The pleasure periphery and the Butler model of resort development

Overview

Pleasure Periphery, six stages of the Butler model, in order and development and consolidation stages of the Butler model.

What you need to know

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Questions from this subtopic

Each one with the model answer underneath.

1. 1

   What is meant by the Pleasure Periphery?

   Model answer

   The Pleasure Periphery is the belt of tourist destinations lying beyond the main tourist-generating regions, and the idea that this belt has moved progressively further from those source regions over time. As transport becomes cheaper and faster and nearer resorts become crowded, familiar or unfashionable, the frontier of holiday destinations shifts outward into places that were previously too remote or too expensive to reach.

2. 2

   Describe the outward shift of the Pleasure Periphery for tourists from north-west Europe.

   Model answer

   The sequence typically described runs from domestic seaside resorts reached by rail in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, out to the northern Mediterranean coasts with the arrival of cheap charter flights from the 1960s, then to the Atlantic islands, North Africa and the eastern Mediterranean as those coasts became crowded and less fashionable, then to long-haul destinations in the Caribbean, East Africa, the Indian Ocean and South East Asia, and most recently to remote environments such as polar regions and high mountains. Each step required a transport development that made the next belt affordable.

3. 3

   What drives the Pleasure Periphery outwards?

   Model answer

   Two forces working together. A push from the existing belt, as resorts become crowded, over-developed, environmentally degraded and associated with an older or less affluent market, so that they lose status among experienced travellers. And a pull from beyond it, as new transport links, aircraft range, cheaper fares and marketing make more distant places accessible, and as those places offer the novelty, unspoilt scenery and cultural difference that the established belt has lost. Rising real incomes make the extra cost of the further destination affordable.

4. 4

   Distinguish between the Pleasure Periphery and the Butler model.

   Model answer

   They describe different things at different scales. The Butler model traces the life cycle of one destination through time, from discovery to maturity and beyond, and is concerned with visitor numbers and development at that single place. The Pleasure Periphery is a global spatial pattern, describing where the frontier of tourist destinations lies relative to the source regions and how that frontier migrates outward. One is a graph of a resort's history; the other is a map of the industry's expanding reach. They are complementary, since it is the ageing of resorts described by Butler that helps push the periphery further out.

5. 5

   What are the implications of the Pleasure Periphery for newly reached destinations?

   Model answer

   They gain rapid growth in arrivals, foreign investment and construction, and substantial foreign exchange, often from a very low base. But they also receive the industry in its most concentrated form, frequently before planning controls, water supply, waste treatment and skilled local staff are in place, so the environmental and social costs arrive early. Because their attraction rests substantially on being new and unspoilt, they are also vulnerable: the same forces that brought the frontier to them will move it further on.

6. 6

   Why does the Pleasure Periphery pose a long-term risk to destinations that depend on it?

   Model answer

   Because their competitive advantage is novelty and relative exclusivity, and both are destroyed by success. As arrivals grow, development spreads, prices fall and the market broadens, the destination loses precisely the qualities that distinguished it, and the more adventurous travellers move on to the next frontier. A destination that has built a large industry on that market must then either reposition itself for a different one or accept decline, and it does so in competition with newer places offering what it once offered.

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