Horticultural Overtourism in Tokyo: Coopetition for Successful Enticement of Visitors from Over- to Less Crowded Gardens

Abstract

Garden managers face the dilemma of promoting and preserving their gardens. Overtourism in popular gardens can be solved by cooperating to entice visitors to alternative, less popular gardens. However, such an enticement strategy may not be successful because garden managers not only cooperate with but also compete against each other (i.e., coopetition). How can garden management practitioners forge a coopetitive relationship to encourage visitors to move from over- to less crowded gardens? Addressing this question, this study aimed to propose a successful coopetitive strategy to redistribute visitors. This study was drawn primarily from semi-structured interviews with garden staff of an overcrowded national garden and multiple less crowded metropolitan gardens. A thematic analysis of qualitative data revealed a lack of cooperation between national and metropolitan gardens and highlighted the former’s aspirations for further growth despite perceived overtourism. This study proposes using the ambiguous cultural status of national and metropolitan gardens as a catalyst for coopetition between them, and contributes to the discourse on sustainable cultural tourism by broadening its scope and redressing the scholarly imbalance between an overemphasis on visitors’ behaviour and a dearth of attention on practitioners of (horti)cultural tourism. Theoretical contributions are detailed at the end of this article.