Interpath relations and the triggering of wine-tourism development

Abstract

The Margaret River region (Western Australia) is a popular international tourism destination. Since its emergence in the late 19^th century, tourism in the Margaret River region (MRR) has interacted with a number of regional industries including timber, dairy, and wine. These interactions have changed from ‘supportive’ to ‘competing’ reflecting various changes in the market and the availability of common local assets such as forest, land, and public funding. While timber and dairy had an important influence on the evolution of tourism in the region, it was the emergence of wine that shifted tourism the most.

Using selected concepts of evolutionary economic geography (EEG), mainly path-dependence, path-reformation, interpath relations, and triggering events, this paper demonstrates how tourism has interacted with different other industries and how these interactions have shaped the MRR as a wine-tourist destination. The paper shows how two related triggering events contributed to the emergence of wine-tourism as a new path in the region – a process referred to as ‘path-blending’. In this respect, the paper provides empirical evidence that triggering events can result in multiple new paths and can also significantly shape the relations between new and existing regional paths. As such, the paper responds to the call for breaking away with the ‘single-path view’ in research on industrial evolution, and for more attention to the various relations between tourism and other sectors within a tourist destination.

Keywords:

• Triggering events
• wine-tourism
• path-dependence
• path-creation
• path-dissolution
• interpath relations
• path-reformation
• path-expansion
• path-blending
• Margaret River region

Acknowledgments

To the Aberdeen – Curtin alliance, the interviewees, Dr Roy Jones, and Dr Petra Dumbell.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Aberdeen - Curtin Alliance.

Notes on contributors

David Flood Chavez

David Flood Chavez is a PhD candidate in human geography at the department of Geography and Environment at the University of Aberdeen, UK. His research is with the collaboration of Curtin University in Western Australia and is funded by the Aberdeen – Curtin Alliance. His work mainly focuses on sustainability transitions and evolutionary approaches on the evolution of tourist destinations as well as political ecology approaches on tourism in the Global South.

Piotr Niewiadomski

Dr Piotr Niewiadomski is an economic geographer interested in the worldwide development of the tourism production system, the global production networks of tourist firms, the impact of tourism on economic development in host destinations, and the emerging sustainability transition research on tourism development. His research mainly focuses on Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) and the context of post-communist restructuring in CEE after 1989. He is now Senior Lecturer in Human Geography in the School of Geosciences, University of Aberdeen, UK.

Tod Jones

Dr Tod Jones is a human geographer interested in cultural and political geographies in Australia and Indonesia, in particular bringing contemporary geography approaches to cultural economy and heritage issues. His current projects are on Indigenous heritage and urban planning, social movements and heritage, sustainable tourism, and applying a sustainable livelihoods approach to assess heritage initiatives. He is now an Associate Professor in Geography in the School of Design and Built Environment at Curtin University in Perth, Western Australia.