GEO-G-DSE-A-5-02-TH – Geography of Tourism

Introduction:

Tourism is one of the fasted growing industries of the world, depending on the demand of people for travelling
for pleasure and recreation. WTO defines tourism as “travelling and staying in places outside their usual
environment for not more than one consecutive year for leisure and not less than 24 hours, business and other
purposes’’. Depending on administrative boundaries of countries tourism may be of two types primarily. These
are domestic i.e. within the country and international i.e. outside the country. In 1994, The United Nations
defined three forms of tourism:

Domestic Tourism involving travelling of the residents of the given country only within their country, Inbound
Tourism involving non-residents travailing in the given country and Out bound Tourism involving of residents
travelling in other country.

Relationship between ‘Leisure’, ‘Recreation’, and ‘Tourism’:

The words ‘Leisure’, ‘Recreation’ and ‘Tourism’ are often used to express similar meanings. Leisure is a
measure of time left over after work, rest, sleep and household chores. Leisure is the time when an individual
can do what he likes to refresh his/ her spirits. Recreation means a variety of activities, which a person could
choose to refresh his/her spirit. It may include activities as diverse as a game of golf, watching television or
travelling abroad. Tourism, therefore, is simply one of these activities, which a person could undertake to
refresh his/her sprit. It places tourism firmly as a part of recreation activities spectrum of a person.

Types of Tourism:
The concept of tourism is evolving day by day and the activity has been claimed into different types with the
development of new tourist infrastructures, several new ideas for promoting tourism is also developing
depending on needs and preferences of all kinds of tourist. These are:

Adventure Tourism:

It is very attracting to adventure seekers who take risks and have special training and skills. Adventure tourist
do difficult activities and extreme sports such as mountaineering, desert hiking, scuba diving, rock climbing etc.
and prefers those tourist destinations which have such adventurous flavours.

Birth Tourism:

Birthright citizenship encourage people of developing and less developed countries to travel into develop
countries like USA, UK, Canada to give birth to a child so that the child automatically become a citizen of the
destination country and the child gain all the benefits of the destination countries.

Business Tourism:

When a person travels to a place outside his common environment for the purpose of business including
meeting, conferences, seminar, visiting exhibitions, trade fair etc. it is termed as business tourism. A business
tourist is wealthier than leisure tourists having more purchasing power.
Cultural Tourism:
In this type of tourism, tourists are attracted to culture, tradition, history festival etc. of a particular region or
country. It involves visiting museums, theaters and galleries, architecture of destination place. For example,
visit to Taj Mahal which is a cultural imprint of Mughals.

Religious Tourism:
In this type of tourism people enjoy long journey for the purpose of pilgrimage or for carrying out missionary
activities. In each year numerous holy places around the world receive huge number of tourist in this type of
tourism. For example, Amarnath journey of India maybe sited.

Space Tourism:
It refers to travelling in space for recreational purpose. It is possible for few rich people regarding its high cost
issue and it has faced several criticisms also.

Sport Tourism:
It includes such tourism where people visit a certain place either for participation or enjoyment in sports. Large
number of tourists visit host countries during any sports tournament. It generates good amount of income for the
host country.

Wildlife Tourism:
People visit distant places for enjoying nature and its wildlife in this type of tourism. It is a very common and
exciting type of tourism.

Health or Medical Tourism

It involves travelling to improve one’s health. It is with the objective of visiting weight-loss camps, naturopathy
centers, and health resorts.

Factors influencing tourism

There are many factors that influence the running of the tourism industry. Some show immediate effect while,
there are also factors which effect in the long run.

Environment at Destination

Tourism is in its best form when the destination is of favourable climate. In contrast, any undesired changes in
the environment such as high winds, flash floods, drought, and extreme climate can affect tourism adversely.For
example, during harsh summer months in India, people prefer to travel to colder climate regions like hill
stations.

Economy of the Country

When a country is undergoing economic turbulence and when people are facing unemployment issues, tourism
is affected adversely. On the contrary, when a country’s economy is doing well and people can afford to spend
money on leisure, tourism progresses.

Historical or Cultural Importance of Destination

The place or destination of travel affects the tourism business to a great extent. If the destination is of great
historical or cultural significance then tourists will certainly like to visit the place for seeing monuments,
castles, forts, ancient architecture, sculptures, caves, antic paintings and utensils, clothes, weapons, ornaments,
and other allied heritage.
For example, the world famous places of historical and cultural importance are Taj Mahal (India), Pyramids of
Gaza (Egypt), Began City (Burma), Acropolis (Athens, Greece) etc.

