Interpath relations and the triggering of wine-tourism development

Abstract

The Margaret River region (Western Australia) is a popular international tourism destination. Since its emergence in the late 19th century, tourism in the Margaret River region (MRR) has interacted with a number of regional industries including timber, dairy, and wine. These interactions have changed from ‘supportive’ to ‘competing’ reflecting various changes in the market and the availability of common local assets such as forest, land, and public funding. While timber and dairy had an important influence on the evolution of tourism in the region, it was the emergence of wine that shifted tourism the most. Using selected concepts of evolutionary economic geography (EEG), mainly path-dependence, path-reformation, interpath relations, and triggering events, this paper demonstrates how tourism has interacted with different other industries and how these interactions have shaped the MRR as a wine-tourist destination. The paper shows how two related triggering events contributed to the emergence of wine-tourism as a new path in the region – a process referred to as ‘path-blending’. In this respect, the paper provides empirical evidence that triggering events can result in multiple new paths and can also significantly shape the relations between new and existing regional paths. As such, the paper responds to the call for breaking away with the ‘single-path view’ in research on industrial evolution, and for more attention to the various relations between tourism and other sectors within a tourist destination.