Discuss about the Business Research Method Research Proposal for Sustainable Tourism Strategy.
The Tourism Strategy in Hobson’s Bay provides the strategy for developing the tourism aspects in and around Melbourne in Australia. Tourism has been significant in this area especially in the destinations around Williamstown and Hobsons Bay. The Tourism Strategy highlights the famous seasonal aspects of Hobsons Bay Tourism and it also emphasises on the negative aspects of in terms of impact on the local residents of the area in case where the Tourism activities are not planned with due diligence. The Strategy Research conducted was based on the main visitor sites of the area like Williamstown and its attractions like Altona Beach and Pier Street (Bailey, & Russell 2010).The area is also well known for its coastal parks stretched along the area and the mesmerising beaches. In this report, we will conduct a literature review of the tourism in and around Melbourne.
The Project Scope is to develop a Sustainable and an enjoyable Tourism Strategy in Hobsons Bay.
Assessing the Tourism Situation – Identification of the existing tourism markets, present issues in the community, opportunities to consider for future developments
Identification of methods to enhance tourism related prospects in the area – Expenditure proposal for increasing the tourism related activities and maximising tourism
Marketing of Tourism – Coming up with newer methods of enhancing tourism marketing including campaigns
Infrastructure requirements in the Community – Identification of any of infrastructural changes with respect to provision of additional facilities to the Tourists
International Marketing – Development of International Strategies for spreading tourism in the world market including the internal marketing in Australia
Funding – Securing funding from sources
Running campaigns in terms of spreading awareness for securing funds for the development of tourism in Hobsons Bay
The listed objectives of the Project – Hobsons Bay are
Objective 1 – The objective of the Project was to develop and maintain a sustainable and a natural tourism environment in the Hobsons Bay Area to be maintained for the present and future generations.
Strategy
Objective 2 – Work towards protecting the present communities of the Hobsons Bay area and ensure effective development is done.
Strategy
The main plan of the Tourism Industry was to provide the critical strategic tourism development objectives for the Hobsons Bay Tourism Area. The Plan has also included the environmental conservation and contribution towards tourism in the specified area. The main tourism strategy was to target the high – end market segments based on the lifestyle of Melbourne’s diversified population (Brown & Lehto 2005).
The Plan was named as Destination Melbourne in order to develop the tourism in the Melbourne Community.
Products identified in order to develop the Tourism in Hobsons Bay Area are
The Plan has chosen Melbourne to be the Tourism Development area for the framework however it has not identified any other regional areas of the Community. It does not also include any framework for the development of Tourism in which the Hobson Bay fit in (Melbourne Metro Strategy 2006).
The plan has successfully integrated the positive events of Melbourne in terms of Tourism in order to develop the Hobsons Bay with the set – up of short term markets with a sustainable growth. The main structures which are identified are Melbourne Leisure Parks and Convention Centres as they come under the main critical aspects of Tourism in Melbourne Area (Cook, R., Yale, L., & Marqua 2010). 9391034318 /
Critical Actions which are to be developed in the area are
The primary research was to develop a plan for the development of Tourism in the Melbourne area – after sustainability in Hobsons Bay Council and to increase the spread of Tourism in the complete year.
What are the available regulatory controls and infrastructure controls in order to improve sustainability in the area?
What are the possible ways of recommending sustainable management of tourism to protect and enhance the natural inhabitation and building heritage in the Hobsons Bay and reduce the negative impact of tourism related activities in the area?
What is the phase wise implementation process of Tourism in the area including the cost related action plan?
The recommendations for the Tourism related activity should be in alignment with the State’s norms and policies as per the regulations of the Tourism Development Council
The research methodology adapted is based on the strategy and the implementation process of the Tourism related activities.
The methodology adapted for the preparation of the Tourism Development includes various factors like
Sustainable Tourism is the main business focus of various Countries and for Countries like Australia where Tourism is one of its main attractions has managed to attract millions of Tourists on an Annual basis. Sustainable Tourism is the main factor which strengthens the economies of various Countries and it also contributes to create healthy communities (Victoria’s Tourism Industry Strategic Plan 2006).
Development of Tourism in any area also causes issues with relation to the negative impacts it might result in owing to the modern development of the Communities. Internet, Roads, Infrastructure and Rail are the main aspects which cause a lot of digging in the mountainous terrain and this eventually results in causing the unwanted pollution(Council Plan 2013).
