AN ASSESSMENT OF THE
COMMERCIAL
ACCOMMODATION
FACILITIES IN UMEÅ.
Tourism Area Life-Cycle PerspectiveABSTRACT
Tourist destinations have been under a significantly growing interest of academia from the second half of the 20th century. The underlying patterns that are shared by destinations’ past, and shapes their future constitute a good share for the context of this interest. This study applies Butler’s Tourist Area Life-Cycle model to an urban tourism destination, Umeå. The model puts the life of a tourism area
(destination) on an s-curve and defines several stages on the curve with designated features. Application of the model to the case of Umeå is limited to accommodation branch of the hospitality industry to apply a comprehensive approach and it shows that the city is in the development stage for in this particular branch. However, there are some divergences in the case compared to the model. The capacity edge that causes pressure to the tourist destinations growth does not appear where the model expects, and some stage features appear to take place in a different sequence than the original model. Consequently, the study connects these divergences to the fact that Umeå is an urban destination and also offers a modified version of the model that might be a good alternative for
applications on other urban tourist destinations. Yasin ÇEPNİOĞLU
1. Introduction
Tourism is known to be an important contributor to regional economies around the globe. The emergence of a tourist destination and the patterns of development and decline are a common interest for a number of public and private stakeholders.
Tourism research community of academia is one of the interested stakeholders in the area since it contributes to the area by providing educated professionals for the industry and supports the industry with research. One popular product of academia in the field is the Tourist Destination Life-Cycle model of Butler (1980). The model is useful to provide an explanation for the emergence and development patterns of destinations, moreover, it presents destinations within a lifecycle that eventually reaches a maturity level where stagnation occurs. When stagnation meets the critical range of elements of capacity, or we may call it ‘carrying capacity’, the model suggests a decline to take place in the development trend. However, Butler suggests that the decline could be avoided by a rejuvenation of some kind such as providing an alternative tourism product that may add to carrying capacity. A successful rejuvenation can start another development trend until the next capacity limit. The model has been applied in various cases since the 80s, however, most of the studies had taken place at remote destinations with a humble range of economic activities compared to urban centres.
Another growing contemporary research field of tourism is sustainable development. Sustainability is a very wide term and can be studied in a number of perspectives. Sustainability in economic means and sustainability in a local community or ecological perspective may mean a different conclusion. Without favouring one of those perspectives to others, studies with reference to tourism and sustainability will be briefly visited to acquire some hints for carrying capacity of tourist destinations beyond the number of beds available or other merely economic indicators.
The study area is Umeå, the biggest city of North Sweden with its population. However, it is relatively smaller compared to other urban centres around the globe. Fortunately, this smaller size provides it to be more suitable for a comprehensive focus. This study is assessing the life-cycle stage of destination Umeå under the light of previous studies by applying the TALC model and literature of sustainability also into account. Even though the size of the city is favourable, a tourism destination contains a wide range of subcomponents such as accommodation, food & beverage, or MICE (meetings, incentives, conferences, and exhibitions) tourism, and these all have potential to provide varying stories of emergence and development. Therefore, it is feasible to consider them as layers of a destination and do the analyses to each separately for generating nuanced discussions. For that reason, this study’s scope is focused on the accommodation layer of the destination Umeå.
2. Literature Review
2.1. What is a tourist?
Using the term tourist may seem simple since it is widely used, it appears like carrying a meaning that is known by everybody. However, it is not the case, the meaning of tourist is a rather controversial avenue. Nevertheless, to extract data and work on the available information in the field, it is important to know what is meant by tourist (Hall, 2005). In order to reach an accurate meaning of tourist, a definition of tourism is needed.
Leiper (1979) recognizes multiple definitions for tourism depending on the intentions. Those definitions are classified by Leiper as economical, technical, and holistic. In some countries, tourism and travel are used as synonyms. The conventional definitions provide some common features for the term; it is performed by non-residents; it occurs for short-term, and it involves a tourist generating area and a destination. They also commonly refer to the intentions of tourists such as leisure, recreation or business, and impact of the activities for both localities and on the tourists (Hall, 2005, pp. 16–17).
To generate a unified base for tourism statistics, World Tourism Organization (WTO, 1991) came up with the following definition (Hall, 2005, p. 17). An international tourist is a person who travels to a country other than his/her country of residence for at least one-night stay and for no more than a year, and the purpose of the visit should not be remunerated from within the country visited. The visitors that do not spend a night in the receiving country is named as ‘excursionist’ and the domestic tourist has a similar definition to the international, but the maximum time of their stay should be no more than 6 months. These features that are assigned for a tourist are rather arbitrarily put and can be used only for specific applications such as the statistics that WTO provides. Furthermore, the situation becomes even fuzzier and confusing when one attempts to draw a line between recreation and tourism because where one ends, and the other starts is a blurry area. Business travel is another controversial case since the purpose of the visit is work but business travellers consume widely the same products as leisure tourists, therefore, they constitute an important consumer share for tourism areas. Even the line between migration and tourism is not clear in some cases, for example, international students can be considered under both terms since their temporary stay for study resembles business travellers, but it may turn to a permanent residence.
