IMPROVEMENT OF THE GOVERNANCE STRUCTURE, BOTH WITHIN THE EU INSTITUTIONS AND WITHIN THE INDUSTRY.

Commissioner Elżbieta Bieńkowska set out her 8 Priorities for the future European Tourism Strategy. Among the 8 Priorities is ‘the improvement of the governance structure both within the EU institutions and within the industry’

 Yet, the term ‘Governance’ is absent from the recent report on Tourism submitted by Isabella De Monte (Italy) subject to discussion in the plenary at the end of October.

While there is no clear definition of what governance in the tourism sector consists of, it can be paraphrased as follows: a process of conducting coordinated activities among public, private and social actors in the “tourism system” to create synergies.

Tourism is a sector of activity that involves multiple interrelationships among numerous types of actors and agents intervening in the production of goods and services consumed by visitors. In this framework, the EU functions, under current conditions, are particularly relevant in coordinating efforts to help ensure that the dynamic of permanent growth that tourism has achieved to date is economically, socially and environmentally sustainable so as to increase its contribution to development.

Definition of Tourism Governance

‘Governance is a practice of government that is measurable, that is aimed to effectively direct the tourism sectors at the different levels of government through forms of coordination, collaboration and/or cooperation that are efficient, transparent and subject to accountability, that help to achieve goals of collective interest shared by networks of actors involved in the sector, with the aim of developing solutions and opportunities through agreements based on the recognition of interdependencies and shared responsibilities'.

At the outset, it would be useful for the EC

• To identify the basic components that could enter into a concept of governance applicable to tourism, studying its implications not only for the public policies that guide tourism development, but also for Public Tourism Administrations (PTAs), as a fundamental component of government, whose impact on future development in this sector would also be studied.
• To develop a methodological proposal for the construction of governance indicators in the EU tourism sector, for use in determining, explaining and evaluating the space it occupies in different contexts, its instruments and mechanisms, as well as its implications for the directive process of tourism, recognizing the role, characteristics and forms of participation of actors intervening in tourism production.
• To determine the patterns of interaction and institutional arrangements that may be desirable for effective governance in the tourism sector, with the aim of opening spaces for reflection about the public sector instruments, means and mechanisms that could help to promote and efficiently produce services that add to and help to sustain the value of tourism production.

Defined in this way, governance can have diverse connotations along two interrelated dimensions:

• Directive capacity of the EU determined by its institutional powers and resources, irrespective of its territorial extent, to promote and transparently exercise mechanisms of coordination, collaboration and/or cooperation subject to accountability, with networks of actors based on agreements recognizing interdependencies and shared responsibilities.
• Directive effectiveness , derived from the efficient use of institutional powers and resources for coordination, collaboration and/or cooperation characterized by co-responsibility, transparency and accountability, which are fundamental to the definition and achievement of objectives with respect to mutually beneficial solutions and opportunities in the general interest.

In any case, emphasis should be placed on the willingness and aptitude of the EU to practice coordination, collaboration and cooperation as directive guidelines for its interactions with the aim of making it possible for networks of actors (public, private and social sector) not only to recognize but also participate in and endorse the objectives of general interest. Such guidelines should be based on approaches especially relevant to the tourism sector.

From this perspective, coordination occurs as a means of responding to the need to strengthen the joint work of public and private organizations responsible for shaping public policies to avoid overlap or gaps in the delivery of public services. In essence, coordination can be understood as a process intended to give coherence and structure to public policies, with preference for the development of comprehensive policies to achieve strategic objectives. Coordination is also recognized as a procedure for avoiding duplication or overlap of public policies; giving consistency cohesion and coherence to public policies; minimizing political and bureaucratic conflict related to the distribution of functions and encouraging the development of a vision that cuts across the different sectors to expand the scope of public policies.

The space occupied by governance in the tourism sector is defined by the dimensions of directive capacity and effectiveness. Each of these dimensions requires its own set of resources (types of competencies, resources, actors, fields of application, etc.) which are specific to each of them and consideration of which is important because it is through them that the space occupied by governance can be described and explained.

The observable facts that make it possible to measure the space occupied by governance in the EU tourism sector, apart from distinguishing some of its specific characteristics and behaviours, should be suitable for grouping around the fields of observation most relevant to the two dimensions indicated. The following five fields are proposed for initial consideration:

• Legal/normative means for the exercise of public coordination, collaboration and cooperation in the sectoral and territorial structures of government.
• Legal/normative means for the formation and development of public-private collaborative and cooperative relations.
• Legal-normative means of ensuring co-responsibility, transparency and accountability in public and private relations.
• Exercise of public coordination, collaboration and cooperation.
• Exercise of public-private collaboration and cooperation.

There is a direct correspondence between the different fields because the aim is to investigate to what extent the EU institutional capacities have been translated effectively into practices supported by diverse structures and mechanisms that would tend to give new content and scope to the management of public and private relations in pursuit of public policy objectives in the field of tourism.