Using Volunteer-Employed Photography to Inform Tourism Planning Decisions: A Case Study of St David’s Peninsula, Wales

Tourism planning is widely considered to be a highly political process, particularly when tourism is only one of a number of possible land uses and there are numerous stakeholders, with a diversity of interests, all trying to influence the outcome. The winners are typically those holding power, while the losers are often the destination community, who lack sufficient power to influence planning decisions. New tools are therefore needed to empower wider stakeholder participation in the tourism planning process, and volunteer-employed photography (VEP) appears a promising option. This paper discusses the use of VEP to inform tourism planning on St David’s Peninsula in Wales. As part of a National Park, the area attracts a large tourist numbers and is subject to relatively strict planning regulations, resulting in many land-use conflicts. Volunteers from two stakeholder groups – local residents and tourists – were given cameras and photo diaries, and asked to use it to comment on what they do and do not appreciate about the area, existing planning problems and ways to avoid future planning problems. Through this case study, the paper will examine the appropriateness of VEP as a tool for assisting tourism planning. The major finding is that a richer, deeper and more valuable dataset can be generated through the participation of host communities and visitors using the VEP approach. As a means of visually representing participants’ views, VEP can be a powerful data collection and analysis tool, making a significant addition to the tourism planning toolkit at the local level.