The purpose here is not to conclude to an ideal definition, but rather to present how complicated it is to state who is a tourist. Even though this fluid state of the meaning of tourist causes a difficulty to study it, it may not cause a serious error if it is studied under a relevant aim and research design. For this study, it is appropriate to adopt the most inclusive perspective because everybody that uses the products commercial accommodation branch of tourism feeds the developing systems. It may not reflect all the areas of tourism in general, but night stays of any kind of visitor can show the trend for the development of the accommodation layer of tourism. Documenting a trend in this area is useful, especially, for the application of Butler’s tourism area life-cycle model.
2.2. Tourism Area Life Cycle
In the second half of the 20th century, some projections came forward for the evolution of
cycles; they are born, rise and fall over time. This process occurs in 6 stages and draws an s-curve on a graph (Fig 1.). However, he suggests in the model that the fall is not inevitable; there might be a rejuvenation taking place at the end. Every individual stage has several distinguishable characteristics. In Table 1, details of these stages are presented with their designated features (compiled by Agarwal (1997) using Butler’s work).
During the first stages, tourism activities are mostly locally initiated or publicly enacted. The number of visits is low, the economic impact of the tourism industry doesn’t constitute a significant presence in the subject area, and tourism products are likely to be authentic to the areas. The development stage of tourism in an area comes with a gradually increasing impact on the local economy. While tourism rises, non-local actors also come into play and propel the upwards move, and the role of local actors decreases.
Figure 1. Tourism Area Cycle of Evolution (Butler, 1980)
Table 1. Stages of resort developm ent and associated features
STAGE CHARACTERISTIC
EXPLORATION
• Few adventurous tourists, visiting sites with no public facilities • Visitors attracted to the resort by a natural physical feature • Specific visitor type of a select nature
INVOLVEMENT
• Limited interaction between local residents and the developing tourism industry leads to the provision of basic services
• Increased advertising induces a definable pattern of seasonal variation • Definite market area begins to emerge
DEVELOPMENT
• Development of additional tourist facilities and increased promotional efforts • Greater control of the tourist trade by outsiders
• Number of tourists at peak periods far outweighs the size of the resident population, inducing rising antagonism by the latter towards the former
CONSOLIDATION
• Tourism has become a major part of the local economy, but growth rates have begun to level off
• A well-delineated business district has taken shape
• Some of the older deteriorating facilities are perceived as second rate • Local efforts are made to extend the tourist season
STAGNATION
• Peak numbers of tourists and capacity levels are reached
• The resort has a well-established image, but it is no longer in fashion • The accommodation stock is gradually eroded, and property turnover rates are
high
POST-STAGNATION
• Five possibilities, reflecting a range of options that may be followed, depending partly on the success of local management decisions. At either extreme are rejuvenation and decline
Source: Compiled by Agarwal (1997) from Butler (1980).
The model has caught attention and been applied in numerous studies. There are various examples of different tourism areas where TALC model is employed for analysis; an island destination in England (Cooper and Jackson, 1989) and Grand Cayman (Weaver, 1990), a resort area along a surfing beach in Australia (Russell and Faulkner, 2004), a wine tourism destination in Canada (Poitras and Getz, 2006) and a tourism area based on a heritage trail (also in Canada) (Lemky, 2017) are some of the distant examples in spatial and non-spatial terms (types of tourism).
The Isle of Man is a small holiday island that doesn’t have any issue with determining spatial borders, and the visitors arrive at the island either by sea or air; hence, the records of visitors are more precise than non-island tourism destinations (Cooper and Jackson, 1989). Moreover, the island has records of arrivals reaching back to 1884. These specific characteristics provide the island with a good basis for analysis with the TALC model. Cooper and Jackson (1989) note that the island’s performance based on the number of visitors shows a correlation with the S-shaped curve of TALC and confirm the validity of the model based on their study.
The discrepancy is not exclusive to Weaver’s study, Agarwal points out that it is rather a common outcome (Agarwal, 1997). Agarwal attempts to use the model for the case of Torbay in her study and points out several operational limitations. She emphasizes the difficulties in operationalizing the model due to the absence of suitable data sources because even when there are some data to be the base of the model, it is often unstandardized. For example, different definitions for tourist over time would change annual visitor numbers, and this can result in very misleading conclusions. Another example is the borders of the areas, if the tourist destination is not a small enough island, determining the borders can be challenging. Moreover, some sources of data might be reflected from a potentially biased platform (newspapers, or council meeting reports). Hence, the epistemological base that the model sit can be hard to keep solid. Furthermore, similar to Weaver, Agarwal’s results show a deviation from the original model with the involvement of locals in the example of Torbay. Their share in tourism activities is high not only in the early stages but also during the development stage.
