁrst two ones are being currently implemented and
will take 2 more years to complete, the concept around Flumserberg has just started
its ﬁrst realization stage (i.e. re-zoning, trails, alp cottages), and the master plan
supposed to re-launch Heididorf is still in its conception phase. They all have
beneﬁtted from the SGDM heuristic because the main stakeholders and actors
could gain an objective and easily understandable view of the current situation
and of future scenarios. Yet, more than this, actors have shifted their perspectives
• from an organizational/institutional and therefore supply-sided to a demanddriven,
ﬂow-based reality
• from tourism as a generable/homogenizable (because too chaotic) situation to a
co-existence of various, diverse tourism ﬂows,
• from the contained view of overnight tourists to a more relaxed approach that
includes day tourists and visitors from the region as well as locals,
• from assuming that tourism as known would persist for decades (tourism as a
stable, enduring industry) to realizing the dynamics of visitor ﬂows that reﬂect
the changes in society (tourism as a social phenomenon).
The shift of perspectives has led the actors to adapt their way of planning. On
one side they have revised the sequence of how to proceed in development plans. In
fact, the traditional approach often offers a perimeter or a parcel of land that may be
well-located and therefore potentially interesting for various forms of development
and use (including tourism). Then, ideally after a necessary re-zoning, the landowner
looks for an interesting investor who proposes a concept, suitable enough for
the region and the stakeholders in the area. Yet, the project will be successful only if
208 P. Beritelli and C. Laesser
Table 1 Dynamics causing challenges legitimizing initiatives carried by stakeholders. Source:
own illustration
Underlying dynamics Challenges Initiatives (1–4)a
Main stakeholders
• Increase of various
ﬂows of biking and
hiking in the region
• Numerous developing
visitor ﬂows
including families
with children
• Lake Walen is not
easily accessible at
every place/village
• Railway and freeway
keep (physically and
mentally) the visitors
away from the south
lakeside
Restructuring lakeside
paths and trails with
the aim of creating a
continuous trail of leisure
activities for all
generations (including
playgrounds) around
the Walensee (viability
concept for pedestrians,
strollers,
wheelchairs, bikes)
• Municipality of
Quarten, in accordance
with neighboring
municipalities
around the lake
• Increase of various
ﬂows of biking in the
region
• Increasing number
of up- and downhill
bikers around
Flumserberg (speciﬁc
requests for a network
of routes, particularly
between peak and
lake)
• Flumserberg is
already a popular
day-trip destination
for up-/downhill biking
but well-prepared
and speciﬁc routes are
missing
Developing a bike
route network for
Flumserberg (5 tracks
on slopes, one on
mountain top, one at
lakeside) separate
from hiking trails,
connecting the network
to the main
transportation (cablecar,
railway, lake navigation)
and further
services (hotels,
restaurants)
• Cable-car company
Flumserberg
• Municipalities of
Flumserberg and
Quarten and various
land owners
• Increase of various
ﬂows of biking and
hiking in the region
• Decrease of traditional
stationary
(overnight) visitors
for skiing and winter
sports
• First successful
travel packages for
groups combining
overnight, traditional
mountain experience,
trips around the lake,
etc.
• The alps around
Flumserberg and the
mountain top areas
developed in the past
decades have been
developed piecemeal
• Old but still neat alp
cottages are scattered
• Buildings and services
in more densely
built zones
(e.g. Tannenheim and
Tannenboden) lack in
an overall picture an
inviting atmosphere
and hospitality
Launching a tourist
development plan,
considering revival of
alp cottages, rural/
agricultural alp experiences,
new hiking
trails and signalizations,
dismantling
restructuring, or
expanding existing
buildings, rezoning
for a major holiday
resort (hotel and wellness)
on either one of
the main zones, identifying
and developing
points of encounters,
building the main
point of encounter at
Tannenboden, revising
road and trafﬁc
concept
• Canton of
St. Gallen (departments
of economics
and of construc-
tions/cantonal
works)
• Municipalities of
Flumserberg and
Quarten and various
land owners
• Cable-car company
Flumserberg
• Heidiland
Tourismus (DMO)
(continued)
The Dynamics of Destinations and Tourism Development 209
there is a demand (i.e. tourist ﬂows) that appreciates and values the new site/
attraction/resort. Working with the SGDM-heuristic requires ﬁrst to understand
the existing visitor ﬂows and their evolution and to derive consequences for new
visitor ﬂows. A development plan based on this precursor is embedded in the
Table 1 (continued)
Underlying dynamics Challenges Initiatives (1–4)a
Main stakeholders
• Increase of visitor
ﬂows to Heididorf
(Heidi village, www.
heididorf.ch) from day
visitors (tour operators
by bus) and overnight
visitors, mainly
from Bad Ragaz
• Increase of ﬂows
hikers and motorized
visitors combining
culinary experiences
and/or wine tasting
with a visit to
Heididorf
• Heididorf offers only
few attractions and
experiences for only a
short stay
• Access to Heididorf
is problematic (lack of
parking spaces)
• To live the full
experience, visitors
must take more time
particularly to hike up
the hill (Heidialp)
Extending the Heidi
village with additional
stations and historic
buildings (still keeping
the experience
true to the novel),
developing an access
for greater number of
visitors, in respect
with the given transit
conditions through or
around the little city of
Maienfeld, general
rezoning of the
perimeter of and
around Heididorf
• Heididorf AG
(Heididorf Inc.)
