13.3. Trends of international tourism and Impacts Flashcards
Tourism
to travel away from home for at least one night for the purpose of leisure. (Note that this definition excludes day trippers or business trips)
Subgroups of Tourism
1) Ecotourism
2) Subtourism
3) Sustainable tourism
Ecotourism
tourism focusing on the natural environment and local communities
Heritage Tourism
tourism based on a historic legacy (landscape feature, historic building or event) as its major attraction
Sustainable Tourism
tourism that conserves primary tourist resources and supports the livelihoods and culture of local people
Changes in Demand for Tourism
Tourism figures since 1950:
- Grown from like 20 million tourist arrivals per year in 1950 to 1.4 billion tourist arrivals per year
- It is predicted that tourism levels will reach over 1.8 billion tourists per year in 2030
- Europe and Asia dominates tourist arrivals
- Africa, Middle East and America occupy smaller populations
Reasons for Growth of Tourism
- With economic development and growing upper and middle classes, so more disposable income (especially in LICs and MICs), more people can afford travel and go on holidays
- Increased tourism marketing so makes people aware of where tourism destinations are
- More budget airlines which makes it more affordable to travel and connect to many more airports and destinations
- With economic development, people have annual paid leave from companies
- There is now the internet, which makes booking and going on holidays much easier
- More tourist destinations built around the world (more amusement parks, more hotels)
- Grey baht or pound → people with high incomes who retire with pensions and live longer → can afford to travel so there are more elder travellers
- LICs and MICs are recognising the benefits of tourism so they built more tourist infrastructure like clean water, hospitals → allows more tourists to travel safely and easily to a much wider range of places
Tourism’s Key Trends
Responsible for:
- 1/10 of jobs around the world
- 7% of world’s exports
- 30% of services exports
- 10% of world’s GDP
- Has a real effect on many countries around the world
- Leads to economic growth
- Provides new jobs
- Can have massively damaging environmental impacts
- Can erode and destroy cultures
Patterns of Tourism globally
Majority of tourists go to Europe and Asia, because these are densely populated areas in the world with many countries so lots of domestic and international tourism (like UK → France)
Environmental Impacts of Tourism
1) Visual Pollution
2) Noise Pollution
3) Land and Sea Pollution
4) Air Pollution
Visual Pollution
Uncontrolled building of high-rise developments
Noise Pollution
- Increased road traffic
- Late night entertainment
Land and Sea Pollution
- Litter
- Money is often is spent cleaning streets and beaches early in the morning
Air Pollution
- Increases with the volume of road traffic
- Carbon footprint of travel associated with international tourism
- In 2002, the World Wildlife Fund estimated that holiday flights in one year from the UK to Cyprus emitted about 70000 tonnes of CO2, more than double the amount the tourist produced during the day
- From resorts:
- The travel foundation recommended resorts to reduce carbon footprints by:
- Doing anaerobic digestion of waste with methane recovery
- Optimisation of the use of bottled water
- Further encouragement of use of local food produce
Carrying Capacity
the number of tourists can exceed the number that the local area can cope with.