Russell and Faulkner (2004) use the model for two tourist areas in Australia, Surfers Paradise and Coolangatta. These areas are neighbours to each other that shares northern and southern edges of Golden Coast. They highlight the non-linearity of reality for tourism destination systems, the importance of entrepreneurship and irreducible complexity of factors that has an impact on tourist areas. Yet, they stick to the TALC model and use its stages to present their subject areas’ fluctuating tourism performance over time by continuously comparing with each other. Although their approach is interesting, their study doesn’t provide a clear picture of its criteria for upward or downward trends. Some new services, the involvement of public and private actors and collaborations that shaped over time are mentioned, but the impacts of those in countable means are not projected. Therefore, their results are hard to evaluate together with other studies.
Some studies cite to TALC model and claim that it was used for their analysis, however, it turns out that the model is only briefly mentioned in the study. There is not a feasible base for the speculations of the subject area’s life-cycle stage within the model’s framework. One example is a case study taking place in a wine tourism destination in British Columbia, Canada. Poitras and Getz (2006) mention the model in their theoretical background, but there is nothing attributed to the model in the result section. In the end, they conclude the destination is likely to be in ‘a mature’ stage in the life cycle, but it is unclear what is this conviction derived from. A recent study which also takes place in Canada is conducted by Lemky (2017). The study deviates from other studies because its subject is Cabot heritage trail which is a corridor rather than an area. The study uses visitor numbers as a performance indicator, and the result appears to draw an S-curve as it was in the model. The critical events on the trail’s development history are marked along the line, therefore, it provides a visual representation for the author’s analysis for the critical events taking place in the temporal dimension.
2.3. Carrying Capacity
Carrying capacity is a serious factor of limitation for every developing industry, and it is definitely a very important one for tourist destinations. It includes diverse sub-elements of limitations such as infrastructure, human resource capacity and ecological sustainability. Development might appear as an unlimited flow but the resources that development is built on may eventually run short.
In the case of tourism destinations, the land and human resource needed for development may get scarce therefore they turn more expensive and less accessible for other industries and the local residents. The infrastructure of an area may not be enough to support the increasing number of visitors with due to shortage of public transportation services and traffic congestions, or pollution that may be caused by overloaded sewage system or powerplants. Another limitation is the impact on the locals. Increasing prices of land and traffic congestions do also disturb locals and at some point, the development of a tourist destination may also cause a cultural clash and become more of a problem than a welcomed industry among locals(Atik, Işikli, Ortaçeşme, & Yildirim, 2015; Suntikul, & Dorji, 2015; Evans, 1976).
Carrying capacity is indeed a crucial limitation for a tourist destination development. Howbeit, it may be impossible to measure it for a tourist destination because of the number of variables and their pace of change (Mccool and Lime, 2001). The maximum number of visitors for a place depends on many dynamic factors that make it almost impossible to determine a certain range for carrying capacity of an area. Nonetheless, it is possible to check if the carrying capacity is met or if there are signs for its occurrence in the short-term future by looking for common symptoms of it by looking for the above-mentioned consequences.
3. Methodological Design
3.1. Methodology
The number of visitors is the main indicator of rise and fall periods in Butler’s original model, however, these numbers may not always be obtainable due to lack of suitable records. Moreover, even when a suitable set of records are available, it is challenging to locate the stages of the model purely based on visitor numbers. Furthermore, the number of visitors may even show a misleading picture since it wouldn’t reflect their spending or the costs for the localities. To cope with this, previous studies dominantly employed a qualitative approach which is also the case for this study. An approach with qualitative focus is accurate for this study because it can provide a more holistic perspective that accounts for a wide range of related variables and give insights for further research areas.
3.2. Methods 3.2.1. Interviews
The main branch of the study includes interviews with professionals in the tourism industry. Selection of respondents took place by checking the accommodation facilities available online and contacting them via e-mail. The mails were sent to head managers of the facilities or it was sent to available mail addresses with a request to contact the head manager.
During the period that the study was conducted, only 4 positive response received, and appointments arranged, but two of those wanted to cancel the meeting afterwards. In the end, two interviews took place. One of the respondents is the head manager of Scandic hotels in Umeå and regional manager of Scandic hotels for Northern Sweden, the second respondent is another head director who works for a destination management agency of the city but didn’t wish the identity to be revealed.
The respondents are informed about the content of the interviews before the meeting days. The interviews had taken place in the respondent’s offices and they are informed about the recording of the interview and the further processing of the materials that they provide. Written consent forms to record the interviews are signed and respondents marked on the form if they are in willing to give permission for the use of their names in the report.
The interviews are conducted in elite interview form. Elite interview refers to the experiences of elite members of society and the method is useful to reach high-quality data in an area where expert knowledge is required. The word elite can be defined in several senses, Smith (2006) points at those different ways of defining elites and the conflicting ideas regarding those. Elites are the people of power, but it does not always mean that there are 2 types of people who are elite and non-elite. A person who holds a kind of power such as a general manager is an elite in the context of that company and the business area, however, the same person is a non-elite in the context of the national political scene where the decision-makers of the policies regarding that business area are made by politicians rather than general managers. That takes us to the importance of the context when elite interviews are to be utilized. It is important to define the term elite in terms of the context of the research.