• canton of
Graub€unden
(departments of
economics and of
constructions/cantonal
works)
Source: own illustration
a
Read 1–4 top down, correspond to 1–4 in Fig. 9
Fig. 9 Selected initiatives/interventions in the Heidiland region. Source: own illustration, maps
© 2013 GeoBasis-De/BKG, Google
210 P. Beritelli and C. Laesser
existing portfolio of demand and hence of the speciﬁc regional resources and
capacities. This is likely to yield a higher probability of success. Figure 10 illustrates
the more land-related (above) against the ﬂow-based (below) planning and
development approach.
Obviously, there are many new attractions and resorts created out of the green,
even in isolated areas and with no relation or connection to existing visitor ﬂows.
However, the underlying entrepreneurial risk and the number of unknown factors
and uncertainties are actually greater. Also, in environments like the ones of
Heidiland, of Switzerland, and of many other places and regions across the
world, developing tourist sites and attractions out of the green becomes an increasingly
difﬁcult task because of environmental, social, regulatory, and ﬁnally and
foremost economic reasons. We think that evolutionary ﬂow-based tourism development
must at least be a valid option. In the end, it builds on a historically grown
tourism portfolio with an according context, contingencies, and local culture
(cf. Polanyi 1957). Figure 11 schematically illustrates two alternative historical
paths with six timeframes. The paths (above and below) represent the development
and direction of one or a group of related visitor ﬂows, the dots major changes, for
instance a creation or extension of a site or an attraction. The evolutionary development
(above) builds on existing ﬂows and continuously diversiﬁes into similar,
related areas. Some ﬂows eventually cease to exist, some other are successfully
renewed/lead into a next generation of visitors. The revolutionary development
(below) faces a similar path until t3. Yet, from then, for instance due to a lack of
earlier diversiﬁcation of visitor ﬂows, it performs a leap, creating in t4 a completely
new branch (i.e. set of visitor ﬂows). While in the end, this path may be a viable
option for a region, it is associated with more dramatic changes, turmoil, and
conﬂicts. Often this scenario occurs when a region has built for decades on the
success of existing visitor ﬂows without considering changes in the demand side
and without proactively adapting its portfolio of attractions, infrastructure, and
services.
Fig. 10 Land-related versus ﬂow-based approach. Source: own illustration
The Dynamics of Destinations and Tourism Development 211
7 Concluding Remarks
The aim of this chapter was to explain that tourism is not only a generic, rather
stable construct but a multi-faceted, highly dynamic social phenomenon. If planners
want to deal with such a reality, they must consider that what they build today is not
only exposed to future changes but to great variability of what it means today,
depending on who is visiting the place. This requires them to look at tourism not
only as one function in space. In fact, in the past decades we have primarily looked
at the conditions of the functional space—for instance, Gunn speaks of ‘resource
factors’ or ‘foundation factors’ (1997, p. 59), such as transportation, water, wildlife,
city—and we have added tourism as one more function. However, tourism is
diverse and dynamic, so that we must consider multiple tourism functions in the
same given space. Also, planners are well advised to recognize that most cases of
today’s tourism development are less an exercise of isolated conception and
implementation, but resemble more systemic intervention. In fact, we must understand
tourism planning and development as a form of intervention in complex and
dynamic systems: the conditions and the framework are complex and dynamic, so
are the implications and consequences. While complexity is easy to visualize
(variable geometry), the dynamics are considered in the SGDM-heuristic but they
still need a more realistic technique of representation (e.g. video-supported 3D
simulations). As computer aided planning and design are quickly progressing, we
trust that soon there will be method and means to carry out such processes even with
a greater number of actors in a more precise and realistic stage. Finally, turning
away from the land-related approach (normally preferred from an investor/developer
perspective) towards a ﬂow-based approach will result in a more considerate
evaluation of investment and thus decrease the risks associated to such a type of
development. Moreover, the herein presented alternative planning process forces
all involved parties to explicitly account for the most important foundation for any
Fig. 11 Evolutionary versus revolutionary development. Source: own illustration
212 P. Beritelli and C. Laesser
such projects, which is to source from an existing or create a durable, sufﬁcient ﬂow
of demand.
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