An Assessment of the Commercial Accommodation Facilities in Umeå : Tourism Area Life-Cycle Perspective

Tourist destinations have been under a significantly growing interest of academia from the second half of the 20th century. The underlying patterns that are shared by destinations’ past, and shapes their future constitute a good share for the context of this interest. This study applies Butler’s Tourist Area Life-Cycle model to an urban tourism destination, Umeå. The model puts the life of a tourism area (destination) on an s-curve and defines several stages on the curve with designated features. Application of the model to the case of Umeå is limited to accommodation branch of the hospitality industry to apply a comprehensive approach and it shows that the city is in the development stage for in this particular branch. However, there are some divergences in the case compared to the model. The capacity edge that causes pressure to the tourist destinations growth does not appear where the model expects, and some stage features appear to take place in a different sequence than the original model. Consequently, the study connects these divergences to the fact that Umeå is an urban destination and also offers a modified version of the model that might be a good alternative for applications on other urban tourist destinations