Tourism can be defined as the act of travel for the purpose of recreation, and the provision of services for this act. A tourist is someone who
travels at least fifty miles from home, as defined by the World Tourism Organization (a United
Nations body).
A more comprehensive definition would be that tourism is a service
industry, comprising a number of tangible and intangible components. The tangible elements include transport systems - air, rail, road, water and now, space; hospitality services - accommodation, foods and beverages, tours, souvenirs; and related services such
as banking, insurance and safety & security. The intangible elements include: rest and relaxation, culture, escape,
adventure, new and different experiences.
Many sovereignties, along with their respective countries and states, depend heavily upon travel expenditures by foreigners as
a source of taxation and income for the enterprises that sell (export) services to these travellers. Consequently the development
of tourism is often a strategy employed either by a Non-governmental organization (NGO) or a governmental agency to promote a particular region
for the purpose of increasing commerce through exporting goods and services to
non-locals.
Sometimes Tourism and Travel are used interchangeably. In this context travel has a similar definition to
tourism, but implies a more purposeful journey.
The term tourism is sometimes used pejoratively, implying a shallow interest in the societies and natural wonders that
the tourist visits.
Prerequisite factors
"Travel", as an economic activity, occurs when the essential parameters come together to make it happen. In this case there
are three such parameters:
- Disposable income, i.e. money to spend on non-essentials
- Time in which to do so.
- Infrastructure in the form of accommodation facilities and means of
transport.
Individually, sufficient health is also a condition, and of course the inclination
to travel. Furthermore, in some countries there are legal restrictions on travelling, especially abroad. Communist states restrict foreign travel only to "trustworthy" citizens. The
United States prohibits its citizens from traveling to some countries,
for example, Cuba.
History
Wealthy people have always travelled to distant parts of the world to see great buildings or other works of art; to learn new
languages; or to taste new cuisine. As long ago as the time of the Roman
Republic places such as Baiae were popular coastal resorts for the rich.
The terms tourist and tourism were first used as official terms in 1937 by
the League of Nations. Tourism was defined as people travelling
abroad for periods of over 24 hours.
The Grand Tour
The word tour gained acceptance in the 18th century, when the
Grand Tour of Europe became part of the upbringing of the educated and wealthy
British nobleman or cultured gentleman. Grand tours were taken in particular by young people to "complete" their education. They
travelled all over Europe, but notably to places of cultural and aesthetic interest,
such as Rome, Tuscany and the Alps.
The British aristocracy were particularly keen on the Grand Tour, using the occasion to gather art treasures from Europe to
add to their collections. The volume of art treasures being moved to Britain in this way was unequalled anywhere else in Europe,
and explains the richness of many private and public collections in Britain today. Yet tourism in those days, aimed essentially
at the very top of the social ladder and at the well educated, was fundamentally a cultural activity. These first tourists,
though undertaking their Grand Tour, were more travellers than tourists.
Most major British artists of the eighteenth century did the "Grand Tour", as did their great European contemporaries such as
Claude Lorrain. Classical architecture, literature and art have always
drawn visitors to Rome, Naples, Florence.
The Romantic movement (inspired throughout Europe by the English poets William Blake and Lord Byron, among others), extended this
to Gothic countryside, the Alps, fast flowing rivers, mountain gorges, etc.
Health tourism & leisure travel
It was not until the 19th century that cultural tourism developed into leisure and health tourism. Some English travellers, after visiting the warm lands of the South of Europe, decided to
stay there either for the cold season or for the rest of their lives. Others began to visit places with health-giving mineral waters, in order to relieve a whole variety of diseases from gout to liver disorders and bronchitis.
Leisure Travel was a British invention due to sociological factors. Britain was the first European country to industrialize, and the industrial society was the first society
to offer time for leisure to a growing number of people. Not initially the working masses, but the owners of the machinery of production, the economic oligarchy, the factory owners,
the traders, the new middle class.
The British origin of this new industry is reflected in many place names. At Nice, one
of the first and most well established holiday resorts on the French Riviera, the long esplanade along the sea front is known to this day as the Promenade des
Anglais; and in many other historic resorts in continental
Europe, old well-established palace hotels have names like the Hotel Bristol, Hotel Carlton or Hotel
Majestic - reflecting the dominance of English customers to whom these resorts
catered in the early years.
Winter tourism
Even winter sports were largely invented by the British leisured classes
initially at the Swiss village of Zermatt (Valais) (year?) and St Moritz in 1864.
Until the first tourists appeared, the Swiss thought of the long snowy winter as being a time when the best thing to do was to
stay indoors and make cuckoo clocks or other small mechanical items.
The first packaged winter sports holidays (vacations) followed in 1903, to Adelboden, also in Switzerland.
