Destination Governance

The Moroccan southeast, with its river water oases, has been utilised for tourism purposes since the coun-try’s “pacification”, which took place in the 1930s. The “Road of the Kasbahs” marketing campaign refers to parts of the river water oasis of the Oued Todra and the Oued Dadès, as well as of the Oued Drâa. Until the end of the 20th century, a form of culturally oriented round-trip tourism was practised with a fair amount of success. However, the practice of tourism in the river water oasis of southeast Morocco has been changing over the past 20 years.
One prerequisite that allowed tourism to penetrate into more far-flung areas of the Moroccan river water oa-sis is the “asphaltification” of many former gravel roads and paths over the past 20 years – especially along the rivers and valleys in the Moroccan southeast. As a result, many previously more or less inaccessible valleys, with their river oases, became open to tourism. Besides this almost tangible spatial extension and quantitative growth following infrastructural circumstances, some additional, more fundamental changes can be observed in the touristification process of Moroccan river water oasis areas.
This article focuses on the different aspects of these new phenomena. It is based on preliminary findings from a fact-finding mission in the Drâa-Tafilalet in spring 2017 as well as on previous empirical work in the region performed by the authors. The goal of the text is to draw some conclusions on Moroccan tourism policy, which as yet does not really seem to be conductive to dealing with the fundamental changes and challenges on both the demand side and the supply side in tourism.
Résumé français:
Touristification du paysage des oasis marocaines: nouvelles dimensions, nouvelles ap-proches, nouveaux acteurs, nouvelles formules de consommation
Le Sud-Est marocain avec ses oasis d'eau de rivière a été mis en valeur pour le tourisme depuis la préten-due « pacification » dans les années 30 du 20e siècle. La formule de commercialisation de la «Route des kasbah» se réfère à une partie des oasis d'eau de rivière de l'Oued Todra et de l'Oued Dades, ainsi que de l'Oued Drâa. Jusqu'à la fin du 20e siècle, une forme de tourisme culturel de circuit axé sur le patrimoine natu-rel et culturel a été pratiquée avec un certain succès. Au cours des 20 dernières années, cependant, la pra-tique du tourisme a changé d’une manière fondamentale dans les oasis d'eau de rivière du Sud-Est maro-cain.
Une condition préalable pour que le tourisme puisse toucher des zones plus larges des oasis d'eau de ri-vière marocaines est la « bitumisation ». De nombreuses anciennes routes et pistes de gravier ont été gou-dronnées au cours des 20 dernières années, en particulier le long des rivières et des vallées du Sud-Est marocain. Cette condition préalable réalisée, de nombreuses vallées anciennement inaccessibles avec leur oasis de rivière se sont ouvertes à la découverte par le tourisme. Mais en dehors de cette extension spatiale presque évidente et de la croissance quantitative due aux circonstances de l'infrastructure, des change-ments plus fondamentaux peuvent être observés dans le processus de touristification de l'oasis d'eau de rivière marocaine.
La contribution se concentrera sur les différents aspects de ces nouveaux phénomènes. Elle sera basée sur les conclusions préliminaires d'une mission d'enquête au Drâa-Tafilalet au printemps 2017 ainsi que sur d'anciens travaux empiriques réalisés dans la région par l'auteur. L'objectif est de rédiger des conclusions sur la politique marocaine du tourisme qui, jusqu'à présent, ne semble pas encore vraiment disposée à faire face aux changements fondamentaux et aux nouveaux défis de l'offre et de la demande dans le tourisme dans la région Drâa-Tafilalet.

For the past quarter of a century, mankind has been searching for ways to stimulate approaches to tourism which are more oriented to the principles of the sustainability paradigm. In the Global South, the public sector – which often plays a key role in OECD countries – often only fulfils this stimulation role to a certain degree.
The aim of this contribution is to focus – with the perspective of the sustainability paradigm – on the discourse and the role of the different stakeholders involved in tourism in developing countries. Using the Souss region in Southern Morocco as a model, the contribution will analyse the activities and positions of public and private stakeholders, including civil society organisations. The question is whether bottom-up processes in tourism regions might function as a possible indirect method to increase awareness of sustainability among local and regional stakeholders, which could compensate for weaknesses regarding sustainability in public policy for destinations in so-called developing countries.

