The current state of tourism
HOMEWORK PACK for SENIOR STUDENTS (MTY 111, 121, 131)
Practice 1.
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The current state of tourism
Tourism may be defined as the science, art and business of attracting and transporting people, accommodating them, and catering to their needs and wants. As an industry, tourism is a dynamic, evolving, consumer-driven force.
What is the state of tourism today? The answer is simple – growth. The global tourism industry is growing steadily at a rate of around six per cent per year. The basic measure for this is international tourist arrivals. Since 1990, the number of international tourist arrivals has risen from 439 million to around a billion, or about six and a half per cent annually. Before that, from 1950 to 1990, the figure had risen from 25 million to 439 million.
The simple fact is that more and more people want to travel to more and more places. The attractions of computers and the virtual world haven’t reduced this. Back in the 1980s, some people thought that with the growth of computer technology, business travel would decline, but this hasn’t happened – in fact it’s expanded because there’s no substitute for face-to-face transactions, especially in a globalized economy. This has been helped by the fact that the relative cost of travel has fallen.
Let’s now look at a few developments behind those statistics – destinations and types of holiday, for example. In Europe established destinations like France, Spain, and Italy are being challenged by newer destinations offering cost advantages, such as Bulgaria and Croatia. On top of this, new shorter break destinations are emerging in the market. But more importantly, though still the region with the most international arrivals; Europe is beginning to lose its dominance of the tourism industry. Tourism in Asia – both as a destination and a generator of tourists – is growing dramatically. Since 1990, the number of tourist arrivals in Asia has gone up by nearly 400%. That’s something that wasn’t really predicted in the 1980s. At that time, people were expecting growth to come from Europe and America.
Another development is that the mass tourism of the 1950 to 1980 period has fallen, and given way to more independent specialist holidays. Yet, ironically, independent travel and backpacking has itself become characterized by ‘mass tendencies’ with a whole industry now developing to support it – from gap year tour companies to backpacker insurance policies and backpacker hotels.
Let’s have a look at the most dramatic development of all – computers and the Internet. The Internet has led to a revolution in the tourism and travel industry. On the one hand, it has resulted in a new type of independent consumer, who looks everything online. But on the other hand, even within the travel industry, the internet is emerging as the key distribution source. What this means is that the industry can reach customers directly, and as a result the role of the retail agent is declining.
At the same time, the big travel companies have fully embraced this new technology, whilst continuing to buy shares in other tourism-based companies, giving them even greater dominance in the market place. So what’s happening is that the big companies are getting bigger at the same time as more and more small specialist companies are emerging
In the second half of the 20th, concern for the environmental impact of travel and tourism gradually increased. Some believed the jet aircraft would be replaced by space travel, that trains and cruise ships would use alternative fuel sources, that underwater leisure centres would be built – all with the hope of reducing the environmental impact of our industry. Well, these things haven’t happened. In fact, the number of flights by jet aircraft has increased sharply, particularly with the emergence of the low-cost airlines. The consequence is that we still have these concerns to deal with – and this will be something we come back to later on.