Organized sport was well established in Britain before it reached other countries. The vocabulary of sport bears witness to
this: rugby, football, and boxing all originated in Britain, and even
Tennis, originally a French sport, was formalized and codified by the British, who
hosted the first national championship in the nineteenth century, at Wimbledon. Winter sports were a natural answer for a leisured class looking for amusement during
the coldest season.
Mass travel
Mass travel could not really begin to develop until two things occurred.
a) improvements in technology allowed the transport of large numbers of people in
a short space of time to places of leisure interest, and
b) greater numbers of people began to enjoy the benefits of leisure time. A major development was the invention of the railways, which brought many of Britain's seaside towns within easy distance of Britain's urban centres.
The father of modern mass tourism was Thomas Cook who, on 5 July 1841, organized the first package tour in history, by chartering a
train to take a group of temperance
campaigners from Leicester to a rally in Loughborough, some twenty miles away. Cook immediately saw the potential for business development in the
sector, and became the world's first tour operator.
He was soon followed by others, with the result that the tourist industry developed rapidly in early Victorian Britain. Initially it was supported by the growing middle classes, who
had time off from their work, and who could afford the luxury of travel and possibly even staying for periods of time in boarding houses.
However, the Bank Holiday Act 1871 introduced a statutory right for
workers to take holidays, even if they were not paid at the time. (As an aside, in the UK there is still no obligation to pay
staff who do not work on public holidays.)
The combination of short holiday periods, travel facilities and distances meant that the first holiday resorts to develop in
Britain were towns on the seaside, situated as close as possible to the growing industrial
conurbations.
For those in the industrial north, there were Blackpool in Lancashire, and Scarborough in Yorkshire. For those in the Midlands, there were Weston-super-Mare in Somerset and Skegness in Lincolnshire, for those in London there were Southend-on-Sea,
Broadstairs, Brighton, Eastbourne, and a whole collection of other places.
In travelling to the coast, the population was following in the steps of Royalty. King George III is widely acknowledged as popularising the seaside holiday, due to his
regular visits to Weymouth when in poor health.
For a century, domestic
tourism was the norm, with foreign travel being reserved, as before, for the rich or the culturally curious. A minority of
resorts, such as Bath, Harrogate and
Matlock, emerged inland. After World War II holiday villages such as Butlins and Pontins emerged, but their popularity waned with the
rise of package tours and the increasing comforts to which visitors became accustomed at home. Towards the end of the 20th century the market was revived by the upmarket inland resorts of Dutch company
Centre Parcs.
Other phenomena that helped develop the travel industry were paid holidays:
- 1.5 million manual workers in Britain had paid holidays by 1925
- 11 million by 1939 (30% of the population in families with paid holidays)
Outside Britain
Similar processes occurred in other countries, though at a slower rate, given that nineteenth century Britain was far ahead of
any other nation in the world in the process of industrialisation.
In the USA, the first great seaside resort, in the European style, was
Atlantic City, New Jersey.
In Continental Europe, early resorts included Ostend (for the people of Brussels), and Boulogne-sur-Mer (Pas-de-Calais) and Deauville (Calvados) (for Parisians).
International mass tourism
Increasing speed on railways meant that the tourist industry could develop internationally. By 1901, the number of people crossing the English Channel
from England to France or Belgium had
passed 0.5 million per year.
However it was with cheap air travel in combination with the package tour that
international mass tourism developed after 1963. For the worker living in greater London, Brindisi today is almost as accessible as
Brighton was 100 years ago.
Recent developments
There have been a few temporary setbacks in tourism, the latest being related to the September 11, 2001 attacks and terrorist threats to
tourist destinations such as Bali and European cities. Some of the tourist destinations,
including the Costa del Sol, the Baleares and Cancun have lost popularity due to shifting tastes and
perceptions among tourists. In this context, the excessive building and environmental destruction often associated with
traditional "sun and beach" tourism may contribute to a destination's saturation and subsequent decline. This appears to be the
case with Spain's Costa Brava, a
byword for this kind of tourism in the 1960s and 1970s. With only 11% of the Costa Brava now unblemished by low-quality
development (Greenpeace Spain's figure), the destination now faces a crisis in
its tourist industry. Belated attempts to move towards "quality tourism" are difficult given competition from cheaper, unspoilt
holiday destinations on the one hand and the legacy of decades of over-exploitation on the other. In many respects, Tenerife
provides a paradigm of the negative impact of mass tourism. Organizations like Greenpeace and ATAN (http://www.atan.org/en) are particularly
critical of development on the island, arguing that Tenerife's current tourism industry is both economically and environmentally
unsustainable.
Receptive tourism is
now growing at a very rapid rate in many developing countries, where it is often the most important economic activity in local
GDP.