The negative aspects of Tourism have been causing a great pressure on the respective Governments of the Countries over the past 35 years.
With these concerns in view, it has been made acceptable that tourism development and planning would consider all the social and environmental concerns and it would contribute to the development of the Tourism in the Countries (Cheng, Yang, Wan & Chu 2013).
This gives a greater scope for the development and improvement of the term sustainable tourism where their focus on the economic development of the Country will not hamper the prospects of future enjoyment of the people in that area and in the world (Victoria’s Tourism Industry Strategic Plan 2006).
The analytical focus has been laid on the tourism development of Victoria where the tourism related activities were developed with a greater emphasis on embracing tourism and conserving the environment The Tourism was being developed with a greater focus on environmental conservation which has included points like
Attractions |
Activities |
Natural Entertainment |
Coastal Park like Altona Homestead in Altona Bird Watching Programs Cherry Lake attractions Jawbone Parks Bird Species Attractions which are of 115 Coastal Park in Point Cook Coastal Heritage Park |
Normal Entertainment and Attractions |
Sea Planes watching in Melbourne Science Works Cruise trips Stony Creek Backwash Warm Beaches Cannons and Gauge Houses Williamstown Reserve – A greatest attraction Altona Pier Restaurants |
Natural Entertainment |
Beaches on the coast Logan Reserve Trips for Fishing and Boating Williamstown Beach |
Parks for fresh nature enjoyment |
Coastal heritage parks |
Yearly and Planned Events |
Williamstown Festival Bay side Festival |
Arts and Culture |
Hobsons Bay Community Heart Centre Historical Society Williamstown Town Hall The Old Fort Spotswood Pumping Station |
Most of the Attractions are not as well – known however some of them have been known for a lot of years to majority of the population in Australia where lots of Tourists come to visit the places. Hobsons Bay with its numerous tourist attractions has a lot of accommodation properties where the Tourists can stay with greater provisions like Bed and Breakfast. Most of the accommodation properties are Hotels and Motels including Service Apartments and Guest Houses (Morgan & Xu 2009).
The Accommodation properties also offer camping sites with a provision of beds especially in the natural reserves and the strong accommodation in the Hobsons Bay is because of the presence of the Corporates in the area. The area also manages to attract various types of tourists which includes niche customers and middle class customers where there is accommodation provision for all the Customer types.
Hobsons Bay has been a site with many transport facilities with rail, boat, sea plane, charter boat and bikes. Most of the Tourists use road transport where they have a convenient access to reach Hobsons Bay. The tourist locations majorly are being exploited by the congestion and pollution the cars cause. The aspect of public transport has been minimal in the area to reach Hobsons Bay. There have been many surveys which were conducted and found that almost 85% of Tourists travel by their own cars. This number can be analysed where the no. of Tourists in each of those cars might be minimum however the no. of vehicles being used to travel are many.
This is the main factor for a lot of pollution in majority of the Tourist locations. The areas around Hobsons Bay don’t have an option to provide to the Tourists to travel other than using the road transport. This could be a major observation for the Government and the City Council of Hobsons Bay in order to co – ordinate with the Project implementation team of the Tourism Development to come up with ideas where they could propose accessible transport systems in order to be created and used by the Tourists.
The Tourists come and spend an average of 2 – 3 hours at Hobsons Bay. The observations made as a part of the study were
Even when people get there to Hobsons Bay there has not been enough space for parking at Nelsons Place. The only method to increase the Tourists and spread the marketing idea of Hobsons Bay is to increase the transport facilities and help the Tourists with appropriate parking facilities to ensure they have an enchanting holiday experience and a get away from their daily busy schedules.
Tourist expectations have been increasing with the advent of no. of increased holiday and tourist destinations around the world. The major tourism trends in the world include
The most critical marketing issues of Hobsons Bay also include the lack of accommodation where the Tourists can escape from their busy schedules and take shorter breaks. The inter related issue of this concern is with the lack of internet technology in the area and also the Tourist department of Hobsons Bay has not made an effort to market its enchanting and serene beauty. The same is the case in Melbourne as well where the presence of Hobsons Bay is completely left out.
