TOURISM ENVIRONMENT

Tourism Environment



Table of Contents

INTRODUCTION3

TASK I: SCENARIO3

1.History and Structure of Travel and Tourism Industry3

2.Influences of local and National governments and international agencies on the Travel and Tourism Industry6

TASK II: SITE VISIT REPORT11

3.Supply and Demand in the Travel and Tourism Industry11

4.The positive and Negative Effects of Tourism13

RECOMMENDATION15

CONCLUSION16

REFERENCES17

BIBLIOGRAPHY19

Tourism Environment

Introduction

The travel and tourism industry has emerged as one of the fastest growing industries in the world generating more than US$3.0 trillion per year. The World Travel and Tourism Council (WTTC, 1994:52) has estimated that tourism is the world's largest industry, responsible for 10 per cent of world GDP and representing approximately 10 per cent of global wages and 11 percent of world-wide consumer spending (Hovinen 2002:209-230). This paper discusses the British Tourism and Travel industry.

Task I: Scenario

History and Structure of Travel and Tourism Industry

The word tour gained acceptance in the 18th century, when the Grand Tour of Europe became part of the upbringing of the educated and wealthy British nobleman or cultured gentleman. Grand tours were particular interesting for young people to "complete" their education. They travelled all over Europe, but notably to places of cultural and aesthetic interest, such as Rome, Tuscany and the Alps. (Graham 2006: 74-95)

The British aristocracy were keen on the Grand Tour, using the occasion to gather art treasures from Europe to add to their collections. The amount of art treasures being moved to Britain in this way was unequalled anywhere else in Europe, and explains the richness of many private and public collections in Britain today. Yet tourism in those days, aimed essentially at the very top of the social ladder( the rich people) and at the well educated. These first tourists, though undertaking their Grand Tour, were more travellers than tourists. (Eurostat 2007: 46-58)

It was not until the 19th century that cultural tourism developed into leisure and health tourism. Some English travellers, after visiting the warm lands of the South of Europe, decided to stay there either for the cold season or for the rest of their lives. Others began to visit places with health-giving mineral waters, in order to relieve a whole variety of diseases from gout to liver disorders and bronchitis.

Leisure travel was a British invention due to sociological factors. Britain was the first European country to industrialize, and the industrial society was the first society to offer time for leisure to a growing number of people. However, this did not apply to the working masses, but rather to the owners of the machinery of production, the economic oligarchy, the factory owners, and the traders. These comprised the new middle class.

Even winter sports were largely invented by the British leisured classes initially at the Swiss village of Zermatt and St Moritz in 1864.Until the first tourists appeared, the Swiss thought of the long snowy winter as being a time when the best thing to do was to stay indoors and make cuckoo clocks or other small mechanical items. The first packaged winter sports holidays (vacations) followed in 1903, to Adelboden, also in ...