Tourism Destination Development: Cycles and Forces, Myths and Realities

The Tourism Area Life Cycle (TALC) has had a relatively long life and has been applied in many situations but also has been criticized for not being capable of explaining the reasons behind the process of development being discussed. One form of analysis which has particular relevance to the TALC in this context is Force Field Analysis (FFA), an approach, like the original Product Life Cycle model, adopted from the business literature. The paper begins with a brief discussion of the TALC model and its continued relevance, and then examines the potential application of FFA. It is argued in the conclusion that the combination of the two models may provide researchers with a better means of explaining the development process of destinations in a non-statistical manner and aiding a movement towards sustainability.