Williamstown has done more of branding than Melbourne where most of the Tourists keep visiting. The key factor which has to be seen here is that the tourism aspect which can contribute to the rise of te economy substantially left behind (Vaid 2003). If the City Council has made an effort to advertise and increase the awareness of Hobsons Bay the tourism would have been a greater sight in that area (Jiang, Dev & Rao 2002).
The potential marketing campaigns which could be adapted and implemented are
Apart from targeting the local Melbourne and the Australian markets, it is also advisable to target the international markets where most of the people would genuinely be interested in Australia and its calm and peaceful environment. Like Melbourne, the Hobsons Bay Market could also cater to Tourists from all areas of interests like
The branding aspect of Hobsons Bay Tourism has been taken care of Agencies like Tourism Victoria and Tourism Melbourne known as Destination Melbourne where Williamstown has been highly branded and marketed. If we consider the site of Tourism Victoria, they have marketed heavily on Williamstown under Melbourne however there would no marketing related to Hobsons Bay (O’Neill and Mattila 2004).
It has also been observed that there is no exposure for Hobsons Bay and there has to be some type pf equal status which the Tourism department can provide to the area. Communication should be effective to ensure that the Tourists are kept appraised of all the facts of Tourist information which could hype up their interests to visit, spend money and support the local residents in terms of increasing their revenue (Dopson & Nelson 2003).
This would also give us an understanding that the Author has highlighted the proper communication and highlighting of the tourist destinations of Hobsons Bay in making its tourism competitive.
The infrastructure of Hobsons Bay is more well developed than St. Kilda and the probable disadvantages are more related to the type of infrastructure available in terms of transport like the rail and road transport, public accessibility of transport and effectiveness of infrastructure. Accommodation and culture and heritage conditions also play a major role (Coghlan 2006).
Some of the critical infrastructure related issues include
The public infrastructure especially in terms of Maritime Heritage close to Park Victoria has restricted the major opportunity to build focus in the same location (Victoria’s Tourism Industry Strategic Plan 2002–2006). This could be treated as a major opportunity to shift their focus to the immediate competitive area which is Hobsons Bay. In order to accomplish this plan, a commercial plan would be a better choice to build the required infrastructure (Kim 2008). We have identified that one of the major attractions of Hobsons Bay is its enchanting experience of nature where there is a lot of space for cycling and open air workouts. Development of the cycling paths will enhance the tourism experience of Hobsons Bay where the promotion of limited usage of transport will help in conservation of its environment (Scott, Laws & Boksberger 2009).
If the area and the accommodation of Hobsons Bay develop more of facilities for the disabled people, the tourism will increase explicitly (ABS 2003). The Hobsons Bay City Council can outsource food spaces where smaller Restaurants and Cafes can be established all through the Beach Side road where people can walk, watch the sunset, eat and drink (Strauss 2008).
This would sound like a perfect short holiday get away where more no. of Australian Tourists will get attracted to. In order to develop the infrastructure in terms of increasing the accommodation facilities, the City Council should invite more of private vendors where they can invest and build the private properties. The analysis has also confirmed that Hobsons Bay has enough no. of private properties which were occupied by residents and the Private vendors can re design those existing old buildings and can shape them into places which can accommodate all types of people. This would solve the issue of finding a place to build new infrastructure for accommodation purposes in Hobsons Bay (Sheedy 2010).
The data collection for conducting the research on Tourism development in Hobsons Bay was conducted by National Visitor Survey and by Tourism Research Australia where these sources have been regarded as the main sources of data (Smith & Holmes 2010). This had a lot of authenticity in terms of collection, analysis and compilation as the data was majorly dependent on the no. of Visitors visiting Hobsons Bay on an annual basis (Hobsons Bay 2007).
Hobsons Bay majorly is not under any Tourism region in order to analyse the data which exists however in this case the employees of National Visitor Survey have interviewed a lot of Tourists who visited Hobsons Bay with questions segregated under different heads like
This questionnaire was targeting the year round visitors with a majority of visitors who used to visit Hobsons Bay for a day. There was a separate questionnaire to target the Visitors during the summer which included questions like
Different locations of Hobsons Bay have varying no. of Visitors on a yearly basis. The major factors which contribute to attract the Tourists are
The research surveys conducted by National Visitor Survey and by Tourism Research Australia have interviewed random no. of Tourists who used to visit the locations mentioned earlier during different seasons in order to get the right pulse of the Tourist attractions of Hobsons Bay.
