This is a tale of two cities – two Hungarian cities that offer great potential for tourism with their fine cultural heritages. The tale will entail a lengthy discussion of the characters and the relations between these characters, it will consider the factors that complicate these relations as the plot unfolds.
This research emerged from the author’s direct experience of the processes of urban tourism in her capacity as a local authority tourism referent. The interest in the role of stakeholders within tourism developed further with participation in a European funded urban tourism project. DETOUR – developing tourism in urban Europe – which brought together six cities to critically benchmark and evaluate their approach to tourism, including the tourism offer, the tourism marketing and the planning of tourism in the cities. This highlighted considerable differences in the way the notion of ‘important’ or
‘key’ players were identified in the various cities which were not considered during the project. The best practice model proposed at the end of the project was clearly grounded in the literature on the benefits of partnership working with an inclusive agenda for participation in the decision making about urban tourism development.
By telling the tale of two cities the study is going to focus on stakeholder involvement in urban tourism development. The extensive literature review is going to consider the emergence of stakeholder theory, based primarily on the writings of academics in the management discipline (Freeman, 1984, Carroll, 1996, Key, 1999, Schilling, 2000) but also with reference to the tourism literature (Jamal and Getz, 1995, Swarbrooke, 1998, Bramwell and Sharman 1999, Sautter and Leisen, 1999, Friedman and Mason, 2004).
The stakeholder theory calls into question the need to investigate issues of power therefore, modern power theories (Weber (1978; 2003), Lukes (1974), Foucault (1972;
1988) and Clegg (1989)) are going to be discussed to gain a better understanding of the power relations between stakeholders. The literatures on collaboration theory (Gray, 1989, Jamal and Getz 1995), tourism planning (Gunn, 1994, Inskeep 1994 and Tribe, 1997, Burns, 2004) and stakeholder involvement (Murphy, 1985, Bramwell and Sharman
1999), along with urban tourism (Jansen-Verbeke, 1986, Page, 1995, Pearce, 2001, Law, 2002) also form the theoretical background of the thesis.
Primary research is based in two Hungarian cities, Veszprém and Pécs. The choice of cities has been influenced by several factors. Primarily, the researcher graduated as a tourism student in Veszprém and worked in the tourism industry there for three years before embarking on this study. First as an assistant in the city’s tourist information centre Tourinform and later as a tourism referent of the local authority (advisor to the Mayor in tourism related issues); she had an insight into how tourism development is shaped by certain enabling and restricting forces. This experience led to the desire to investigate whether this is unique to Veszprém or if other cities operate with similar methods. The scholarship from the University of Derby made the city of Derby a logical choice for the comparison. Within the UK, it was thought that York, a historic city with an established tradition of welcoming tourists, would be a useful part of the study.
However, the review of the literature on stakeholders and tourism development and the discussion with the PhD supervisors suggested another idea for exploring: whether or not the existence of a tourism strategy influences the involvement of stakeholders in the tourism development processes. As most UK cities with a significant tourism industry would have a tourism strategy in place, it seemed a better bet to look for another Hungarian city with similar characteristics to Veszprém but without a strategy. Pécs fitted the selection criteria, therefore at that stage the research was going to focus on four cities, Veszprém, Derby, York and Pécs. The decision followed the recommendation of the School Research Degrees Committees to the RD5, where the Committee suggested looking at stakeholder involvement in a city without a tourism strategy.
As the first round of interviews were conducted in Veszprém and Pécs, the researcher found significant similarities between the responses from the two cities, or better phrased there were not enough significant differences emerging from between the responses from the two cities, furthermore, there were no differences discovered that could have been explained by the existence or lack of a tourism strategy.
The analysis of the first interviews has revealed considerably more information than the researcher had hoped for. Also, neither the literature, nor the findings of the interviews conducted thus far suggested any difference in stakeholder involvement that would be influenced either by the size of the city or the existence of a tourism strategy. Therefore, it was argued that the involvement of a third and fourth city in the research may only enhance the quantity of the data, without adding extra value to the research. It has been decided that the study would benefit more from an in-depth analysis of the power hierarchies and the role of the individual stakeholders within them. This was reinforced by the RD7 Confirmation of Progress discussions, with the recommendation to conduct interviews with at least the key actors from the main sectors (public, private, academic) in Derby to test the above statement about quantity versus quality of findings. The field work in York and the four interviews in Derby brought up remarkably similar issues to what had been revealed in Veszprém and Pécs before, therefore the research did not seem to benefit from the involvement of a third city. The work on the two cities in the UK proved to be a useful testing ground for the ideas and methods used in the studies in Hungary, but the decision to drop the two from the full study was made on the grounds of securing the best possible data and the opportunity to critically review it. It appears that the UK material would have reinforced and largely replicated the critical elements of the study without adding further dimensions to the study.
