Environmental Impact on Tourism - Outline

Environmental Impact on Tourism - Outline

Introduction

Tourism is an umbrella term for travelling, the travel industry and the hospitality industry and in use since the 1980s. According to the World Tourism Organization the industry is one of the world's largest industries achieving revenues of about 623 billion U.S. dollars, in 2004. In addition to this, with around 100 million jobs, tourism is one of the largest employers. Cross-border trips account for 25 to 30 percent of world trade in services (Sheldon 2005). According to the World Tourism Organization, tourism comprises the activities of persons travelling to and staying in places outside their usual environment for a consecutive period of less than one year and more than one day for leisure, for business or other reasons (Cooper et al. 2001). Tourism is defined as the set of trips whose purpose is pleasure or business or professional reasons and the like, and for which the absence of habitual residence is temporary, are not made to travel tourism transferred to the workplace. Tourism is the set of relationships and phenomena produced by the movement and stay of people away from home, while such movement and residence are not motivated by a lucrative business.

Discussion

Key Environmental Issues

Managing environmental issues is of key importance to tourism planning. Unplanned tourism has led to environmental degradation in developing countries. Thus, tourist resort planners must give preference to designs where environmental damage is minimized and, where a very basic limitation is related to the carrying capacity of the areas in relation to visitor use and the development of facilities. Conventional forms of tourism development will affect resource quality, and tourists will seek other destinations. There have been expressions of outrage by some at the devastation of natural wildlife in developing nations (Williams 1998).

Though tourism has become a major economic sector, it is still not a very secure growth sector, especially for the developing economies. The developing economies go through seasonal fluctuation in arrivals, in addition to themselves going through economic cycles. Destination nations, among the developing nations do not have the power to control pricing. In addition, most third world tourism destinations are “mutually substitutable.” There are several well known economic impacts of unplanned tourism. Often, benefits of tourism do not always go to the host country, and a large amount of foreign exchange generated by the industry is reportedly funneled back into the countries of tourist origin. The nature of package tours is such that most of the foreign exchange does not even reach the destination nation.

Sustainable Development

As tourism has become a major economic activity, the ability of the national economy to benefit from tourism depends on the availability of investment. It is done in order to develop the necessary infrastructure and on its ability to supply the needs of tourists. It helps to develop the economy for a long time.

A cost benefit analysis of mass tourism can be measured at national, regional and local levels. Incidental costs, it leads to quality ...