Research Importance of Destination

There are tourists who visit places with the objective of studies and exploration. Need for research promotes
tourism. Archeologists, Geologists, Oceanographers, Biologists and Zoologists, Architects, and People
researching Arts and Cultures seek places that have great significance in the field of research.

Religious Importance of Destination

The places of religious importance or worship are always flooded with tourists. At these places, tourism is at
its peak at particular time periods in a year. The tourists often go on pilgrimage to find inner peace and invoke
blessings of the deities they worship and to cleanse their sins before death. For example, Mecca, Bethlehem,
Kashi are places with such importance.

Technology

Internet has penetrated to almost every corner of the world. Tourists are enjoying the benefits of Internet.
While planning a tour, the tourists try to get the idea about the places they are going to visit, the quality of
amenities and services, and the attractions at the destination. After visiting a destination, the experienced
tourists share their opinions on various platforms of the Internet.

Thus, the reviews of experienced tourists shared on the internet work as guidelines for the following tourists.
Hence, just like a double-edged sword, the Internet can boost as well as bring down the tourism business.

Tourism Products

The tourism products are grouped into the following types −

Tourism Oriented Products

These are the products and services created primarily for the tourists and also for the locals. These products
need a great share of investments in private sector. A few of them are −

• Accommodations; such as hotels, bunglow etc.

• Transportation; such as taxis, luxury buses, and boats etc.
• Retail Travel Agents
• Tour Operators
• Shopping Centers such as malls local markets etc.
• Cinema Theatres
• Restaurants for Food and Beverages
• Tourism Information Centers
• Souvenirs Outlets
• Museums, Temples, Gardens, and Theme parks

Residents Oriented Products

Here, the products and services are created mainly for the local residents staying at a particular tourist
destination. This category requires investment in public sectors more. Some of them are :
 • Hospitals
• Public Parks
• Banks and ATMs
• Petrol Pumps
• Postal Service

Intangible Products of Tourism

These are:

• Bookings of accommodations, theatres, at various sites.

• Tourists’ experience by visiting a destination, eating at a restaurant, or performing an activity.
• Tourists’ memory which is created by storing the details of events and experience on the tour. The
high degree of satisfaction or dissatisfaction is often stored as a long term memory.

Tourism Issues
Positive issues related to tourism:
Positive aspects related to tourism may be discussed under the following heads:

Economic Significance tourism:

Primary benefit of tourism includes the expenditure incurred by tourists on purchase of goods and services,
producing economic benefits. Secondary benefit includes both indirect as well as induced benefits.

Tourism and balance of payment:

The balance and payments represents a systematic double entry of all transactions between a particular country
and all other countries. It is a statement of income and expenditure on international account. At national level,
the major aim of both developed and developing countries in promoting international tourism are commonly to
increase overseas earnings and to improve or redress to balance of payment situation. International tourism
constitutes one of the important items in world trade and enters into the balance of payments account of
individual countries.

Tourism and Development:

Tourism is an important factor of economic development.

i. It increases urbanization by continuous growth of construction and addition of tourism facilities

including the creation and improvement of infrastructure and tourist superstructure.
ii. It increases industrial activities that relate to tourist services that are hotels and transportation etc.
leading to development of other industries.
iii. It increases demand of agricultural production because of the increase in consumption.
iv. It also enhances market for local products and goods.

Tourism and Employment:

The tourist industry being mainly service oriented is labour intensive and therefore important source of
employment. Tourism activities are more multifaceted than any other economic activity and provide a wide
range of jobs extending from unskilled to highly specialised. Tourism offers work in many fields such as hotels
and other forms of accommodation, travel agencies, government tourist offices, guides and interpreters,
handicrafts and souvenir industries etc. The employment maybe classified under three categories:

i. Direct employment for providing goods and services directly to the tourists in hotels, restaurants,
shops etc.
ii. Indirect employment stimulated by tourist expenditure in activities that supply goods, services to
the tourism.
iii. Investment related employment in construction and other capital goods industries.