It was decided that the study would benefit more from an in-depth analysis of the power hierarchy and the role of the individual stakeholders within it than from the assessment of the strategy devising process as well, which could have presented a risk of losing the focus of the research and the clarity of the responses. The introduction of the concept of stakeholders was provocative enough, when it is recognised that there is no word in Hungarian for ‘stakeholder’. This meant that the research involved a deconstruction of the literature concept into its constituent elements that did translate into the language of the respondents and then a reconstruction of the applied concept through the answers given in the interviews. To undertake a similar approach with the ideas of strategy and strategic management was thought to be too ambitious for one PhD and therefore the focus intensified on the identification of key informants’ perceptions about the nature of
involvement in the urban tourism development of the cities. Therefore the study that is presented has been concentrated on the two Hungarian cities and the arguments about stakeholder involvement developed within those cities. The interviews conducted in Derby and the materials collected from York were used to sharpen the analytical perspective developed through the research but are not specifically included here. The depth of the materials gathered from Pécs and Veszprém produced a rich field of data, identifying both similarities and differences in the ways stakeholders were involved in urban tourism development.
The initial research was focussed into the formulation of the research aims:
• To determine the notion of stakeholder in tourism and the parameters of the concept;
• To identify the stakeholders in urban tourism and investigate the power relations between them;
• To critically evaluate the level and limitations of stakeholder involvement in urban tourism development.
These aims were the product of extensive discussions in the University and were also aired before tourism practitioners to ensure that they gave the research the most appropriate framework. They proved to be a useful guide to the development, implementation and analysis of the research.
The study will use a case study approach (Yin 1994, 2003). As the number of cities involved in the research does not allow for generalisations, the findings on power relations and stakeholder involvement in the cities will be presented in a case study format.
The thesis appears to fall into three distinct parts but the development of the argument relies upon the successful interlinking of these parts. The first part, Chapters 2 – 5, present the review of the literatures, moving from the general approaches to the macro issues of urban tourism development (Chapter 2) through the issues of collaboration (Chapter 3), constructions of stakeholders (Chapter 4) and concepts of power (Chapter 5).
The analysis is presented in these three sections to allow the reader to become familiar with the critical understanding of the term stakeholder developed from the literature and how those models sit with other concepts of urban tourism and urban tourism development. The literature review identified the trends towards partnership working as particularly significant and also noted the need to establish a firm theoretical grasp of the concepts of power and involvement. Even within these chapters it will be apparent that the research object contains several elements that can be thought of separately for the purposes of exposition. However, in practice the elements overlap the distinctions imposed on the literature in these reviews and it is the interconnections between the issues that fully express the complexities involved in the development of urban tourism.
This recognition is fundamental given the assumption underlying the thesis that tourism is a complex entity with a multitude of actors and a myriad of offers. Chapter 5 ends by bringing together the elements from the whole of the literature review and putting together an analytical framework that is taken forward to drive the empirical study.
The second part considers the issues that are necessary for the study. Chapter 6 outlines the research methodology and the methods devised to deliver this work. It reviews the epistemological issues as well as the practical concerns of undertaking the research. This critical review of the approach also contains an account of the ways in which the deconstruction of the literature provided the framework for the questions posed. In the following chapter, there is a short introduction to the background and contexts of the research. The intent is to create an impression of the two cities where the research took place and the structures of tourism in Hungary.
The third section moves on to the presentation of the analysis, moving through an analytical description of the responses in constructing a listing of the stakeholders in Chapter 8, to a consideration of collaboration and capacity in Chapter 9. Chapter 10 presents the major findings on power, power relations and constructions of power within the urban tourism contexts in the two cities. The presentation of the findings from the interviews is iterative, showing first the patterns of responses to the questions and then further analysing them to reveal the significance of the comments.
Primary data was gathered through semi-structured interviews with key informants who were identified primarily on the basis of the literature, and a snowball technique was used as a secondary selection method to identify the interviewees.
The first subject area that the fieldwork tried to establish was the identification of stakeholders in the given city. The second area to be explored looked at the links between the previously identified stakeholders. The questions hoped to reveal information on both the formal and informal relations between the key players and the affected organisations and people, as perceived by the respondents. The third area was investigating the involvement in the urban tourism development in the cities. These questions sought to identify the key decision-makers and to depict the process, again, as perceived by the individual respondents. These answers gave information regarding involvement, legitimate stakeholders, and power in decision-making.
These findings are presented in three chapters which link closely to the concerns identified in the three chapters of the literature review. The first one presents the identified stakeholders in separate lists for both cities, which are worked into a joint list for urban tourism stakeholders. The second chapter discusses the perceptions of the respondents regarding involvement in urban tourism development, with special attention to the relations between the stakeholders. This chapter also looks at the issues concerning tourism collaborations. The third chapter analyses the distribution of power between the identified stakeholders which will help to get a better understanding of the conditions of involvement. The power-related findings are used to map the power relations between the stakeholders. The responses are organised in four different ways: 1) identifying the Foucauldian discourses, 2) mapping the stakeholders according to Weber’s categories of power (bureaucratic, traditional, charismatic), 3) investigating the three dimensions of power established by Lukes, and 4) assessing the distribution of power in the open organisations of the two cities relying on Clegg’s theory.
The outlined chapters enable the researcher to provide a new definition of urban tourism
stakeholders and devise a model of stakeholder involvement in urban tourism development.
The original contribution of the research will be provided by an elaborated stakeholder definition for tourism, the identification of stakeholders in urban tourism and a critical understanding of current practices and limitations of stakeholder involvement in urban tourism development. The conclusions to the thesis are presented in the form of a series of propositions that demonstrate the contributions to knowledge made, issues for practice and suggestions for further research.
The process of telling our tale has served to underline the complexity of tourism and the interrelationships within tourism. We begin in the next chapter with the opening pages of the discussions about urban tourism development.