THE FUTURE OF TOURISM

Tourism is travel for recreational, leisure, or business purposes. The World Travel Organization defines tourists as people “travelling to and staying in places outside their usual environment for not more than one consecutive year for leisure, business and other purposes”. Tourism has become a popular global leisure activity. It is important, and in some cases, vital for many countries.

The World Tourism Organization reports the following ten countries as the most visited in terms of the number of international travellers: France, the United States, China, Spain, Italy, Turkey, the United Kingdom, Germany, Malaysia and Mexico. Also the same organization reports the following countries as the top ten tourism earners for the year 2011, with the United States by far the top earner. They are: Spain, France, China, Italy, Germany, the United Kingdom, Australia, Macao and Hong Kong.

People have always travelled to distant parts of the world, to see great buildings, works of art, learn new languages, experience new cultures, and to taste different cuisines. Leisure travel was associated with the Industrial Revolution in the United Kingdom – the first European country to promote leisure time to the increasing industrial population.

There are many kinds of tourism. They are: agritourism that involves any activity that brings visitors to a farm or ranch. Food tourism is experiencing the food of the country, region or area, and is now considered a vital component of the tourism experience. Extreme tourism is a niche in the tourism industry involving travel to dangerous places (mountains, jungles, caves, canyons, etc.). Cultural tourism is the subset of tourism concerned with a country or region’s culture, specifically the lifestyle of the people in those geographical areas, the history of those people, their art, architecture, religion, and other elements that helped shape their way of life. Pop-culture tourism is the act of travelling to locations featured in literature, film, music, or any other form of popular entertainment.

There has been an up-trend in tourism over the last few decades, especially in Europe, where international travel for short break is common. Among that trends are: pro-poor tourism, dark tourism and doom tourism. Dark tourism involves visits to “dark: sites, such as battlegrounds, scenes of horrific crimes etc. Doom tourism involves travelling to places that are environmentally or otherwise threatened.

Tourism has a great future, because it is the world’s fastest-growing industries. In 2010, the Middle East and Asia had the greatest growth of tourists. Europe still has the greatest number of tourist – nearly 500 million in 2010. The tourism industry therefore is very important to economic growth as well as the environment.

The tourism industry is divided into five different sectors:

Accommodation

Food and Beverage Services

Recreation and Entertainment

Transportation

Travel Services

The diversity of these five sectors shows that the career options in the tourism industry are unlimited.

Tourism can help country’s economy and infrastructure. For example it provides jobs. Some countries such as Caribbean have tourism as their main source of income.

There are many factors that help explain the growth of tourism in future.

· more affluence

· greater awareness

· more car ownership

· improvements In technology

· more leisure time

· more choice

But still there are some problems. Global economists forecast continuing international tourism growth, depending on the location. Here we should say about wild nature. We must reduce number of tourists in order to save the wild nature. As one of the world’s largest and fastest growing industries, this continuous growth will place greatest stress on remaining biologically diverse habitats and indigenous cultures, which are often used to support mass tourism. We must not forget about pollution as well here, because tourists cause pollution as well. We should bare it in mind too as we speak about the future of tourism.

The Future Tourism

Tourism has become a popular global leisure activity. Tourism is important, and in some cases, vital for many countries. Tourism brings in large amounts of income in payment for goods and services available. It also creates opportunities for employment in the service sector of the economy, associated with tourism. There has been an up-trend in tourism over the last few decades, especially in Europe, where international travel for short breaks is common. Tourists have a wide range of budgets and tastes, and a wide variety of resorts and hotels have developed to cater for them.

During the last decade, the tourism industry has seen many important changes that will have a significant impact on future tourist demand. On the one hand, the rise of e-tourism, the democratization of travel and the tendency to book and to make up one’s trip online rather than to buy a standard tourist package proposed by a tour operator, stood out with regard to the new traveler’s preferences. On the other hand, natural disasters such as tsunamis, volcanic eruptions and earthquakes as well as health issues, such as avian and swine influenza, have changed our perception of holiday and leisure. Therefore, it would be interesting to hypothesize about the future trends in travel that we can expect to see over the next decades.

These can be divided into several trends:

1. Green tourism, also known as nature-based tourism or sustainable tourism, is in great demand and will continue its growth in the future since many travelers are now aware of the negative impact tourism might have on the environment and have, therefore, become more responsible with regard to sustainability.

2. Educational tourism developed, because of the growing popularity of teaching and learning of knowledge and the enhancing of technical competency outside of the classroom environment. In educational tourism, the main focus of the tour or leisure activity includes visiting another country to learn about the culture, such as in Student Exchange Programs and Study Tours, or to work and apply skills learned inside the classroom in a different environment, such as in the International Practicum Training Program.

