چک و اسلواکی: مسائل مفهومی در تجزیه و تحلیل اقتصادی گردشگری در حال گذار

Research on tourism in the transition economies of Central and Eastern Europe has tended to be fragmented and atheoretical. This paper explores five main conceptual issues related to production and consumption issues in tourism in the former Czechoslovakia in the course of transition: path dependency, property rights and privatisation, the nature of markets and regulation, re-internationalisation and globalisation, and the polarisation of consumption.

The post 1989 transition in Central Eastern Europe (CEE) has had a major impact on tourism in the region. The central issue was, and remains, how tourism is influenced by the transition from a system of central planning (involving various degrees of decentralisation and proto privatisation in different countries) to a market economy. Papers on the early stages commented on the impact of border openings and incipient privatisation (Hall, 1991; Harrison, 1993) but the changes in tourism have been complex and difficult to unravel. There has been a steady growth of research in response to this challenge (Hall, 1998) but our understanding of the processes of change remains, at best, fragmented and highly empirical. This paper seeks to add to research in this field through an examination of the economic aspects of the transition in tourism in the former Czechoslovakia. To some extent the over-empirical concerns of much of the literature reflect the lack of a theoretical framework for unravelling the complex processes that constitute tourism in transition. Jaakson (1996), amongst others, rightly dismisses the utility of development stages models, derived from Rostow, as a theoretical framework, not least because of its implicit determinism. In Czechoslovakia—as elsewhere in CEE—a highly-organised tourism industry existed before 1989 and is now in transformation rather than evolving from a low base through distinctive stages. The conspicuous failure to provide an alternative theoretical framework for the economic analysis of tourism partly reflects the isolation of much tourism research from wider discourses on the transition. Yet, tourism can both benefit from and contribute to these discourses, having been prominent in post 1989 economic changes in CEE. This paper provides some building blocks for conceptualising the economic dimensions of tourism in transition. It does not aim to provide a single integrated theory, but instead focuses on five main related themes: path dependency, globalisation and re-internationalisation, property rights, markets and regulation, and the polarisation of consumption. It synthesises some of the existing literature, but mainly draws on the experiences of the Czech Republic and Slovakia (Williams & Baláž, 2000a). Given the diverse economic trajectories in post-1989 CEE, this case study illustrates the place and time contingent nature of the transition in tourism, rather than an attempt to generalise about the changes in CEE, let alone all post state socialist societies.

This paper has sought to contribute to the conceptualisation of the economic aspects of tourism in the transition economies of CEE through a discourse on the experiences of the former Czechoslovakia. The five themes considered separately here are, of course, interlinked. Path-dependency provides an overall perspective, the relationship between markets and regulation influences all other aspects of tourism production and consumption, changes in property rights are crucial to firms’ engagement with different sub-markets, internationalisation opens up markets to competition as well to new opportunities, and the polarisation of consumption reflects the outcomes of various processes including the redistribution of property rights. While all the above processes are significant for understanding the structures and trajectories of tourism in the Czech and Slovak republics, the relationship between markets and regulation constitutes the critical issue. There was an attempt to create markets in a very short time period, via the sharp shock strategy, which arguably was informed by the neo-liberal agenda that was ascendant in western policy circles in the late 1980s and early 1990s (Gowan, 1995, p. 6). A sharp shock was given to the economy, as public expenditure was cut and state subsidies were removed in several areas of the economy. This was combined with the removal of international barriers. However, the reforms were partial in two important ways. First, a highly competitive market, free of state intervention, was not created. Even in the tourism sector—considered to be in the vanguard of economic reforms—there were compartmentalised sub-markets, some of which were dominated by state provision through trade unions and health-related stays in spas, or by the subsidised holidays provided by employers. Secondly, the emphasis was almost entirely on the removal of negative barriers to trade, and scant attention was given to the need to establish and foster the institutions, which regulate markets, even in the most neo-liberal of western European economies. This had disastrous consequences for tourists, destination areas, and shareholders that were, in various ways, defrauded or simply let down by many of the first generation of enterprise owners. A number of lessons can be drawn from the experiences of the former Czechoslovakia. First, the ‘sharp shock’ inevitably meant not only a collapse of many companies and of incomes, but a lack of time for the social and political co-evolution of those institutions which were essential for the regulation of the emergent markets (Gowan, 1995). Secondly, the pre-occupation with property rights led to gross inefficiencies and corruption which could have been avoided if appropriate regulation had been in place, including corporate governance practices and stock market regulation. Thirdly, that changes in demand created opportunities for new and privatised firms, especially in relation to international tourism. This sector is likely to expand further in future, which reinforces the need for it to be effectively regulated. Otherwise, a repeat of the collapses in the Czech tour company sector may seriously undermine confidence in this sector. Finally, as in many other countries, there is a tendency to over-emphasise the importance of the formal sector. Under state socialism, a large share of holidays was organised through networks of families and friends. During the transition, this informal sector became more important, and these friendship and kinship ties, with access to homes and second homes, provided the means to sustain, or create, new, holiday behaviour. This points the way to opportunities for the development of low cost forms of tourism, especially in rural areas, in what are relatively low income societies. This paper has not been concerned with exploring the detailed empirical trajectories of tourism during the transition in the former Czechoslovakia (see Williams & Baláž, 2000a). Instead, it has explored how the economic changes can be conceptualised. The findings no not necessarily apply to all the transition societies; for example, the experiences of Albania (Hall, 1998) and Bulgaria (Bachvarov, 1997) are very different to those of Czechoslovakia. Similarly the transition is still in process and, in different ways, will continue to be so for many years if not decades. This paper therefore has to be seen as a statement on the first decade of the transition. Despite these reservations we hope that this paper will deepen understanding of the transition in the tourism economy in the Czech and Slovak republics, while posing theoretical questions for those working on other transition economies.