Evolutionary dynamics and purposeful design: The case of the Margaret River Region, Australia

Abstract

Transformations of tourism destinations can be considered under several lenses. One lens refers to the degree of controllability and of purposeful steering of these transformations. The increasing discourse about tourism design, ranging from experience design and atmospheric design to destination design, implies that tourism destinations and their experiences can be created. Such approaches assuming higher degrees of controllability clash with concepts such as evolutionary economic geography. Looking at the development and historical transformations of the Margaret River Region in Western Australia, this paper combines document research, ethnographic observations and semi-structured interviews to investigate the evolutionary dynamics and purposeful interventions into the development of tourism destinations. The case study finds that historically some developments have happened incidentally (e.g., hippie movement) and others, while being of a designed nature (e.g., viticulture), were not planned with a primary tourism focus. Therefore, the case study analysis urges caution in over-emphasizing the possibility of comprehensive destination designs. Instead, it seems necessary to balance the transformation heuristic “destination design” with descriptive notions of “destination evolution”. With this detailed case specific analysis, we advance thinking on destination development by blending two seemingly contrasting paradigms, the emergent destination design perspective and the evolutionary destination approach by suggesting an evolutionary destination design theory.