3. Medical tourism. When there is a significant price difference between countries for a given medical procedure, particularly in Southeast Asia, India, Eastern Europe and where there are different regulatory regimes, in relation to particular medical procedures (e.g. dentistry),traveling to take advantage of the price or regulatory differences is often referred to as "medical tourism".

4. War tourism is recreational travel to war zones for purposes of sightseeing. War tourist is also a pejorative term to describe thrill seeking in dangerous and forbidden places.

The future of the tourism sector is positive. Despite a subdued consumer backdrop, travel is something that consumers appear they are not willing to forego so easily. The World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) forecasts that international tourism will continue growing at the average annual rate of 4%. With the advent of e-commerce, tourism products have become one of the most traded items on the internet. Demand from Europe is expected to remain strong, but the most significant growth is expected from China and India and new emerging markets, such as Vietnam and Thailand, continuing the shift towards Asia. Tourism products and services have been made available through intermediaries, although tourism providers (hotels, airlines, etc.), including small-scale operators, can sell their services directly. This has put pressure on intermediaries from both on-line and traditional shops.

Tourism began when time began. Babylonian money-traders travelled for business, the Egyptian Queen Hatshesput took a cruise along the east coast o f Africa and the British aristocracy took Grand Tour of Europe with Thomas Cook in the nineteenth century. Tourism is about experiences, whether exploring an unfamiliar culture, shopping, lying on a beach or enjoying sport in far-flung places — or a little nearer home. A range of factors determines the scale of tourism. Some continue to exert influence decade after decade; others have an effect for a much shorter period. According to the UN World Tourism Organization (2001), the principal determinants and influences that will impinge on the development and growth of tourism in the future, affecting and creating the tourism economies, are prosperity and affordability, accessibility, events, culture, globalization, competition, and climate.

Despite improvements since 2009, consumer confidence remains below 2007 levels. Uncertainty prevails, with the Eurozone crisis, the US fiscal cliff and China’s rising inflation - all contributing to a deep inconfidence towards the end of 2012. Against this backdrop, tourism had a record year in 2012, with increased global mobility driving international arrivals of over 1 billon, coupled with expenditure of US $ 1.2 trillion.

Downturns in consumer confidence have historically resulted in sharp falls in tourism arrivals, as evidenced by the 4% decline witnessed in 2009. However, this recovered within a year, rising by 6% in 2010. More recently, the industry has demonstrated continued strength with accelerating emerging economies and demographic shifts enabling the sector to rebound quickly despite the continued challenges in the global economic backdrop. Key markets in Asia, where consumer confidence is higher, have witnessed more significant tourism growth (7%) than that seen in the US (4%) and Europe (3%).

The future indicates further optimism with a 3-4% increase in tourism arrivals forecast for 2013. Demand from Europe is expected to remain strong, but the most significant growth is expected from China and India and new emerging markets, such as Vietnam and Thailand, continuing the shift towards Asia.

Forty-three destinations have eased their visa policies over the last two years. The UN

World Tourism Organization suggests that improved visa processes could generate an additional US $ 206 billion in global tourism receipts by 2015. This highlights the significance o f such initiatives in enabling the sector to achieve the 3-4% growth as suggested. A forecasted 5% increase in global commercial air traffic is expected to reach or surpass airport capacity over the next 20 years, reinforcing the importance o f continued investment in infrastructure.

New emerging inbound destinations

Eastern Europe, with many countries joining the EU, Asia and South America will play a major role as leading inbound destinations since they excite and arouse the interest of many travelers. On the other hand, North Africa is threatened with a decline if it does not innovate and diversify its tourism product.

We can predict that competition between destinations is going to be fiercer in the future. Each country should therefore look for a competitive advantage that it can develop and exploit.

New emerging outbound markets

Among the biggest emerging outbound markets, we can cite here China and India with over a billion people each, many of which are starting to travel internationally.

This implies that inbound destinations interested in those promising markets should get prepared for this large influx by: Improving their infrastructure, mainly road and airport infrastructures; Preparing communication media in relevant languages; Ensuring better air connections by seeking common ground with other airline companies or Tour-Operators; Initiating in-depth studies on tourists’ travel needs from those markets.

Green tourism

Green tourism, also known as nature-based tourism or sustainable tourism, is in great demand and will continue its growth in the future since many travelers are now aware o f the negative impact tourism might have on the environment and have, therefore, become more responsible with regard to sustainability.

