Tourism planning and development has proven to be an effective tool in helping the economic upliftment of many countries. South Korea has been making strides in coming up with commendable urban tourism programs that has been helping the country position itself as a major tourist destination in Asia. We now look at the country’s development of its travel industry and see how we can use it as a model for urban planning with focus on tourism development in many other areas.

If you’re looking for Part 2, you can see it HERE.

What is Tourism Development Benchmarking?

Before we dig in deeper. Let’s deal first with the meaning of benchmarking. It is simply looking at another site or object that can be regarded as a model or emulated for the development of another site or object. In tourism, it would be about picking out a destination, identifying its features and how it developed, then modeling another destination based on the features of the benchmarked destination.

What makes benchmarking an effective tool in tourism planning and development?

The number one benefit of benchmarking is it saves so much time and resources in figuring out how a new or emerging destination should be planned, developed and managed. Without any benchmark, planning a tourism site would lean towards trial and error or just one level above the tarot card reading. A lot of time would be wasted figuring out how a lake, a river, a mountain or even an informal settlement can be developed or repurposed into a viable tourist destination. You can definitely throw in practical things to make those development introduction more sustainable and even green.

Benchmarking also minimizes the element of the unknown and makes a new destination more prepared to potential negative impacts or repercussions because the benchmarks already identified the potential issues and possible solutions.

But keep these in mind when you apply benchmarking in tourism planning and development

Copy-pasting or completely imitating a benchmark should be abhorred. One should treat it like learning how to knit to come up with a unique product and not knitting something that has been done. Take the lesson, not make the imitation.

The idea must apply to local setting. The environmental, social, cultural and economic condition of a benchmark would most likely be different from other destinations. The resources are different and even the markets would need some tweaking to make the development more feasible.

With these out of the way, we can now look at South Korea as a good benchmark for tourism planning, development and management.

South Korea has maintained so many of its historical sites such as palace complexes even in the middle of the capital city of Seoul where their cultural and historical values over commercial repurposing is never an issue. Because businesses come and go and eventually forgotten in decades. But culture and history will remain as integral parts of the people and the country for thousands of years.

There are still so many things we can learn from South Korea in terms of urban tourism planning, development and management. One take-away we can learn from this country is that development need not be a huge issue so long as it improves the total value of their cities which in turn would produce an ideal habitation and business environment. Plus communities also become highly attractive for travellers in search of quality destinations and transient habitation.

You can read the Part 2 HERE, where we will see the rest of possible benchmarks such as beaches, other urban features and hiking trails, even kpop and kdrama, plus the conclusions. Do let me know your comments and how I can improve this type of article.

If you appreciated this article, you can also read the article on Urban Mobility
You can also check out my online course on practical carrying capacity
as well as the ebook on Practical Ecotourism