In essence, this study is about the accommodation branch of the tourism industry’s past, present and future. Thus, the professionals that are in higher positions in larger organizations are defined as elites.
3.2.2. Processing method for the data obtained from the interviews
Even though qualitative studies provide a wider perspective, it is also prone to human error both from the side of the respondent and the researcher. For example, respondents may not remember details correctly or express their opinions as facts, and the researcher may cause biased results with the structure of the interview questions. It is necessary to address these possibilities and make sure that they are cross-checked via comparing individual interviews with each other and also comparing the overall results of interviews with statistical data.
the needs of an individual study. For this study, the themes are pre-made as past, present and
future, and shared with interviewees. The transcriptions are then coded line by line and the
analysis of the interviews made together using the codes.
In addition to the interviews, other sources that may help to identify the historical development of the destination are utilized for enhancing the data provided from the interviews and have deeper insight for the overall story of the destination. These sources include newspaper articles, various advertisement materials from the DMOs, websites of hotels and the organizations that have relations with the tourism industry in Umeå.
3.3 Study Case: Umeå
Umea is the largest city of Northern Sweden in Västerbotten County with its population over 120.000 inhabitants in which about 30.000 are students. The city houses plenty of tourism products to its inhabitants and visitors.
There are numerous cultural elements present such as museums, theatres and an opera house, and cultural and sports events. The art museum, Bildmuseet may deserve particular attention amongst others since it is famous beyond borders. It was one of 3 nominated museums for “the Council of Europe Museum Prize 2014” (Council of Europe, 2013), and it was listed in the British newspaper Telegraph’s “42 incredible museums to visit in your lifetime” in 2017 (Kim, 2017). Moreover, the city was the European Capital of Culture in 2014, that is interrelated to its cultural product abundancy. Furthermore, the city is also known for its Sami heritage that are historically the native people of the land. The natural beauties of the city and available outdoor activities are other elements of attraction. The urban infrastructure of the city makes these natural assets accessible for the visitors and locals.
There are 42 accommodation facilities that are listed in visitumea.com website that is a part of the destination management organization of the city. Most of those hotels are in the city centre along with numerous restaurants in different concepts and scales. There is also a hotel situated next to the university hospital.
Figure 2. Change of Number Accommodation Establishments, Night spent and Occupancy rates for Västerbotten County
*Data obtained from Statistics Sweden (https://www.scb.se/).
The chart above shows the state of accommodation establishments in Västerbotten county from several aspects between the years 2008 and 2017. Each line represents the change ratio compared to 2008, which is the first year on the chart. The first line shows the change in the number of establishments and marked with blue colour on the chart. The second line is the number of night stays spent by visitors on the establishments in the given period and marked with orange colour. The third line is for occupancy rates that represent how far the bed capacity of the establishments met with visitor demand overall for the years and marked with grey colour.
There are two points that are worth to look closer on the chart. The first is the U-shaped line for the number of establishments that initially presents a decrease in the number establishments and then an increase back to the same level as the first years. The second one is the fairly stable increase in the number of nights spent by visitors and the occupancy rates.
The decrease in the number of establishments goes until 2014 and then starts to rise back. The number night stays and occupancy rates, at first, increase gradually, and from 2014 they show a more dramatic rate of increase. 2014 seems to be a breaking point for all the lines for an increase, hence gives a hint for further attention to this time.
2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 Number of establishments 0 6% 3% -1% -6% -8% -4% -6% 4% 3% Number of nights 0 -2% 4% 10% 9% 11% 12% 17% 24% 31% Occupancy rates 0 -5% -2% 6% 11% 10% 19% 21% 31% 40% -20% -10% 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50%
Change of Number Accommodation Establishments, Night
spent and Occupancy rates for Västerbotten County in
comparison to 2008
4. Results
It is hard to determine the starting point of tourism in Umeå. This difficulty comes from the lack of literary information about the first accommodation establishments or touristic activities in the city. However, the first hotel of the city was documented, and it was found in 1895 by the seaman’s mission.
Seaman’s mission was “a trade union and social insurance for seamen” (Stora Hotellet, n.d). The union acquired plots near the river by the city centre in 1892 and built Stora Hotellet 3 years later. The hotel also contained additional facilities and it became an important element in the heart of the city for locals, as well as visitors.
