3.5 P RECEDENTS OF L OCAL E CONOMIC D EVELOPMENT WITHIN THE C OUNTRYSIDE
3.6.5 Tourism - A Local Economic Development Strategy in Wales
broadly the factors that stimulated many European states to adopt Local Economic Development within rural areas – this section advances to illustrate how tourism in Britain (Wales)50 has been used as a strategy to achieve sustained Local Economic Development within the countryside51.
3.6.5 Tourism - A Local Economic Development Strategy in Wales
The tourism industry has been described as one of the fast growing industries in Wales and in areas alike. Correspondingly, recent studies have shown that tourism industries have provided a focus for policymakers and researchers investigating strategies that can be used successfully to rejuvenate the economies of underdeveloped periphery and rural areas52. Moreover, it has been argued that tourism can be used as strategy and an approach for the realisation of sustainable development in marginalized areas, facing challenges and un- promising future. The challenge of periphery and rural areas facing a bleak future can largely be attributed to a number of factors, such as; depressed agriculture conditions, as well as for post-industrial and urban areas seeking new industries to replace traditional employment in manufacturing and slow growth service industries.
In the case of the Blaenavon Industrial Landscape in Wales, event and cultural tourism was and continue to be used as a strategy to stimulate Local Economic Development within depressed rural areas. Blaenavon, which is located within the Industrial South Wales valley, was awarded a United Nations (UN) World Heritage Status. This worked in the areas favour as it was placed in global map as one of the tourism sites worth visiting when touring Wales.
Jones and Munday (2001) described the area of Blaenavon as an outstanding representation of an early industrial revolution landscape; that plays host to ironworks, early workers housing, a canal system and the existing Big Pit coal-mining museum. The museum is considered one of the major attractions for visitors in that it provides an opportunity to visit an authentic underground coal-face. It is argued by varies researchers (Jones and Munday, 2001; Terluin, 2003 and Bristow, 2000) that substantial development of cultural artefacts have the capacity to enable increased visitation in area while simultaneously providing an alternative development path to compensate the disappearance of traditional production industries, the area has failed to evolve and adopt to the industrial global climate that will allow it attract new industrial investment.
52 See “Hiller, H. (1998) Assessing the Impact of Mega-events: A linkage model. Current Issues in Tourism, Vol. 1,1 pp. 47-57 &Bristow G., (2000) “Renewing Rural Wales” in Bryan, J. and Jones, C.
“Wales in the 21st Century”, MacMillan Business: Basingstoke”
Source: www. Google.co.za. redkite-environment.co.uk
The results of the adoption of tourism as a strategy to trigger sustained LED within rural areas in Wales has had mixed results. The strategy to date has been able to help with the development of infrastructure within the area. It has also assisted with an increase in the number of visitors to the area, thus directly or indirectly leading to the creation of more job opportunities in various sectors, such as; the retail and wholesale recreation;
Source: http://lawhf.co.uk/
accommodation; and finance and business sector. However, despite providing some job opportunities for the poor sector of the community, the retail and hospitality sector offers locally extremely poor people with little prospect of levering off the on -site spending, and the same is true of local services in general (Jones and Munday, 2001). This is a critique that has been raised against the tourism sector in terms of the sustenance of its economic benefits by a number of researchers in the field53. Furthermore; tourism has been critiqued for as being an industry that is highly susceptible to economic leakage and thus having negative implications for the sustenance of Local Economic Development within rural areas.
Although this strategy has the potential to help stimulate the local economies in many depressed regions, such as those in rural areas of Wales, it also presents a challenge which is how to eradicate the problems that have been identified as being a hindrance in the achievement of the tourism sectors endeavours.
For the tourism sector to have a more meaningful impact on the establishment of Local Economic Development within the countryside, it needs to rectify all the gaps that have been identified above. This can be done this through crafting policies that safe-guard the local residents from exploitative foreign investors. This will ultimately ensure that economic leakage is reduced and benefits for the locals maximised. The culture of producing and buying local products should also be encouraged, as this has a number of positive benefits for Local Economic Development. Key sectors within the local area should be identified and strengthened, so that the comparative advantage can be exploited. Having discussed cases from varies continents; the next section advances to discuss the precedents of Local Economic Development in rural areas within the African continent.
53 Jones and Munday (2001) argue that the “promotion of tourism and leisure service industries as a LED driver, especially in rural areas, may ignore certain underlying industry characteristics”. This is because the tourism sector in many instance features low wages and unskilled labour, lessening income-related demand effects while simultaneously promoting the development of unskilled workforce or informal sector (second economy), which does not directly add to economic growth.
“Moreover, external ownership of large tourism concerns, together with an underdeveloped local tourism infrastructure can limit the contribution of new tourism activity to local areas growth prospects”.