Developing a Tourism Plan of Action

Getting Started

This document is designed to provide information on setting and prioritizing tourism goals and objectives and then putting them into action to ensure they happen. Tourism plans and actions based on clear goals and objectives, are more likely to succeed in meeting your community’s tourism needs.

First, congratulations to your community for taking a very important step, establishing a tourism working group and utilizing the Tourism Destination Area Resource Kit. Through completion of the self-guided workbook, your community has evaluated your area’s tourism activity levels and established benchmarks for measuring progress. So, what’s next? Now you must analyze the results of the workbook to plan what might be pursued to further improve tourism success and advance your community as a Tourism Destination Area.

Taking Note

Using the completed self-guided workbook, your community is ready to compile 10 lists stating tourism concerns and successes. These lists relate to the 10 critical elements and the sections of the workbook.

Before starting each list ask yourself – what are the areas of concern and what are the things we do well? Do we have all the ingredients to be a successful Tourism Destination Area? Where does our community need to focus it’s attention? Keeping these questions in mind and letting the information recorded in the workbook guide you, make a list for each section. Remember, the more specific you are in stating a concern or success, the easier it will be to find a solution or plan an action.

Once all your community’s tourism concerns and successes are listed, your tourism working group needs to discuss which items are the most important and rank them accordingly. In determining the importance of tourism concerns and successes, the main criteria are as follows:

• Successes that demand specific actions to ensure their sustainability.
• Concerns that have a negative affect on many or all of your tourism markets: These should rank higher than those that affect few or only one or two of your markets; and
• Opportunities that are easy to address: How much time, effort, and/or money will be needed? Obvious opportunities that can be addressed easily and are instrumental in growing your destination should rank higher.

When this stage of the process is complete, your group should have lists of valuable information and a good understanding of your community’s tourism needs and concerns. Understanding this information allows you to move to the next step, developing tourism goals and objectives.

Setting Goals and Objectives

Tourism goals are broad, long-term statements that outline what the working group would like to see happen to tourism in the community. These goals should be compatible with the community’s Tourism Position and should provide direction for more specific objectives to follow.

Tourism objectives are specific, measurable and have a defined completion date. If acted upon, tourism objectives will help you accomplish your tourism goals. Your Tourism Working Group may develop several objectives however, remember to avoid broad or general statements that make your objectives difficult to measure. Please rank each objective in order of priority.

Achieving Results

Next your working group is ready to develop an action plan. Developing an effective action plan can help your community focus and decide what steps need to be taken to achieve your particular tourism objectives. An action plan can help determine who is going to do what, when and where. It guides you to your vision of the future and the actions necessary to get there. The action plan answers the question “What do I do to achieve my objective?”

Each objective will demand a separate action plan and will likely require several action steps. Action steps are very specific. They should eliminate any confusion about what should be done, how it should be done and by whom.

If your tourism working group is having difficulty developing action steps to meet an objective, perhaps the objective is unrealistic. You may wish to change the objective or even delete it all together.

Action Plan checklist:

• Does the Action Plan accomplish the goals stated?
• Does the Action Plan demonstrate it’s potential effectiveness in relationship to the goals stated?
• Are the short-term, middle-range, and long-term goals identified?
• Is there a time line of events?
• Are those individuals/groups who have an interest in the implementation of the Action Plan identified?
• Is there a positive, productive and constructive impact of the Action Plan upon the future scene?
• Does the action plan explain in detail - who, what, why, when, where and how?

Developing a Tourism Plan of Action | Sample

SAMPLE: Shows an example of Tourism Action Plan to help guide you through this process:

Concern: Enhance Leadership. Section 2B: Our community has not participated in the Sustainable Tourism Community Screening Program.
Goal	Objective	Action	Responsibility	Timeline	Resources	Results
To enhance leadership within the community.	To research the Sustainable Tourism Community Screening Program and encourage a group of community stakeholders to register and participate in this program by March 2006.	* research program via internet * meet with TCH staff to discuss program * do a presentation to ensure stakeholders understand program * Organize a group to participate	* S. Smith * J White * J White * J.Doe	Jan. 15/06 Feb. 02/06 Feb. 10/05 Feb. 20/05	Community c@psite computer Meeting room Laptop Community meeting room Computer Power Point FAQ info sheet List of names Available times Itnerary

Developing a Tourism Plan of Action | Template