There is not an official record for the emergence of the other accommodation facilities that can be obtained during the period that this study took place. One of the interviews respondents, Anders Skönby, works for Scandic Plaza Hotel as the general manager for last 10 years, he is born in Umeå and worked in the city in different companies for about 20 years before taking his current position. According to his knowledge in the field, the first increase in the number of commercial accommodation establishments should be in the 1960s when people’s financial power increased, and travel opportunities became more accessible. First Scandic Hotel in Umeå (there are currently 2 of them) had started in 1963 as a road hotel and that is related to the spreading growth of road hotels around the world. Beyond that, the 1960s is a significant decade for the city because the airport started operating in 1963 and the university was found in 1965. According to Skönby, the city and the number of accommodation establishments and the visitors gradually increased from the 1960s until 2014.
Until the 1960s, the investments to the field was made by locals. The main example of this was the first hotel of the city, Stora Hotellet, that was owned and ran by local investors at those times. But after the 1960s, other actors also started to enter the market such as the hotel chain Scandic AB and since then the ownership of the accommodation establishments become owned by both locals and outsiders.
Figure 3. Compilation of night stay statistics in between the years 1991-2018
*Data obtained from the local DMO, Visit Umeå. 0 100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 Tho us and s o f N ig ht S ta ys
The chart above is drawn out of the guest night stay data and provided from Visitumeå and shows its historical trend between 1991 and 2018. The initial sources of this data are hotels, holiday villages, hostels and campsites within Umeå Municipality. Hotels, holiday villages, hostels and campsites are lawfully obligated to provide this information to the state and Visitumeå provides this data from state sources, therefore, the numbers for each year shows a reliable trend to analyse. The years 2012 and 2013 are missing in the chart because the available data for those years don’t contain campsites’ night stay data. Yet, the trend appears to show a consistent picture even in the absence of these years.
The number of night stays does not directly reflect the visitor numbers since the same visitor may stay several nights but it shows the changing use for the bed capacity of the city which is equally important demand factor. There are two visible leap periods on the trend, the first is 1992-1995 and the second is 2014-2017, and in between these periods, there is a gradual increase in the nights spent by visitors in the accommodation establishments. It is not clear if there was a triggering event for the first leap, but the second leap appears to be greatly related to the European Union project “European Capital of Culture”.
“You can say that 2014 was a milestone. It was the start of quite a lot of change in both events
and the part that you travel for as people because you wanted to see it (European Capital of
Culture in 2014). So, 2014 was very special for us as a town and for us in the hospitality industry.”
Both interview participants point at 2014 as a milestone for the city for a significant leap. Umeå was the European Capital of Culture in 2014, “The EU’s aim with capitals of culture is to reflect cultural diversity, increase exchange and awaken interest in Europe’s cultural wealth” and Umeå was selected to be one of the two capitals of culture for the year 2014. According to the interviews, it provided the city to show itself more significantly beyond its borders. Hundreds of events in various sorts had taken place during the year and some of them continue to be practised until today. On the same year, the art museum of the city, Bild Museet, was awarded with The Council of Europe Museum Prize 2014. Therefore, the EU culture capitals project gave Umeå further recognition with its cultural vibrancy and also it gained further cultural values during the year.
In the case of seasonality, there is not a clear indicator to see how it was in the past and the interview respondents could also not provide any information for earlier periods of the hospitality industry or accommodation establishments. Nowadays and recent years doesn’t show a seasonally fluctuating demand. However, one respondent states that even though the number of visitors does not change much, the people who are coming to the city for business reasons on the winter season also comes in summer season for leisure.
“Everything is getting more expensive, but you can’t get any more out from customers. They want lower and lower price because of the competition. It is quite hard for management. You get burnt from two fronts.”
While on the one hand, the competition is becoming severe with the stagnating demand and increasing supply, on the other hand, the cost of supply is increasing. One interview participant addresses the pressure caused by costs of the increasing land values, rents, and employee salaries.
The city is growing in population and in the number of the newly established businesses, however, the impact of this growth is not very strong in visitor numbers. Instead, eco-tourism is seen to be a promising tourism product for the future. One existing demand production comes from the university hospital. There is one hotel next to the hospital but Skönby says that there is a constant flow of visitors to their hotels who comes to the city for the hospital, even though their hotels are relatively far from the hospital. Therefore, the presence of the city hospital is a worth mentioning contributor to decreasing the surplus of the bed capacity in the city.
“I can say we have very very few days that we are full. So, we don’t actually need more rooms in the short term. But, in 10-15 years, absolutely, because the city is growing.”
As aforementioned, the future of the city’s accommodation establishments is expected to be in a more intense competitive environment. In a few years, the hotels will be completed, it will mean about 400 more rooms and the bed capacity of the city will be increased to double compared to 2009. It is not only the bed capacity propelling the competition, but also existing establishments are getting renovated, hence, their products are getting upgraded and refreshed. The participants of the interviews could not suggest any decisive indicator signalling a corresponding rise in the number of visitors. Nevertheless, the industry is hopeful for the future. There is a rapid growth expectation for the city in the next 10-15 years and this is reflected as the reason for increasing investment in the hospitality industry even though the supply of bed capacity has surpassed the demand. On the other hand, one risk that may cause these visitor expectations to fail is that the rising oppositions against air travel because of its impacts on climate change. If people increasingly decide to avoid using planes that may harm the hospitality industry of Umeå because of its location that is considerably distant to other urban cities.