Location wise Visitors |
No. of Visitors |
Local |
12% |
Victoria |
48% |
Interstate |
17% |
Overseas |
23% |
The present plan to conduct an analysis of the tourism was well designed and the review of the plan was well managed by the tourism development department and the City Council of Hobsons Bay with a high level participation of the tourists and the industry people. The critical objective was simple where the tourism analysis was to be conducted in order to improve the tourism in the area of Hobsons Bay (Huimin & Ryan 2011).
Ethics, Standards and Clearances
The plan for the data analysis and for practicing the ethics, standards and clearances was as given below.
Key Objective |
Action Plan |
To create a strong commitment to the Strategy and ensure its proper implementation in all the Tourist Sites |
· Communicate regularly with all the critical stakeholder groups by using the tools and techniques of the Council in order to obtain a clearance from the Council members, forum members, the internal and external teams. The major groups which are to be included in getting a clearance are Industry departments Council Teams Community Members · Involve all the groups in the strategical implementation meetings and the ongoing development activities · Establish and maintain stronger relations with the Melbourne Tourism Board · Keep the Stakeholders informed of all the high level strategical outputs and outcomes in order to ensure a better acceptability of the plan |
Timely review of the strategical plan and develop the strategy |
· Consider the previous reports of the sustainable tourism and focus majorly on all the factors which have to be improved · Conduct a mid – performance review half way through the planned life cycle of the project |
Strategical plan to be developed with an effective implementation plan |
Improve the tourism sectors by collaborating with the essential vendors and improving the Tourist site overall |
Make an effective use of the Tourism generated revenue in order to improve the industry |
The main idea of improving the tourism would be to enhance the Hobsons Bay Area in terms of tourism, accommodation, infrastructure facilities, employment and tourist attractions like food and entertainment |
With the critical findings of the research which was conducted in Hobsons Bay related to its Tourism the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats were analysed by using the market standards. The weaknesses were listed in order to improve them. For example, it was found that there was not appropriate parking space and the area was around the beach and there was no scope to provide parking facilities for all the vehicles which came to Hobsons Bay (Hobsons Bay 2012).
Genuine report standards of the forums and the City Councils were used in order to report the tourist analysis of Hobsons Bay. All the critical stakeholders were involved in all the meetings and monthly reviews in order to collect the feedback and work on improvement plans (Prasad and Dev 2000).
The Tourism plan of Hobsons Bay can be changed in the future depending on the newer strategical plans which might be made and the plan was made initially by considering the social and environmental conditions of improving the tourism prospects in Hobsons Bay. The plan was originally based on Melbourne Tourism and the challenges which the suburban tourism was facing. The research conducted in real was the major input for designing the tourism development plan of Hobsons Bay. The roles which were played by Melbourne Tourism, National Visitor Survey and by Tourism Research Australia were considered to be the most critical sources of the research.
Using the regression method and by applying the method of correlation parameters we have assumed the correlation co-efficient where its value is 0.78 and we show the direct relation between the no. of Tourists who have visited the place and the no. of days spent at Hobsons Bay by them (Radu, Huidumac, Costel & Rossela 2010).
Multiple R factor |
0.782 |
Square times R |
0.612 |
Adjusted value of Square times R |
0.573 |
Error |
977,99 |
Results |
12 |
These values confirm that 0.78 is the correlation and it has a direct relation between the no. of Tourists visiting Hobsons Bay and the no. of days spent by them at the Tourist Location. The results prove that they are the same as the correlation co-efficient. On the basis of the analysis and data collection which the National Visitor Survey and by Tourism Research Australia have done by considering the tourists season wise and between 2006 – 2008, we can confirm that the influence on the no. of tourists spent is 62% and the balance no. of Tourists keep visiting Hobsons Bay during some seasons.
Conclusion
The research and analysis which has been conducted to improve the sustainable tourism around Hobsons Bay provides information about various destinations for people who can come and visit the place. The Tourism department of City Council has to collaborate and work together in terms of improvising the tourism prospects in Hobsons Bay with relation to Food Industry, Nature based conservation parks, Cultural heritage parks and sites, Shopping complexes and theatres for entertainment, Accommodation and Sports complexes for conducting events which would improvise the economy of Australia further.
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