Systems approach to residents’ irritation in urban tourism destinations

Abstract

This paper focuses on the highly demanding issue of managing residents’ attitudes towards tourism development in urban tourism destinations. The objective of this study was to find efficient solutions in how to manage residents’ attitudes systematically to reduce residents’ irritation in urban destinations, which are considered as complex systems. Therefore, the systems approach methods such as system dynamics and simulation modelling were used. The presented system dynamic model represents the main theoretical contribution of this paper and fills a gap in the current theory of using systems approach to manage residents’ attitudes and reduce residents’ irritation. The model enables wide range of simulations and can be applied in practice in urban destinations with high tourism intensity to find suitable solutions for a particular destination. The case of Český Krumlov Town, the Czech Republic, show that regulating the number of visitors helps to reduce the overall irritation of residents, especially in peak times when overcrowding occurs, but this alone may not be sufficient to keep residents’ irritation lower in the long-term. Therefore, it is necessary to use a more advanced approach by combining visitor management with benefits for residents.