“The city wants us to be about 250.000 (population) in 10-15 years, so, if we see that process going that way, we need these rooms. So then, we will have a balance between the customers coming to Umeå and available rooms.”
The interview respondents are from Umea; therefore, they have access to the opinions of other inhabitants of the city. When they were asked about the locals’ attitude towards visitors and hospitality industry in general, they answer that locals are either unaware of the industry and the increased visitors or enjoying to products of this growing industry, therefore, have a positive attitude and express their positive feelings about the presence of visitors.
According to the interview respondents, the infrastructure of the city does also seem like unaffected by the growing hospitality industry. They think that even in case the visitor numbers increase rapidly, the municipality is ready to do necessary investments to increase infrastructure capacity because of the growth plans of the city in general. They say that the city is already growing, therefore, growth in the hospitality industry will not cause problematic pressure on the infrastructure that is already being upgraded.
5. Discussion
Butler’s (1980) model (Figure 1) gives a good figure to present the life course of a destination and Agarwal’s (1997) table (Table 1) that compiles the features of each stage is a useful guide to move together. Both will be used as the main framework elements for the discussion here. Umea is an urban city, even though its population size is relatively smaller than the other urban cities. As a result of being an urban city, initial stages of Butler’s tourist area (destination) life cycle model is difficult to apply. Especially exploration stage is difficult to determine for an urban destination without going all the way down in the history of the town back to the days it was first settled.
The first “adventurous” tourists in the city’s history are long gone and probably there is nothing documented about them that is within the reach of this study. It is also hard to determine their motivations. There could be good guesses about those motivations, but it is not possible to check their accuracy, therefore, it can’t be safely used for analysis and not possible to tell whether the physical features of the area were a dominant reason for the visitors or there were other drives. The same conclusion goes for the first accommodation establishments, Stora Hotellet might be the first hotel in the town, but it is not clear if there were other commercial accommodation establishments in early days of the city before this hotel.
On the other hand, the foundation of Stora Hotellet can be interpreted as a market recognition. The need for commercial accommodation facilities must be recognized at those times and the first establishment for the industry shows the involvement of at least some actors in the city. The hotel was privately owned but there might be support or encouragement of local state administration involved too. Yet, there is no source to document such involvement that can be referred to here. The conditions in relation to market area and seasonality do also lack a source to reliably refer. Stora Hotellet is the only tangible sign for involvement stage and it points to the late 19th century.
Unlike the stages of emergence and involvement, the development stage is where the signs are becoming more plentiful. It is dark up until the 1960s, interviews participants predict a gradual increase with the growing city but the visible growth for the accommodation branch of the hospitality industry seems to start in 60s.
in Umeå is the first Scandic Hotel. The hotel is located next to the motorway and was established in 1963 with the purpose of providing their product and services as a road hotel. Another factor that signifies Scandic hotel specifically for this study is that it is not a local company, it is a Swedish company but not from Umea. Hence, it shows the presence of outside actors in the city with a larger hotel chain. Umeå Airport in 1963 and Umeå university 1965 other signifiers of the 60s. Despite the fact that both the university and the airport are very likely to have a considerable impact on the development of the hospitality industry, there is not any data that is obtained for this study in relation to their particular cases.
The 60s show some sparks of the developing industry of hospitality for accommodation establishments but after that, there is a dark area until recent decades. The night stay data from state records gives a narrow window for analysis and it starts from 1991. The gradual increase that interviews suggested is visible on the night stay data between 1995 and 2014. However, there is a visible leap between 1993 and 1995 and there is not a special reason for this leap that is identified by interview participants. On the other hand, the second leap takes place between 2014 and 2017 and this was well recognized by the interview participants and it is affiliated to the European Union project “2014 European Capital of Culture”. At that time, interviews suggest that many new establishments were found, and the city’s recognition was significantly increased beyond its prior reach. This directly relates to the feature of the development stage which expects an increasing amount of tourist facilities and promotional efforts.
But the other features of the development stage that are listed in Agarwal’s compilation for the model (Table 1) do not show themselves as clearly. It is not clear how far the control of the industry can be affiliated to outsiders because locals are still in the business and interviews suggest that it is rather mixed. And expected antagonism from the resident population towards the visitors doesn’t seem to be the case given the reflections of the interview respondents. The current state of tourism appears to show a mixture of features that are listed for different stages in the model. As it is mentioned in the prior paragraph, additional tourist facilities and increased promotional efforts are visible, but other features of development stage are questionable to be the case for Umea’s hospitality industry or accommodation branch in particular.
On the other hand, we observe some features that are listed under consolidation stage currently in progress in the city; the majority of the accommodation establishments and attractions for visitors are within a walking distance to the city centre even though there are new and old other establishments are scattered around within the borders of the municipality. Therefore, we can talk about a business district that has taken shape.