Travel with a mission

Another important future trend is travels that incorporate an added-value rather than just a classic lazy sun and see vacation: Many travelers are nowadays looking for real travel experiences that enrich their culture and let them live and feel the authenticity. Furthermore, they seek out travels that involve volunteering or that include a particular mission, for instance, learning a new language, exploring new culinary techniques, attending a seminar, a concert or an event, etc.

Social media

Social media includes web-based and mobile technologies used to turn communication into interactive dialogue between organisations, communities and individuals.

The last decade has witnessed an unprecedented rise o f social media in many different forms: Collaborative projects (e.g. Wikipedia), blogs and micro-blogs (e.g. twitter), content communities (e.g. YouTube), social networking sites (e.g. Facebook), etc.

Workforce development

The success of the tourism and hospitality sector is based on the continually evolving challenge of “selling the intangible”. Thus, the human factor is of an increased importance. If we look, for instance, at destinations and companies selling tourism services, they are struggling to differentiate themselves beyond just the physical product. In other words, it is the human element that creates their competitive advantage and what makes or breaks a tourism experience.

Travel to and from the lunar surface has been known to be feasible since it was first achieved 34 years ago. Since that time there has been enormous progress in related engineering fields, so there are no fundamental technical problems facing the development of lunar tourism — only investment and business problems. The outstanding near-term problem is to reduce the cost of launch to low Earth orbit, which has been famously described as “halfway to anywhere”.

Recently there has been major progress towards overturning the myth that launch costs are high because of inescapable physical limits, as companies are planning sub-orbital flights at 0.1% of the cost of Alan Sheppard’s similar flight in 1961. Market research shows strong demand for both sub-orbital flights and orbital services. Travel to the Moon will offer further unique attractions: in addition to its allure arising from millennia of mythology in every country, bird-like flying sports will surely become a powerful demand factor.

While tourism can have a positive effect on national resources (generating cash to preserve natural assets and built environment, conservation and preservation of species and habitats...), unfettered consumption o f natural resources (atmosphere, fuel, food, water, biodiversity, ecosystems) is not an option in the future. Global economists forecast continuing international tourism growth, ranging between three and six percent annually, depending on the location. As one of the world's largest and fastest growing industries, this continuous growth will place great stress on remaining biologically diverse habitats and indigenous cultures, which are often used to support mass tourism.

Tourism began when time began. Tourism is travel for recreational, leisure, or business purposes. The World Tourism Organization defines tourists as people "traveling to and staying in places outside their usual environment for not more than one consecutive year for leisure, business and other purposes. Tourism has become a popular global leisure activity. Tourism is important, and in some cases, vital for many countries. It is activity essential to the life o f nations because of its direct effects on the social, cultural, educational, and economic sectors of national societies and on their international relations. Tourism brings in large amounts of income in payment for goods and services available, accounting for 30% of the world's exports of services, and 6% of overall exports of goods and services. It also creates opportunities for employment in the service sector of the economy, associated with tourism. These service industries include transportation services, such as airlines, cruise ships, and taxicabs; hospitality services, such as accommodations, including hotels and resorts; and entertainment venues, such as amusement parks, casinos, shopping malls, music venues, and theatres.

According to the UN World Tourism Organisation (2001), the principal determinants and influences that will impinge on the development and growth of tourism in the future, affecting and creating the tourism economies, are prosperity and affordability, accessibility, events, culture, globalization, competition, and climate.

Prosperity and Affordability According to research by the Future Foundation, consumers perceive holidays as the number-one luxury product. They desire holidays over houses, fast cars, expensive perfumes and designer clothes. Prosperity has resulted from rising incomes, which in real terms have doubled over the past 20 years, and affordability has resulted from falling prices. This is exemplified by consumers who stay in luxury hotels but travel by budget carrier. Consumers are making their money go further, as incomes rise, prices fall. This pattern of economic behavior is happening all over the world, and over the next two decades the number of people in the middle classes in China, India and Eastern Europe will grow — and these will be the tourists of tomorrow.

Accessibility. The tourists' world is shrinking because of technological advances. The ability of the Internet to inform and to break boundaries allows consumers to choose a tourist destination anywhere in the world and beyond. With an improvement in the economies of scale brought about by the online economy, travel and tourism are becoming a buyers’ market. The world is opening up to the tourist. Even just a few years ago many citizens of China and Russia could not imagine travelling outside their village — international travel was more a dream than reality. Today, visa restrictions are less onerous and the world is accessible to nearly everyone.

