Tourism and cross-border regional development: insights in European contexts
Arie Stoffelen and
Dominique Vanneste
European Planning Studies, 2017, vol. 25, issue 6, 1013-1033
Abstract:
This paper aims to structurally analyse the role of tourism in regional development processes in European cross-border regions with different historical development paths. Departing from an institutional perspective, the research is based on comparison of the position of tourism in region-building processes in the newly developing German–Czech cross-border region and the more ‘mature’ German–Belgian borderlands. Results indicate that the development of local cross-border tourism projects is no guarantee for positive destination-wide regional development impacts. In some cases, these projects may even reinforce asymmetrical socio-economic development directions of neighbouring borderlands. Rather, the socio-spatially equitable distribution of tourism benefits in cross-border contexts depends on several process-based aspects. These include the presence of ‘thick’ (cross-border) institutional arrangements, multi-scalar representation of tourism stakeholders in decision-making processes and a transversal position of tourism in regional development strategies. However, both with cross-border institutional ‘under-mobilization’ (Germany–Czech Republic) and with institutional ‘over-mobilization’ (Germany–Belgium), the informal network position of institutional brokers proved key for safeguarding the integrative character of tourism in the inevitably complex cross-border region-building process.
Date: 2017
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:eurpls:v:25:y:2017:i:6:p:1013-1033
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DOI: 10.1080/09654313.2017.1291585
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