Moreover, Local efforts towards extending the tourist season are also somewhat present. There is not a clear high season for tourism but there are efforts made by the industry, municipality and local destination management agency (Visit Umea) to create different tourist products, or upgrade the existing products and promote those in various channels to reach an all-year-round stable industry.
seems to have still a consistent rate of growth. The share of the hospitality industry in the local economic context Umea cannot be considered in the same manner with a resort island destination or any other tourist destination that is on a non-urban area. It might be smaller in the size of the population compared to other urban cities, but it still houses the complex network of economic activities as an urban centre. Expecting an increase in the share of tourism in this economic environment could be accurate but there is not the data that supports this assumption. And expecting a major role of developing tourist destination in the local economy of an urban centre would need a visibly high rate of tourism activity in the city and in case of Umea it is hardly visible according to the interviews.
The last feature in Agarwal’s compilation for consolidation stage expects older facilities to be seen as a lower-class product. In the case of Umea, this happens with a twist that blinks to the rejuvenation stage. The accommodation establishment and the facilities that are older than others fall under the shadow of the new and fresh ones, however, the older ones do not let the course of time to drag them away from their prior glittering days. They are and had been in renovations, and they add new products to their set of offerings that provide them with competitive power.
The first hotel of the city, Stora Hotellet is a good example of this with its extensive renovation, product development and brand management movement that is related to EU capital of culture project 2014. In February 2014 the hotel was reopened, refreshed by keeping its historical value for the city and became a stylish boutique hotel. Stora Hotellet is an elegant example of the refreshment movement but it is not the only one. Other establishments that have at least decades of history in the city also took part in this movement, Scandic Plaza was still under the excitement of their new sports facilities and the restaurant opening by the time this study was taking place.
Accordingly, it could be said that the older facilities are in the awareness of their fight against time. Before the new establishments steal the stage for good, they change with changing times and a number of them seem to do it successfully. However, it is tricky to locate this case in the model and Agarwal’s table because it could be interpreted as a part of the post-stagnation stage for a sign of the rejuvenation process in progress.
To be able to make a more accurate interpretation, it is good to check features of the stagnation stage and see if they reflect the current or past state of Umeå. The first feature expects the destination to reach to its peak numbers of visitors and it also hits the capacity limits during stagnation. For Umeå, there is no good reason apparent to say the peak number of visitors is reached and the capacity limit is not met both in terms of bed capacity and the city’s visitor capacity in general terms. Thus, the first feature clearly doesn’t fit the case of Umeå.
The second feature of stagnation anticipates the destination to have a substantial image, but also it starts to lose its appeal for the visitors. Umeå’s image as a tourist destination is being established today but still, the destination management organization and all other stakeholders in the field work on it. The increasing night spent numbers and the reflections of the interview respondents do not reflect any decrease in the appeal of the place. It is not as clear as the first feature, but the second feature does also not seem to be the case for Umeå.
because it is difficult to see how far accommodation establishments have an impact on accommodation stock and property turnover rates. The city has a known issue with the shortage of accommodation possibilities for the inhabitants, but this may as well be related to the fact that city has a consistent population growth rate and the housing stock may not be responding with enough growth rate. Therefore, it is somewhat non-clear for the last feature of the stagnation stage, yet it does also not likely to be the current reality for Umeå.
Consequently, Umeå doesn’t show the expected signs of stagnation stage. If the city hasn’t experienced stagnation, the renovation and product development efforts that have been done in recent years under the cultural capital project cannot be considered as a product of post-stagnation.
The journey of locating the state of tourism for Umeå on Butler’s tourist area (destination) life-cycle model provides a picture to us at this point. The emergence and involvement stages had taken place in over 100 years ago, thus they don’t reflect the current situation in Umeå. Stagnation and post-stagnation stages are also not the case for Umeå since their attributed features are all yet to be observed. What remains are development and consolidation stages and here it becomes fluid because today’s Umeå shows some features of consolidation stage, but this stage should be also occurring in the critical range of elements of capacity area (Figure 1) and there is no sign of meeting the capacity limit. There is a further room in senses of economic, ecologic and tolerance of locals, and there is also more bed capacity waiting to be used. This might be related to the fact that Umea is an urban centre and have a higher resilience for growth for developing industries, therefore, it doesn’t make a disrupting impact even though hospitality industry achieves a considerable growth rate.
Similar problems appear for the development stage features. Development of the industry is quite obviously out there but the number of visitors does not surpass the resident population. Moreover, residents of the city are barely aware of the visitors, let alone antagonism. Nonetheless, the development of the industry is evident with the steadily increasing night stays and the number of establishments that the interviews suggest.