Regional Development and redistribution of income:

Tourism directly helps to develop those remote and under developed areas particularly in developing countries
which lack raw materials and other resources for industrial development but have tourism significance. The
distribution of investment among areas of tourist appeal in such regions, according to a tourist development
plan would lead to significant expansion of local and regional economic activities and may reduce the
imbalances caused by haphazard urbanization and area development due to industrialization. Tourism would
provide labour and employment opportunities to the less skilled sector of population and prevent their migration
to the industrialized and urban centers. Thus the regional aspect of tourist expenditure is an important domestic
effect of tourist spending and has special significance for those areas which are relatively isolated,
underdeveloped and have unemployment problems and it redress the long standing economic imbalance
between regions.

Socio-cultural significance of tourism:

For development of tourism infrastructure, the host communities also have access to those facilities such as
medical facilities; transportation facilities etc. It creates development in public services. Tourism allows
intercultural interaction and tourists also learn from the local people. The recreational activities create
environment for socialisation. Local heritage, crafts, traditional activities, cultural histories of the host
communities are often explored to the outside world through tourism.

Negative issues related to tourism:

The negative issues related to tourism may be summarised under the following heads:

Environmental Issues:

Generally, nature tourism, wildlife tourism, adventurous tourism etc. are often occurring in forests, coastal
environment, high alpine areas etc. People are more interested to explore more remote, pristine, and natural
environment of the planet. Tourism industry and tourist activities have different negative environmental impacts
as follows:

i. Construction of superstructure i.e. hotels, restaurants, shops and infrastructure such as roads disrupt
virginities and natural environment of destination spots. This disruption increases more with the
development of a tourist destination.
ii. The needs for water for cleaning and drinking increases resulting in excessive loss of water and thus
creating water crisis.
iii. Noise pollution often disturbs wildlife and behavioural changes occur to the animals.
iv. With more flow of tourists more food and beverages consumption increase which result in plastic and
non- biodegradable solid waste pollution.
 v. There are many direct negative impacts of tourist activities, specially in case of adventurous tourism
such as removal of vegetation, loss of vegetation, loss of vegetation height, exposure of tree root system
etc.
vi. According to World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) Tourism Highlights, 2016 there has been a steady
increase in tourist arrivals worldwide. In 2015 there were 1.186 billion tourist arrivals by different
modes of transportations which in turn resulted in increased emission of CO2 and greenhouse gases.

Socio-cultural issues:

The socio-cultural issues may be summerised as follows:

i. Tourism activities increase growth of consumer culture among the host communities. The local
people copy consumption pattern of the tourists to improve their social status.
ii. The young members of host community often imitate tourist behaviour that negatively affects
traditional value system of the host community. Thus acculturation occurs in which existing culture
of host community is modified and these new modifications are often opposed to their traditional
culture.
iii. Crimes are seen in tourist spots which come from tourist induced activities such as rowdy behavior,
alcohol and drug addiction, gambling, prostitution and these are means for recreation to many
tourists.

Economic issues:

The negative economic issues related to tourism are:

i. Resources of the host areas become unsustainable and exhausted for exploitative nature of tourists.
ii. Often profits from the tourism industries of host areas are gained by foreign and outside owners and
local people are deprived from achieving economic benefits.

Towards sustainability:

From negative issues related to tourism arise the question of sustainability. Tourism of a particular place cannot
survive with all these negative impacts on physical and socio-cultural environment. From these perspectives, a
new concept in tourism arrives that is sustainable tourism. The main principles for sustainable tourism are as
follows:

i. It contributes actively to the conservation of natural and cultural heritage. In sustainable tourism
local and indigenous people are involved for planning, development and wellbeing of their own.
ii. It entertains independent and small size organized groups of tourists so that carrying capacity of the
host destination does not exceed.
iii. It ensures the economic benefits of the local and indigenous people of the tourist destination.

So just like sustainable development sustainable tourism has economic, socio-cultural and environmental goals,
maintaining those goals sustainable tourism may be achieved.
 Environmental
protection

Sustainable
tourism

Development of
Economic gain
local people
from tourism
through tourism

Fig: Goals of sustainable tourism

Ecotourism as a way to sustainable tourism:

Ecotourism is defined as responsible travel to natural areas that conserves the environment and sustains the
well-being of local people. It is an important approach for stabilized sustainable tourism activities. Ecotourism
also have three basic goals:

i. It conserves biological and cultural diversity by strengthen protected area management system
(public or private) and increasing the value of sound ecosystems.
ii. Promote sustainable use of biodiversity by generating income, jobs and business opportunities in
ecotourism and related business networks.
iii. Share the benefits of ecotourism development equitably with local communities and indigenous
people by obtaining their informed consent and full participation in planning and management of
ecotourism business.