Seit einem Vierteljahrhundert ist die Menschheit auf der Suche nach Wegen zur Förderung von Handlungsweisen, die den Anspruch auf eine verstärkte Orientierung am Nachhaltigkeitsparadigma erfüllen. In den Ländern des Globalen Südens schafft es die Öffentliche Hand – die in den OECD-Staaten oftmals die Rolle eines zentralen Key-Players einnimmt – oftmals nur sehr eingeschränkt diese zu erfüllen.
Das Anliegen dieses Beitrags ist es – unter dem Blickwinkel des Nachhaltigkeitsparadigmas – den Diskurs und die Rollen der unterschiedlichen im Tourismus von sog. Entwicklungsländern involvierten Akteuren zu analysieren. Dabei wird die Souss-Region in Südmarokko als Fallbeispiel herangezogen, um die Positionen und Handlungsansätze von öffentlichen und privaten Akteuren – einschließlich zivilgesellschaftlicher Organisationen – zu beleuchten.
Die zentrale Frage ist dabei, ob Bottom-Up-Ansätze in Tourismusregionen als indirekter Ansatz wirken, bei den lokalen und regionalen Akteuren die Nachhaltigkeitsorientierung zu stimulieren und damit Schwächen der öffentlichen Nachhaltigkeitsförderung der politischen Seite in Destinationen der sog. Entwicklungsländer kompensieren können.

Evolutionary and relational approaches to economic development are gaining ground in geography as a discipline, although in the subfield of tourism geography, their potential is only just becoming recognised. This article focuses on the evolution of mature tourism destinations, taking the path dependency concept forward from the notion of path creation into the new domain of path plasticity. Drawing on the notion of cultural political economy, we examine how tourism destinations can break with path dependency routines incrementally and move steadily towards different future paths, which may recast tourism in a different light in the overall “urban” context of the destination. Using a case study of a Mediterranean coastal destination on Catalonia's Costa Daurada, we explore the inter-tangled tourism and urban development processes in relation to the socio-spatial dimensions of urban change. The article argues for a wider range of social and cultural criteria in the analysis of tourism evolution – advocating the use of path plasticity and a cultural political economy approach – to offer an alternative perspective on shifting tourism situations, reflecting the inherently “urbanising” nature of tourism development in the traditional coastal resort context. It adds to the growing literature on governance and strategy-making in sustainable tourism.

In the Global South – to a certain extent as a legacy of the colonial period – traditional hierarchical steering modes are still quite widespread. The significantly changing conditions of competition in recent decades have boosted the need for innovation in tourism. As such, the core challenge for tourism development in many countries of the Global South has been to attain an innovation-based orientation by using stimuli from destination governance. This in turn raises the question of which governance approaches seem most appropriate for tackling impending challenges and how to optimise approaches to destination governance. This article is an attempt to analyse the factors that might facilitate the diffusion of an innovation-based orientation , with a specific focus on the role of the different stakeholders involved in tourism in developing countries. It analyses the interactions of the " ecosystem " of stakeholders in different spheres and on different levels in an effort to develop options that optimise their synergy. As a basic hypothesis, the article adopts the " counter-flow principle " , with exchange between different levels and spheres as stimuli for innovation; to a certain extent, the integration of these political stakeholders aims to call traditional governance structures into question and instead facilitate new negotiation and mediation processes. Taking the Souss-Massa region in Southern Morocco as a case study, the paper describes an analysis of the positions of public and private stakeholders as well as civil society organisations. In light of the structure of the relationships among private stakeholders, the dominating role of micro-entrepreneurs in rural tourism calls for particular emphasis. The main question is what kind of relationship between the stakeholders would foster effective governance processes among local, regional and (international l stakeholders. One of the major constraints seems to be that existing public governance conditions concerning the fostering of private activities limit the implementation of an innovation-oriented range of rural tourism options. The paper then examines such limitations and constraints of existing governance structures, which lead to the suboptimal performance and effectiveness of (mainly) top-down approaches; however, activities by civil society – which has become stronger since the Arab Spring – in the form of intervention by different NGOs are also crucial.

The aim of this study is to examine the new trends in the hybridity research area and clarify the convergence of interests of state actors, private actors and civil society actors. Hybridity is perceived as a ‘multidimensional phenomenon’ and ‘new paradigm’ in tourism industry. The effective collaboration amongst public sector – private sector – civil society can be attained likelihood with taking into account regional governance and multilevel governance. Hybridity at global governance level covers ‘decentration’ (supra: centralisation and infra: decentralisation) which includes the nexus of ‘voice’ (democratic participation) and ‘entitlement’ (legal-social rights and duties). In this framework, this study explores state and non-state interactions at multiple levels and attempts to clarify how hybridisation provides triple win solution for state actors, private actors and civil society actors related issues in realm of theory/praxis dichotomy. Through enhancing legitimacy and effectiveness of the activities and efforts of non-state actors in the framework of (quasi)indirect centralisation process, states ensure reciprocal understanding. In this study, constructivism was followed as paradigmatic research method.

KEYWORDS: hybridity, destination governance, regional tourism development, stakeholders, public sphere