Figure 4. Life-stage of tourism in Umeå for commercial accommodation establishments
Figure 4 above is drawn to fit the case of Umeå into the perspective of the tourism area life cycle model of Butler. The figure appears similar to all the elements of Butlers model are present, but there is one substantial difference that might be missed in the first glance. The area which named a Critical range of elements of capacity is positioned above the S-curve, in the original model it covers the area where consolidation and stagnation stages are located on the S-curve. Besides, there is a dotted circle added to the model between the development and consolidation stages and it is named as “Life-stage of tourism in Umeå for accommodation establishments”. The angle of the curve is also slightly different, yet, it is only to project the case of Umeå more visually comprehensible and does not rely on any mathematical base because we don’t have all the relevant data to calculate a precise curve.
To briefly explain the positions of the historical events may help to understand the story of Umeå on the model. Exploration stage goes back at least as far as the 19th century, we don’t know when or where the accommodation services had started and if there was any establishment aiming commercial profits, but the city was already settled, therefore, it must have already some visitors that stay overnight. The involvement stage starts with the first hotel of the city Stora Hotellet in 1895 as an enterprise of the Umeå seaman’s mission. The hotel becomes an increasingly important part of city life with its facilities that are not only for visitors but also for locals to use.
also comes forward in the tourism habitat of the city in the same decade with the first Scandic hotel.
From the 1960s until 1990 there is a hollow spot for the study, we don’t know how exactly the development pace sailed. Yet, an official guest night spent data of the accommodation establishments starting from 1991 show a stable increase up until today.
In Figure 4 above, the dotted circle shows an area on the S-curve, as it reflects its meaning with its name, it covers the position of Umeå’s tourism for commercial accommodation branch. It’s shown as an area rather than a point on the curve because the study indicates that Umeå’s current status reflects both the characteristics of development and consolidation stages. It might be accurate to interpret this state as the end of development stage and beginning of the consolidation, but it is not clear that the rate of the increase in visitor numbers will become lower anytime soon. Thus, it is more accurate to say that Umeå is still in the development stage but shows signs of an approaching consolidation stage.
The area for Critical range of elements of capacity is located above consolidation and stagnation stages on “number of visitors” axis because Umeå doesn’t have any sign for stress related to the capacity of visitor volume it can carry. The increasing volume of visitors do not cause any apparent issue, and it is received positively instead such as a fresh destination full of energy to grow in the hospitality industry. Despite the fact that the growing number of visitors may cause the mainstream tourism-related issues in future, that impact is expected to be balanced with the growth of the city as an urban centre. Therefore, the area that marks the capacity limitations on the model is dragged upwards which marks the city’s high resilience for the stress related to the higher number of visitors.
6. Conclusion
Mobility is part of our everyday lives to varying extents. It comes in various forms from daily commuting to migration. Tourism is the version of mobility that concerns this study because of its economic, social and ecologic impacts on the area that it takes place.
Tourism requires travel from one’s personal space to a foreign space and to use products of tourism during this process of moving forth and back. Underlying motivations of these travels can differ such as business or leisure, and it is difficult to set limits to its extent moving from these motivations. For the purposes of this study, tourism is taken to the level of tourist and tourist is defined as the individual that use tourism products.
Butler’s “Tourist Area Life-cycle” model offers an appealing framework to analyze the evolving tourism in an area (or we may call tourism destination). The majority of the studies using the model had taken place in non-urban settings, therefore, the case of Umeå came as a distinctive alternative example. However, it comes with a serious limitation because tourism with its all extend is too wide to analyse comprehensively for this study. Thus, the study is limited to accommodation branch of the industry.
and hospitality industry in the city. Besides, it gives insights for the direction where the industry’s future is heading.
Albeit, there had been some difficulties while applying the model that is worth to state. As it was mentioned in the literature review with other studies. The designated features for the stages don’t seem to occur in the exact same order as it was expected in the original model. Moreover, the late stages, consolidation and stagnation do not appear in the critical range of elements of
capacity area in case of Umeå. Besides that, the lack of information source for the application
of the model was another problem stated in previous studies and it takes place in this case as well. The features that are listed under earlier stages, emergence, involvement and even development, were proved to be difficult to investigate due to lack of available source of information.
Furthermore, the study is conducted as a master’s thesis and it was a subject of several more limitations. First one is the limited period of time and this limitation had caused difficulties to reach the relevant quantitative data as well as relevant people to interview. The second limitation is the low budget because there were some statistical data that could be obtainable, but it was provided by a private company that offers the service commercially, therefore, it was not possible to elaborate the study with those.
Nevertheless, the available interviews and the data provided enough clarity for the case of Umeå to draw conclusions. Moreover, some of these commercially provided statistical data was indirectly obtained from the destination management organization of the city, Visit Umeå, and helped the empirical base of the study to stand more confidently.
Even though there are some divergences from the original model’s suggestions for designated features for each stage, the study concludes that the stage of life for the accommodation branch of Umeå’s tourism is Development stage. Additionally, the study provides a modified version of the model deriving divergences that are observed in this case. The version presented in Figure 4 may provide a useful alternative for future studies that takes urban destinations as a subject area. Since this study is focused on the accommodation branch, there is an avenue for further studies that may be focused on different branches of tourism.
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