Knowing Macau with Butler's Life Cycle Model

Knowing Macau with Butler's Life Cycle Model

The following literature is suggesting that how a tourist destination can be analyzed with the help of Butler's Tourism Life Cycle Model. Butler (1980) introduced the concept of the model which clarifies and extends earlier work by, for example, Cristaller (1963), Noronha (1976) and Stansfield (1978). In doing so, Butler clearly links the development cycle of tourism destinations to that of products in the product life cycle model. This is one the best used management framework to know the evolution in a tourism destination as described by Baum (1998), the original Butler's model included:

• Recognition of dynamism within the tourism environment — at the time of its inception, constant change was not as widely recognized in tourism as it is today;

• A focus on a common process of development within tourism destinations, permitting description and modeling.

• Recognition of capacity or limits to growth in destinations, again a relatively new concept in tourism at the time but one imported from growing thinking in this area in the recreation literature.

• Identification of triggers in the environment which bring about changes to a destination.

• Recognition of the management implications of the model and, in this sense, the practical links to the product life cycle are evident.

• An argument for the need to view tourism planning in its long-term context.

• A spatial component which argues that there would be a series of spatial shifts as development stagnated, and

• Universal application, namely that the model was essentially true for all tourist destinations (Butler, 1980: 4–5).

Tourism, in many developed countries, has reached a point of maturity where resorts which flouris...

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