Cultural Capital. As wealth and educational attainment increase, culture becomes more important as a destination driver. The cultural capital of a destination is a measure of the total stock of knowledge, attitudes, perception, skills and tastes that are encompassed. People see culture and heritage as one of the six components of a nation’s brand, a key measurement of tourism and the propensity to travel to a destination.

Climate. That climate shapes a destination’s tourism product is obvious: What would Switzerland be like without snow and skiing or the Caribbean without sun and beach holidays?

Technology. The tourist of tomorrow will be better informed, have wider choice and be able to purchase holidays on demand, helped by technology such as the Internet, video on demand and online booking.

Environment Tourists’ growing awareness of social and environmental issues leads to a conflict between conscience and the desire to travel. The provision of sustainable travel products (i.e. carbon offsetting) aims to bridge the gap between these two states of mind, but the consumer will ultimately have to decide whether the environment or freedom to travel is of greater importance.

Movement from an Experience Economy to Authenticity From a tourism perspective, as the experience economy matures consumers desire more authentic and real experiences rather than false and manufactured experiences we associate with theme parks and resorts. Driving this trend is higher education attainment, ageing populations, a knowledgable consumer and concern for how we lead our lives.

I'm optimistic that in the future, travel and tourism will be both sustainable and responsible, with a focus on preserving identities and cultures, celebrating the unique and conserving what is locally distinctive about a place. We'll fly less and in turn, we'll fall back in love with travel closer to home. I think we will begin to have a more personal, meaningful relationship with the places that we visit and a better understanding of our individual motivations for travelling.

A sustainable future for tourism

While tourism can have a positive effect on national resources (generating cash to preserve natural assets and built environment, conservation and preservation of species and habitats...), unfettered consumption of natural resources (atmosphere, fuel, food, water, biodiversity, ecosystems) is not an option in the future.

Glofoal economists forecast continuing international tourism growth ranging between three and six percent annually “depending on the location”. As one of the world's largest and fastest growing industries, this continuous growth will place great stress on remaining biologically diverse habitats and indigenous cultures, which are often used to support mass tourism.

Sustainability itself requires some definition in this Review:

"Humanity's investment in a system of living, projected to be viable on an ongoing basis that provides quality of life for all individuals of species and preserves natural ecosystems. Sustainability in its simplest form describes a characteristic of a process or state that can be maintained at a certain level indefinitely".

"Sustainable development meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs”.

Within Britain, Scotland has taken a leading position in defining strategies and action plans for sustainable development in tourism. The Sustainable Tourist Unit of Visit Scotland describes the balance to be achieved in sustainable tourism:

· Economic prosperity: long term competitive and prosperous tourism businesses; quality employment opportunities; fair pay and conditions for all employees

• Social equity and cohesion: tourism that improves the quality of life of local communities; community involvement in tourism planning and management; safe, satisfying and fulfilling visitor experiences

• Environmental and cultural protection: reduced pollution and degradation of the global and local environment; tourism that maintains and strengthens biodiversity; tourism that maintains and enriches our unique and diverse culture."

The sustainability of our planet's resources is the most pressing economic, social and political issue of our time. It is also a truly global issue, affecting the developed and developing worlds, and requiring solutions which are based on nations’ mutual dependence. A sustainable future for the British tourism economy, like any industry or sector, is dependent upon sustainable strategies for resource consumption, the reduction of carbon emissions, the protection and conservation of bio-diversity and a critically honest approach to the sector’s environmental, as well as economic and social impact.

Our consumption o f the Earth's natural resources is depleting the planet's ability to replenish itself and to sustain life on earth

• % of the world's fisheries are over-fished and faced with commercial extinction

• half o f the world's original forest has been destroyed. We are losing a further 2%

every year

• Species extinction is currently 1000 times the natural evolutionary rate

• % of all birds and mammals on earth are in danger of extinction

• Climate change is already happening and poses a threat unlike that any other facing civilization

At the root of these problems is the way that we humans live, work, travel and play. The way we produce and consume resources is simply unsustainable in the long term. We are currently using resources at a rate 25% greater than the Earth's ability to renew them.

Between 1961 and 2003, the impact of human activity on the planet's ecosystems increased by 150%. If current trends continue, by 2050 we will need a SECOND planet in order to be able to meet our demands for energy, water, food and shelter - and to absorb our wastes. The challenge therefore is to find a way in which all the world's people can lead happy and healthy lives within the natural limits of our one planet. There is a growing consensus that we urgently need to build a world in which everyone has a fair share of the Earth's resources, where there is space for wildlife and wilderness too, and where living sustainably is easy, affordable and attractive.

Date: 2015-04-20; view: 6601