In recent years, second holidays or vacations have become more popular as people's disposable income increases. Typical
combinations are a package to the typical mass tourist resort, with a winter skiing holiday or weekend break to a city or
national park.
On 26 December 2004 a tsunami 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake hit Asian
countries bordering the Indian Ocean, and also the Maldives. Tens of thousands
of lives were lost, and many tourists died. This, together with the vast clean-up operation in place, has stopped or severely
hampered tourism to the area.
Special forms of tourism
For the past few decades other forms of tourism, also known as niche tourism, have been becoming more popular,
particularly:
- Adventure tourism: Tourism involving travel in rugged
regions, or adventurous sports such as mountaineering and hiking (tramping).
- Agritourism: Farm based tourism, helping to support the local
agricultural economy.
- Armchair
tourism and virtual
tourism: not travelling physically, but exploring the world through internet, books, TV, etc.
- Cultural tourism: Includes urban tourism, visiting historical or interesting cities, such as London,
Paris, Prague, Rome, Cairo, Beijing, Kyoto, and experiencing their cultural heritages. May also consist of specialized cultural
experiences, such as art museum tourism where one visits many art museums during the tour, or opera tourism where one sees many
operas or concerts during the tour.
- Disaster
tourism: travelling to a disaster scene not primarily for helping, but because one finds it interesting to see. It can be
a problem if it hinders rescue, relief and repair work.
- Drug tourism (for use in that country, or, legally often
extremely risky, for taking home)
- Ecotourism: Sustainable tourism which has minimal impact on the
environment, such as safaris (Kenya) and
Rainforests (Belize), or national parks.
- Educational tourism: May involve travelling to an education institution, a wooded retreat or some other destination in
order to take personal-interest classes, such as cooking classes with a famous chef or crafts classes.
- Gambling
tourism, e.g. to Atlantic City,
Las Vegas, Macau or
Monte Carlo for the purpose of gambling at the casinos there.
- Gay tourism: Tourism marketed to gays who wish to travel to gay-friendly destinations which feature a gay infrastructure (bars, businesses, restaurants,
hotels, nightlife, etc.), the opportunity to socialize with other gays, and the feeling that one can relax safely among other gay
people.
- Heritage tourism: Visiting historical or industrial
sites, such as old canals, railways,
battlegrounds, etc.
- Health tourism: Usually to escape from cities or relieve
stress, perhaps for some 'fun in the sun', etc. Often to "health spas".
- Hobby tourism: Tourism alone or with groups to participate in hobby interests, to meet others with similar interests,
or to experience something pertinent to the hobby. Examples might be garden tours, or
square dance cruises.
- Medical tourism, e.g.:
- for what is illegal in one's own country, e.g. abortion, euthanasia; for instance, euthanasia for non-citizens is provided by Dignitas in
Switzerland.
- for advanced care that is not available in one's own country
- in the case that there are long waiting lists in one's own country
- for use of free or cheap health care organisations
- Perpetual
tourism: Wealthy individuals always on holiday, some of them, for tax purposes, to avoid being resident in any
country.
- Regional
tourism Tourism bundle of few country in the region, using one of the country as the transit point. The country of
transit point is usually a country with good transport infrastructure.
e.g. Singapore is the base for tourism for South East Asia due to its strategic location and good transport infrastructure.
- Sex tourism: mostly men from First World countries visiting Third World countries for
purpose of engaging in sexual acts, usually with inexpensive local prostitutes.
This form of tourism is often cited the principal way that paedophiles can hire
child prostitutes.
- Sport tourism:
Skiing, golf and scuba diving are popular ways to spend a vacation. Also in this category is vacationing at the winter
home of one's favorite baseball team, and seeing them play everyday.
- Space tourism
Trends
The World Tourism Organization forecasts
that international tourism will continue growing at the average annual rate of 4 percent [1] (http://www.world-tourism.org/market_research/facts/market_trends.htm). By 2020 Europe will remain the most popular destination, but its share will drop from 60 percent in
1995 to 46 percent. Long-haul will grow slightly faster than intraregional travel and by 2020 its share will increase from 18
percent in 1995 to 24 percent.
Space tourism is expected to "take off" in the first quarter of the
21st century, although compared with traditional destinations the number of
tourists in orbit will remain low until technlogies such as space
elevator make space travel cheap.
Technological improvement is likely to make possible air-ship hotels, based either on solar-powered airplanes or large dirigibles. Underwater hotels,
such as Hydropolis, slated to open in
Dubai in 2006, will be built. On the surface of the
ocean tourists will be welcomed by ever larger cruise ships and perhaps floating cities.
Some futurists expect that movable hotel "pods" will be created that could be temporarily erected anywhere on the planet,
where building a permanent resort would be unacceptable politically, economically or environmentally.
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