TOURISM

International Tourism Industry and Sustainability

International Tourism Industry and Sustainability

Introduction

Tourism is defined as travel to a place outside the usual residential environment, involving a stay of at least one night but no more than 1 year, with varying motivations, such as business, pleasure, visits to friends and relatives (VFR), and education. Tourism has long been of interest to geographers, given its spatial, temporal, and activity patterns and given its major economic and environmental impacts, ranging from the local to the global.

Although the antecedents of modern tourism can be traced back to Thomas Cook in 1850s Britain (Hamilton 2006, pp.13; Withey 1998, pp.33), as a highly structured sector of many economies it can be viewed as a creation of more recent times. Its rise has been traced by a number of authors, including Gee et al. (1997, pp.26) and Holloway and Taylor (2006, pp.240). Since the early 1950s the growth of tourism, both domestically in the developed countries and internationally, has been phenomenal in its scale, and remarkably resilient to periodic economic and political adversity. In product life cycle terms (Evans et.al 2003, pp.138-141) and taking a global perspective, international tourism might be categorized as having passed through the “introductory” phase into the “growth” phase. The number of international arrivals, for example, has risen to 805 million in 2005 from 24 million international arrivals in 1950, equal to growth rate (average) of 6.5% per annum (WTO 2008, web). As many more countries and potential consumers are being drawn into the international tourism net, further growth is to be expected before “maturity” is reached. All this growth has led to a new dimension of tourism which is eco-friendly tourism.

However, sustainable tourism practices have not produced the desired sustainable results so far, as stakeholders are still not clear on enhance and improve sustainability in international tourism.

Discussion

In the last 40 years, the international tourism industry has been very successful, and it is considered as international economic success (Coccossis and Parpairis 1995, pp.107). The positive effect of tourism on economic development is the driving factor behind the governments of developing economies to pursue investment in tourism (Hall 1995, pp.12). Tourism is perceived as a means for regional, as well as, national development to enhance infrastructure, balance of payments, foreign exchange revenues and employment in the country (Edwards 2004, pp.9). In developing countries, sustainable tourism is especially important because it has the potential to bring social, economic, and environmental benefits.

Sustainable tourism seeks to meet three over-arching goals: the quality of life of host societies must be improved; to accomplish visitor happiness; and to guard natural resources in destination countries (Hunter and Green 1995, pp.31). Inskeep has defined sustainable-tourism as, “which… meets the needs of present tourists and host regions while protecting and enhancing opportunities for the future. It is envisaged as leading to management of all resources in such a way that economic, social and aesthetic needs can be fulfilled while maintaining cultural integrity, essential ecological processes, biological diversity and life support systems” (1991, ...