Tourism

Ø  Definition of Tourism

Tourism is classically regarded as traveling for recreation although this definition has been expanded in recent years to include any travel outside of one's normal working or living area.

The tourist originated when large numbers of middle class people began to join aristocratic travelers. As societies became wealthier, and people lived longer, it became not only possible but probable that lower-middle and middle class people steadily employed would retire in good health and with some significant savings.

The tourist is usually interested (among other things) in the destination's climate, culture or its nature. Wealthy people have always traveled to distant parts of the world, not incidentally to some other purpose, but as an end in itself: to see great buildings or other works of art; to learn new languages; or to taste new cuisines.

Organized tourism is now a major industry around the world. Many national economies are now heavily reliant on tourism.

The term tourism is sometimes used pejoratively, implying a shallow interest in the societies and natural wonders that the tourist visits.

Ø  History of Tourism

The words tourist and tourism were first used as official terms in 1937 by the League of Nations but the tourism industry is much older than that. It was defined as people travelling abroad for periods of over 24 hrs, but the term may also include travelling within one's own country, and in a broader sense it can include daytrips.

King George III is widely acknowledged as the first "tourist", who took regular holidays to the seaside town of Weymouth when in poor health.

"Tourism", like any other form of economic activity, occurs when the essential parameters come together to make it happen. In this case there are three such parameters:

1. Disposable income, i.e. money to spend on non-essentials
2. Time in which to do so.
3. 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 or have been legal restrictions on travelling, especially abroad.

The word tour gained common acceptance in the eighteenth 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 overEurope, but notably to places of cultural and aesthetic interest, such as Rome, Tuscany and the Alps.

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 gothick countryside, the Alps, fast flowing rivers, mountain gorges, etc.

The British Aristocracy were particularly keen on the Grand Tour, using the occasion to gather art treasures from all over 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.

Tourism in the modern sense of the word did not develop until the nineteenth century; that was leisure travel, which today forms the larger part of the tourist industry.

Again the leisure industry was a British invention, for sociological reasons. 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.

Leisure travel had developed as an offshoot of cultural tourism, partly as 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, but this was a very minor development.

It was not until the nineteenth century that leisure tourism really began to develop, as people began to "winter" in warmer climates, or to visit places with health-giving mineral waters, in order to relieve a whole variety of diseases from gout to liver disorders and bronchitis.

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 FrenchRiviera, 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.

Even winter sports, as a leisure activity rather than as a means of transport, were largely invented by the British leisured classes. It was English tourists who invented winter sports at the Swiss village of Zermatt (Valais).

Until the first tourists appeared, the villagers of Zermatt just 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.

Organized sport was already well established in Britain long before it reached other countries. The vocabulary of sport bears witness to this: rugby, football, and boxing are all British sports, and even Tennis, originally a French sport, was formalized and codified by the British, who invented 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 tourism did not really begin to develop, however, until two things had occurred. 
a) improvements in communications 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. The biggest development of all was the invention of the railways, which brought many of Britain's seaside towns within easy distance of Britain's large urban centres.

The father of modern mass tourism was Thomas Cook who, on July 5, 1841, organised the first package tour in history, by chartering a train to take a group of teetotalers 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 of 1871 introduced, for the first time, a statutory right for workers to take holidays, even if they were not paid at the time.

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 connurbations. For those in the industrial north, there were Blackpool in Lancashire, and Scarboroughin (Yorkshire). For those in the Midlands, there were Weston-super-Mare in Somerset and Skegness in Lincolnshire, for those in London there wereSouthend-on-Sea, Broadstairs, Brighton, Eastbourne, and a whole collection of other lesser known places. But for a century, tourism remained a national industry, 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, a trend boosted by the emergence of the Dutch company Centre Parcs.

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. Billy Butlin developed low-cost holiday camps with chalet-style budget accommodation and mass catering near many attractive beaches. Other companies, such as Pontins followed his example, but their popularity waned with the rise of package tours and the increasing comforts to which visitors became accustomed at home.

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) (forParisians).

