2. Existing tourism models
A number of tourism models have been developed that have tried to explain how tourism works. It is important
to understand that models are simpli"ed views of reality that strive to explain how certain features, lationships
or processes work. They do not try to mirror reality precisely. Most tourism models recognise the complex nature of tourism and the inter-relatedness of di!erent components of tourism. To a large extent, they all argue a reductionist approach to tourism. Pearce (1989) in his seminal work, for example, discusses how one can understand how tourism works by dis-aggregating it into its component parts, identifying the relationships and then reaggregating it. He argues that the whole of tourism is equal to the sum of its parts.
Mill and Morrison (1985) show the tourism system as a closed system that consists of four interconnected parts } Market, Travel, Destination and Marketing. An understanding of tourism comes from an understanding of di!erent models that drive each of the components. For instance, Mill and Morrison argue that the market can be best understood through the use of a consumer behaviour model and that a regulatory framework model is the most appropriate method of understanding the destination. McIntosh and Goeldner (1995) discuss the array of approaches used to study tourism, ranging from a geographic, to a product approach, an economic approach and a sociological approach, among others.
They conclude that a systems approach is needed, dening a system as a set of inter-related groups coordinated
to form a unied whole and organised to accomplish a set of goals. Gunn (1979) adopts a land use planning model and treats tourism as any planner would treat any other land use. Murphy (1985) is one of the few scholars who uses a living ecosystem analogy to examine the relationship between tourists and host communities. However, his model does not attempt to explain how tourism functions, simply how it relates to its host community.
Perhaps the existing model that comes closest to acknowledging the complexities of tourism is Neil Leiper's
much misunderstood &Tourism Systems' model (Leiper,1990). The use of the plural of the word &system' is
intentional for he argues that tourism systems function at a personal level, with each tourist operating within his or
her own tourism system. Thus, for example, the four million overseas visitors who came to Australia in 1997
operated in four million discrete tourism systems that may have shared certain common elements, but
otherwise remained individual.
Each of these models argues explicitly, or implies strongly that:
1. tourism can be controlled;
2. disparate tourism players function in a formally, coor dinated manner to form a uni"ed whole;
3. tourism is organised and that the organisation can be controlled by a top down management approach;
4. individual tourism business function to achieve a set of common, mutually agreed upon goals;
5. tourism is the sum of its constituent parts, and
6. by understanding how each part works, an understanding of how tourism works as a whole will emerge.
The greatest strength of these models is that they are all written from the perspective of an overarching public
sector tourism organisation that is charged with developing tourism according to a plan. As such, they have utility
for governmental and quasi-governmental sector tourism organisations and academics. Implicit in all of these models is the assumption that tourism is a linear, deterministic activity, whose orderly development can be controlled from above by &planners'. These models try to reinforce the belief that tourism is predictable and that control over tourism is both possible and desirable,
while a loss of control poses a threat to desired tourism outcomes. They argue that the failure of the top down planners to control tourism is a function of a lack of data and the failure to dissect and analyse all the interrelationships between tourism's component parts, rather than as an inherent function of how tourism works. With such information, tourism should be able to function as a machine according to traditional Newtonian physics. Such an attitude is re#ected in a recent World Tourism Organisation document stating that tourism must be developed and managed in a controlled, and sustainable manner, based on sound planning (WTO, 1994). Yet, history shows that most tourism plans do not work. Both the popular and academic tourism literature are replete with accounts of adverse social, cultural and environmental impacts, calls for the need to control rampant tourism development, stories of the undesired effects of spontaneous development and the "nancial troubles many tourism organisations face. Indeed, one of the common themes in the tourism literature is how to control the genie of tourism once it is let out of the bottle. If the traditional models explained tourism fully, then they should also o!er insights into controlling tourism. But none does. The reason is that tourism is simply too complex to be captured e!ectively in a deterministic model.