Page 206 - Tourism The International Business

9. The management of tourism

Tourism offers many values to the community and nearly everyone gains from some of them, either directly or
indirectly. While the public awareness program should help citizens recognize these benefits, not all can be
explained to all audiences. It is necessary to select and stress those a particular audience experiences and to explain

it at a level they can understand.
Importance

Time, resources, and the audience's capacity to absorb will limit the amount of information that can be
presented in any one message or in a total campaign. In selecting benefits to be promoted, it is necessary to
consider not only their relevance, but, their importance. Given limited resources, it is necessary to concentrate on
educating the public about those which it will feel to be most desired.
Some benefits, such as economic growth, would be counted as important by most communities. The ranking of
others, such as diversifying the economic base, would be more situational. People in most communities might
acknowledge this to be desirable. Among those recognizing its desirability, persons in areas whose economies were
subject to wide cyclical swings would probably rate it as highly important. Were the local economy "recession

proof", diversification would probably be of minor interest.
The importance attached to particular values may vary widely among groups within a single town or city. Again,
it is necessary to tailor the message to the audience. All may agree expanding the property tax base would be a good
thing. Homeowners and businessmen are likely to feel this is a highly important benefit while apartment dwellers
would probably place it far down on their list of priorities.

Exhibit 76: Many retail outlets
benefit from tourism. (Courtesy Hong
Kong Tourist Association.)

Every benefit is of interest to someone. In communicating with an audience, it is necessary to concentrate on
those they are likely to consider important.
A sort of filtering process has been described. First, all benefits of tourism are considered. In developing a
message for a particular group those values that are relevant to their lives and goals are identified. This reduced list

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