Josef Tan (Lead Specialist, CPDD Geography Unit)
Mr Josef Tan, Lead Specialist at the Geography Unit, shares how Stanley Plog's typology of tourists, allows for learning progression in Geography, as well as help us achieve Sustainable Development Goal 11 of Sustainable Cities and Communities for Singapore.
Do you feel excited about teaching the revised Upper Secondary Geography?
In this final issue of GEM! for the year, I was asked by the editors to get readers excited about the revised syllabus for upper secondary students. Specifically, I was asked to write about Trevor Bennetts’ idea of learning progression, with reference to how Sustainable Development Goal 11 (SDG11) is featured in our curriculum.
The ask does not sound very exciting.
So instead, I shall begin by sharing what I had learned about Stanley Plog, whose ideas excite me most in our revised syllabus.
Who is the late Stanley Plog?
Born in Nebraska, USA, Plog received his doctoral degree from Harvard University’s Department of Social Relations in 1961, detailing the technique of analysing Congressional mail in his dissertation. After a stint with the Social Psychiatry Training Program at the University of California, Los Angeles, Plog founded several companies that provided services to the travel industry. Later, Plog became widely recognised as a pioneer who had shaped modern travel industry market research.
In his 1980 article in the Canadian Geographer, Richard Butler explained the evolution of tourist areas with reference to Plog’s model of tourist types, which was published by the Cornell Hotel and Restaurant Administration Quarterly in 1974.
Through his model, Plog explained the relationship between the popularity of destinations and tourists’ personality. On one end of Plog’s personality scale is the allocentric tourist who is confident and curious, while at the other end is the psychocentric tourist who prefers safe and familiar destinations.
Places like Mongolia with few tourist amenities and facilities attract the adventurous allocentric tourist.
Photo credits: Vince Gx via Unsplash
Cities such as Paris have abundant tourist amenities and facilities such as hotels, as well as infrastructure such as train networks, which attract the psychocentric tourist.
Photo credits: Mika Baumeister via Unsplash
Plog argued that a destination will experience decline as its visitor profile shifts towards an increasingly smaller pool of psychocentric tourists. He was quoted as saying, “Tell me who visits your destination, and I will tell you whether it is in decline.”
In Costa Rica, tourism development progressed and attracted tourists with different personality characteristics at different phases of its tourism development. It used to attract allocentric tourists, but as tourism development evolved and more facilities and amenities are built, psychocentric tourists are beginning to visit Costa Rica.
Photo credits: Perry Grone via Unsplash
How does Plog’s tourist types illustrate learning progression in Geography?
According to Trevor Bennetts’ 2005 article in International Research in Geographical and Environmental Education, learning progression “focuses on… advances in students’ learning over a period of time”.
In our revised syllabus, we plan for progression from lower secondary to pre-university in two ways:
Continually deepen students’ geographical thinking
Progressing from a basic understanding of the emotions that people associate with places, Plog’s typology of tourists enables students to examine the dynamics between people and places, as tourist destinations rise and fall.
Planning for progression to continually broaden students’ understanding of our syllabus content, by gradually layering models and theories over single concepts
Lower secondary students learn about basic needs like housing and transportation before encountering Plog’s idea of personality-driven human needs in upper secondary. For upper secondary students, we selected relatively simple models that Butler and Plog had developed in the 1970s-1980s to complement Harry Hess’ seafloor spreading theory and Wladimir Köppen’s climate classification, before stretching students to learn more up-to-date theories at the pre-university level. Our aim is to help students comfortably acquire more sophisticated understanding of our disciplinarity and be able to manage more difficult syllabus content over time.
A simplified diagram of Plog's personality scale
in the 2023 USG learning materials for Cluster 2 Tourism
Would understanding Plog’s tourist types help us to achieve SDG11?
Sustainable development is the unifying theme for Geography across secondary and pre-university levels. This provides continuity of learning for students and challenges them to apply their learning in context.
SDG11 would stand out for many students in Singapore as it seeks to make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient, and sustainable. To monitor our progress, the United Nations (UN) had identified 10 targets that are measured by 15 indicators. Several SDG11 targets are relevant to tourism development, for example, Target 11.4 - strengthen efforts to protect and safeguard the world’s cultural and natural heritage.
Arguably, tourists’ behaviour is an important consideration in safeguarding heritage at tourist destinations. Plog’s model provides students with a schema to analyse and explain their views on the impact of tourism on heritage.
More importantly, Plog’s model is based on findings from questionnaire surveys, which is also introduced in the revised syllabus as a quantitative data collection tool. Knowledge of quantitative methods would help students understand how the UN monitors sustainable development. In a nutshell, Plog’s model empowers students by illustrating how quantitative methods help us understand human behaviour, which is key to tackling the variety of sustainability challenges.
Why do I describe Plog’s tourist types as beautifully flawed?
Many models and theories including Plog’s tourist types are flawed, and that works beautifully for geography learning.
The models and theories in our revised syllabus act as the shoulders of giants for our students to stand on, so that they would not need to climb as high to see as far.
However, these models and theories neither explain every situation comprehensively nor do they apply perfectly to every location in the world. There will always be room for students to strengthen or refute these models and theories.
Thus, fieldwork will endure in our curriculum because we need to put aside time for students to construct knowledge, building on the models and theories that they had learned.
It excites me to imagine students debating over what type of tourist they are, or what type of tourist they think their friends are. It excites me to imagine students collecting data using questionnaires to test, challenge and improve Plog’s model. It excites me to imagine students reflecting on human nature and what kind of tourist they want to be using the lenses of tourism geography, enriched by Plog’s model. To learn for life requires us to acknowledge that there is a lot more to learn in life, beyond what others have discovered before us, or what we think we already know.
Back to Plog’s inspiring career, using a large dataset that he had collected over nearly 30 years, he published an improved model in 2001, providing new insights into tourist personalities and destinations. I am sure that the late Stanley Clement Plog will feel excited that Geography students in Singapore will continue to advance our understanding of tourists.
I hope you feel excited about this as well.
Bennetts, T. (2005). Progression in geographical understanding. International Research in Geographical & Environmental Education, 14(2), 112-132.
Butler, R. W. (1980). The concept of a tourist area cycle of evolution: implications for management of resources. Canadian Geographer/Le Géographe canadien, 24(1), 5-12.
Plog, S. C. (1974). Why destination areas rise and fall in popularity. Cornell hotel and restaurant administration quarterly, 14(4), 55-58.
Plog, S. (2001). Why destination areas rise and fall in popularity: An update of a Cornell Quarterly classic. Cornell hotel and restaurant administration quarterly, 42(3), 13-24.