TOURISM

Tourism Provides Jobs

Tourism Provides Jobs

Introduction

Tourism is one of the most thriving industries of world today. According to recent estimates, tourism contributes nearly 9% to world economy and provides employment to more than 220 million people across the globe. As the tourism emerged as the as major industry with its growing worldwide importance, it boosted enormous expectations as to its potential for development especially in the third world countries. The world has been looking at the tourism industry as tool to attain national and regional economic growth and for jobs creation. Its role, however, has been extended recently to meet world-scale developmental and growth related challenges such as poverty reduction and sustainable development. Several international bodies, governmental and non-governmental organisation and scholars highlight the importance of tourism industry and its potential in the framework of the Millennium Development Goals (Ashley & Roe, 2002, p.1-12; UNWTO, 2006). At the beginning of the new millennium in 2000, the United Nations approved the Millennium Declaration, which binds the members of UN to a new global partnership specifically designed to decrease extreme poverty, charting a set of specific objectives with the deadline of 2015. This declaration is commonly known as the United Nations Millennium Development Goals. These goals address various areas of global concern such as eradication of hunger and poverty, primary education, women empowerment, gender equality, reduction of mortality rate in children, mental health combating deadly diseases like HIV and malaria, environment, and global development (UN, 2000).

Evidently, the world tourism industry, alone, cannot address all these ambitious and important global targets and goals of UN. Nevertheless, tourism industry possesses the great potential to play a vital role in poverty reduction, ensuring environmental sustainability, providing new opportunities for employment and paving the way for a global partnership for development and elevation of previously neglected and underprivileged groups. Particularly in the third world countries, increasing tourism demand is perceived to be enormously beneficial for the economy, and due to the new worldwide role, tourism has become a significant social policy instrument for community development, provision of jobs and financial benefits to the poor and previously marginalised people (Hall, 2007, p. 111-118; Mowforth and Munt. 1998, p. 35-47). It has been rightly suggested that increasing tourism demand has relatively more to offer to developing countries rather than the developed ones. Resultantly, the tourism industry has attained the status of a leading economic activity in many developing and third world countries. Several policies, projects and programmes have now started highlighting the new and significant role of tourism industry in development.

Discussion

Over the past few decades, international tourism industry has grown exponentially. It has now become one of the most important industries in the world in terms of revenue generation and jobs creation. The tourism industry also remained largely untouched during the global financial crisis of 2007. According to the statistics issued by the United Nations, the year 2010 witnessed 935 million international tourist arrivals worldwide. This shows 6.7 percent increase from 2009 and 2.4 percent increase from the peak in ...