The following five criteria ecotourism encompasses; those are:

1. Conservation 2. Low impact and green efforts, 3. Sustainability, 4. Community involvement, 5.

Environmental education and interpretation.

From the above discussion it is clear that ecotourism is a powerful tool for promoting sustainable tourism.
Tourism system:

Inputs Tourism
retailing Destination Outputs
subsystem subsystem

Human Tourists’
resources Travel and Natural and satisfaction
tour cultural
Operators attractions

Natural Environment
resources Transport Accommodation
al protection
subsystem
Infrastructure
Government Transport to (Roads and
Economic
policy reach railways)
gains to the
destination
local people
Locally owned
Fig: The tourism system: an environmental perspective, after Laws (1991) referred in Holden, 2000).

Recent Trends in Tourism in Global and Indian Perspectives:

With increased technology the coming years the world would witness the emergence of fast transportation
system all around the world.

i) The modern information technology has led to the creation of more demand for tourism.
ii) The market for budget hotels has continued to expand during the last decade.
iii) Special Interest Tourism is growing at a fast pace. Activities like Visiting Theme Parks, Adventure
Tourism, and Casinos are attracting more and more tourists.
iv) In order to attract repeat visitors, hotel industry is extending special emphasis on personal attention
to their customers.
v) Short break are becoming an increasing feature of modern lifestyles as travelers opt to take many
more trips of shorter length. Increased frequency of transportation and its network is making it easy
for people to reach far away destinations much faster.
vi) One of the major changes that are occurring in world tourism market is increasing size of mature
travelers. Senior citizens are taking more and more trips.
vii) Environmental Issues are becoming more important for lodging properties and more green hotels
are coming up. In green hotels guests saves millions of gallons of water and prevent the release of
tons of detergents.
 viii) With environmentalism becoming more important to more people, the size of ecotourist segment is
increasing dramatically. A survey shows that 34 million Americans took a nature based trip during
their last vacation or plan to do so on an upcoming vacation.
ix) The early years of this millennium are marked by major social and economic shifts that have
changed the way customer behave. Stimulated by increased knowledge, information and buying
power, these shifts are creating aspirations or better life styles.
x) One of the newest trends happening in global tourism is Single Holiday Tourists. As compared to
Group Travel, people prefer to travel as single. Travel by Single Women travelers to India is
increasing by 6 to 8 percent every year.
xi) With the increasing number of visitors to a common destination, managing visitors’ requirements are
becoming difficult for service organizations in the near future. Resulting in increased number of
mergers, acquisitions, alliances and cooperative agreements.
xii) The participation of Non Governmental Organizations in heritage conservation and preservation of
heritage properties is increasing throughout world.
xiii) To tap domestic as well international health tourism market, hotel properties will develop or convert
their hotels into spa resorts on the Ayurvedic and other rejuvenating concepts.
xiv) In India foreign hotel chains are thriving on the concept of franchising. All international players are
scouting for properties in India.
xv) Internationally branded hotels are coming to India. The country has caught the fancy of leading
international groups.
xvi) Business travel constitutes about 12 percent of the share of the global travel industry sweepstakes.
According to industry estimates, the Indian business travel industry will touch 1 billion marks by
2010.
xvii) On the pattern of Singapore, a number of amusement and theme parks are coming up around metro
towns across the India.
xviii) To develop tourism, Golf has been chosen as a thrust area and Indian Department of Tourism is
working with major courses to attract potential golf tourists.

References

Bull, A, 1991. The Economics of Travel and Tourism, Pitman, London

Holden, A. 2000. Environment and Tourism, Routledge, London and New York

Matheieson, A and Wall, G.1982. Tourism: Economic, Physical and Social Impacts, Longman, Harlow

Nandi.M. 2011.Development of tourism in Western Bankura, West Bengal, unpublished M.Phil dissertation, the
University of Burdwan, Burdwan

Shah, K. et al.2002. Towards Earth Summit 2002, Stakeholder Forum, Sustainable Tourism Briefing Paper, Economic
Briefing No. 4,Sustainable Tourism- Turning the Tide, UNEP (www.earthsummit2002.org)

https://www.tutorialspoint.com/tourism_management/index.htm

SUBMITTED BY MOUMITA NANDI, DEPT. OF GEOGRAPHY, DINABANDHU ANDREWS COLLEGE,

KOLKATA-700084