Tourism in Sydney's The Rocks: Challenges, Theories, and Solutions

This report provides an overview of the tourism industry, specifically focusing on The Rocks, a historic precinct and popular tourist destination in Sydney, Australia. It highlights various challenges within the hospitality sector, such as poor employment conditions, discrimination, and seasonality, which negatively impact the number of travelers. The report delves into several tourism planning and development theories, including Christaller's theory of tourist area development, Stanley Plog's theory categorizing tourists by personality (allocentrics, psychocentrics, and midcentrics), Cohen's theory of tourist behavior (organized mass tourists, individual mass tourists, explorers, and drifters), Doxey's Irritation Index, and Butler's theory of destination life cycle. The conclusion emphasizes the need to address issues like sexual harassment and the impact of government tax policies on tourism firms. The report aims to provide a comprehensive understanding of the factors influencing the tourism industry and offers insights into how these challenges can be addressed to enhance the visitor experience and promote sustainable tourism practices.

Sydney Attraction- The
Rocks

Tourism is one of the largest and quickly growing industries. Tourism is an aggregation
of activities, corporations and services that are delivering a travel experience consisting of
attraction, settlement, transportation as well as food and drink establishments of retail or
wholesale shop, entertainment and various other hospitality services that are being offered to
people who are travelling away from their houses (Petroman, 2015). The Rocks is an urbanized
locality, tourist precinct and historical area of Sydney's city centre in Australia. There are certain
issues in this hospitality sector. These challenges are poor payments and employment conditions,
sexual molestation, discrimination, low quality education and training, monarch-al and intolerant
culture of corporate, seasonality and instability in political power, etc. All these issues are
reducing the number of travellers. There are various theories related to tourism planning and
development. Some of the theories are:
Charistaller's theory:
This theory states that there was a constant development of tourist areas. There are
various types of travellers who used to travel The Rocks at different time (Murphy, 2012).
Experience of tourists and influences of destinations are changed over time. Engagement of
locals in tourism also altered over time. There occur new cycles having new tourist destinations.
Stanley Plog's theory:
Popularity of The Rock in Sydney is linked with inherent personalities of tourists.
Travellers can be categorised on the basis of their personalities as Allocentrics, psychocentrics
and the midcentrics. Allocentrics are having strong requirement for new and varied experiences.
They used to seek those destinations that are not familiar by them and having completely
different culture and surroundings. They are preferring for staying in native lodging and they
love to try new food and entertainment Jamorska, (2017). While, the Psychocentrics like to travel
those places which are known by them and they prefer a safe and secured destination. They do
not wish to do experiments with accommodations, foods and entertainment. They used to seek
those experiences that would cause personal tension. They are also engaged in different
situations. Midcentrics are those people whose personalities are situated between the
personalities of allocentrics and psychocentrics.. They are not adventuresome but also they also
do not feel fear in trying new experiences as long as these are not giving any challenge to them.
Popular places of Sydney now a days are visited by such type of travellers.
Cohen's theory:
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Cohen developed this theory in the year of 1972 which is related to the behaviour of
tourists. They classified the typology into four that are organised mass tourists, individual mass
tourists, Explorers and Drifters (Iveson, 2014). Organized mass tourists are those who used to
travel in groups. They are purchasing those packaged tours which are ordered in advance by
travel agents or operators of tours. Individual mass tourists are someone who do not travel in a
group. Each and every member of group is having certain level of control over his time and
guide. They are making their decisions about their activities by themselves. Explorers are those
tourists who are arranging their own trip. They are associated with the regional residents and are
trying to speak local language (Philips, 2012). However, they do not totally follow the living
style of local communities. Drifters are those who keep avoiding contacts with other travellers.
They use to stay with the regional and share their accommodation, food and habits. They get
completely immersed in the local or host culture (Haeusler, 2014). They are retaining only the
most basic of their native customs. They usually not think themselves as travellers.
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Doxey's theory:
Doxey proposed a theory called Irritation index or irridex in the year of 1975. This
theory states that local people are becoming more aggressive towards the travellers and due to
this number of tourists starts decreasing .
Butler's theory:
This theory was built on the idea of Christaller, Plog, Cohen and Doxey in the year 1980.
This states that this theory was not only based on the earlier theories but are also created on the
basis of business concepts of product life cycle. The product life cycle is a theory under which
sales of new goods increase slowly and then this experiences a fast growth before stabilising and
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(
(Source 1: Cohen theory, 1974)