Even so, increasing speed on railways meant that the tourist industry could develop slowly, even internationally. By 1901, the number of people crossing theEnglish Channel from England to France or Belgium had already passed 0.5 million per year.

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)

What the railway did for domestic tourism in the nineteenth century, the airliner and the package tour have done for international tourism since 1963. For the worker living in greater London, Brindisi today is almost as accessible as Brighton was 100 years ago.

Tourism has become a multi-billion pound international industry, and one that is growing in developed countries (source countries) at a rate considerably faster than annual growth levels.

Receptive tourism is also growing at a very rapid rate in many developing countries, where it is often the most important economic activity in local GDP.

Mass tourism has been stagnating and declining in recent years. The Costa del Sol and the Baleares, which attracted millions of tourists annually during the1980s and 1990s, and other resorts such as Cancun have seen declining tourist numbers as they have become seen as untidy or ugly or simply lacking in kudos due to their past popularity. The mass tourist economy has also been hit badly by terrorism, with specific attacks on destinations such as Bali andKenya. For the past few decades other forms of tourism have been becoming more popular, particularly:

• Ecotourism: Sustainable tourism which has minimal impact on the environment, such as safaris (Kenya) and Rainforests (Belize), or National Parks.
• Cultural tourism: Usually urban tourism, visiting historical or interesting cities, such as London, Paris, Prague, Rome, New York etc.
• Heritage tourism: Visiting historical or industrial sites, such as old canals, railways, battlegrounds etc.
• Health tourism: Usually to escape from cities or relieve stress, often to "health spas".
• Sport tourism: Particularly skiing.

In recent years, second holidays or vacations have been becoming more popular as people have more disposible income. Typical combinations are a package to the typical mass tourist resort, with a winter skiing vacation or weekend break to a city or national park.

Ø  Benefits of Tourism

The key benefits of tourism are economic, socio-cultural and environmental.

·         Economic benefits - Tourism can provide direct jobs to the community, such as tour guides or hotel housekeeping. Indirect employment is generated through other industries such as agriculture, food production, and retail.

Visitors' expenditure generates income for the local community and can lead to the alleviation of poverty in countries which are heavily reliant on tourism.

Economic diversification is important to areas where there may be a concentration of environmentally damaging industries such as mining or manufacturing.

Infrastructure development such as airports, roads, schools, hospitals, and retail areas have the potential to benefit the local community and can aid economic development by allowing more trade and better flow of goods and services.

·         Social benefits - Tourism can bring about a real sense of pride and identity to communities. By showcasing distinct characteristics of their ways of life, history and culture, tourism can encourage the preservation of traditions which may be at risk of

·         Environmental benefits - Tourism provides financial support for the conservation of ecosystems and natural resource management, making the destination more authentic and desirable to visitors. It also adds more value to the local tourism business.

Ø  Negative Impacts of Tourism

Many of the negative impacts from tourism occur when the amount of visitors is greater than the environment's ability to cope with the visitor volume.

Some of the consequences of exceeding the environmental capacity include strain on already scarce resources such as water, energy, food and natural habitat areas. In addition, unchecked tourism development may lead to soil erosion, increased pollution and waste, discharges into the sea and waterways, increased pressure on endangered species of animals and plants, and heightened vulnerability to deforestation, as well as loss of biodiversity.

The same way that tourism can encourage the preservation of socio-cultural authenticity of host communities, mass tourism may also erode traditional values by introducing foreign elements which are in conflict with the cultural, historical, and religious heritage of the community.

The tourism paradox therefore, lies in the tension between our desire to travel the world, and the need to provide the most benefits with the least harm. Many well intentioned people in the public and private sector are hard at work looking for solutions that will provide viable, long-term socio-economic benefits for tourist areas.

Building a culture of sustainability will however, take time and you, the traveler, can become part of the solution.

Sources:

1.      http://www.knowledgerush.com/kr/encyclopedia/Types_of_tourism/

2.      http://green.hotelscombined.com/Rtg-Negative-Impacts-of-Tourism.php

3.      http://green.hotelscombined.com/Rtg-Benefits-of-Tourism.php