after that, it starts declining (Aswell, 2013). When this is applied to the tourist destinations,
model gives suggestion that resorts are developing and changes according to time. There are
certain stages namely exploration, engagement, development and consolidation. During such
stages, the destination is linked to increase in the number of visitors. After the consolidation
stage, destination would change (Baldacchino,2016). It may decline or may regenerate. At the
stage of Exploration, few of the adventuresome travellers used to visit sites having no public
facilities. They get attracted to the resorts by a natural physical feature. In the next stage of
Engagement, limited interaction among regional residents and developing tourist organisations
are leading to the provision of basic services. Increment in advertising involves a definable
pattern of seasonal variation. Here, the defined market area starts emerging. In the next stage of
development, facilities of visitors increase. The trade of tourist are controlled by the outsiders.
The number of tourists increase in the peak season far outweighing the size of local civilians. At
the stage of consolidation, tourism now becomes a major part of the regional economy but level
of growth have begun to level off.
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source 2: The Rise and Fall of a Destination, 2017

From the above based report, it has been concluded that tourism sector which is a rapidly
growing industry is now facing certain problems like sexual harassment. Women staff and
visitors are being sexually harassed by men. Due to this reason, number of female travellers are
decreasing day by day. Organisations should tighten the security level so that this act can be
vanished or minimised. Tax imposition by the government is another factor that impacts
negatively on the working of tourist firms of Sydney like The Rock. There are certain theories
that are explaining the way in which tourism industry is working.
Purpose of tourist visit
Main purpose of tourist visit is to attract large number of people and try to fulfil their
target as well. Tourist companies have to opted different methods and policies also implement
them for the purpose of fulfil their target and maintain performance. Through this members are
able to expand business in international market and increase number of customers as well. As
they have to use different types of activities which is helpful for them to attain long term profits
and maintain better position in across the national boundaries. They are responsible to offer best
quality of services to people in order to attract them keep them for long period.
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REFERENCES
Books & Journals
Aswell, T. (2013). Louisiana Rocks!: The True Genesis of Rock and Roll. Pelican Publishing.
Baldacchino, G. (2016). More than island tourism: Branding, marketing and logistics in
archipelago tourist destinations. Archipelago Tourism: Policies and Practices. 1.
Haeusler, M. H. (2014). The Sydney Vivid Festival: From Place Branding to Smart Cities. Cities
of Light: Two Centuries of Urban Illumination. 144.
Iveson, K. (2014). Building a city for “The People”: The politics of alliance‐building in the
Sydney Green Ban Movement. Antipode. 46(4).992-1013.
Jamorska, I. (2017). The geological and tourist attractions of the largest Australian cities and
their surroundings. Geotourism/Geoturystyka. (38-39).29.
Murphy, M. (2012). Exploring Sydney: An Onsite Orientation Program for Students Studying in
Australia.
Petroman, C. (2015). Typology of tourism destinations. Scientific Papers Animal Science and
Biotechnologies. 48(1).338-342.
Philips, D. (2012). Fairground attractions: A genealogy of the pleasure ground. A&C Black.
Walsh, B. (2011). Irish Female Gothic Fiction: A Study of the Fiction of Regina Maria Roche
and Sydney Owenson (Master's thesis, Mary Immaculate College, University of
Limerick).
Wotherspoon, G. (2016). Gay Sydney: A History. NewSouth.
Online
The Rocks . 2017. [online]. Available through :
<http://www.australia.com/en-gb/places/nsw/sydney-the-rocks.html>. Accessed on 21st
August 2107.
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