Question:
Discuss about the Global Tourism Issues and Development.
Tourism is an economic as well as social activity which involves people traveling to different parts of the world for recreational purposes. However, tourism can also incorporate the travel of new places for business purposes. According to Ferroni (2017, p. 19), tourism activities have seen great advancement with much focus being placed on the hospitality and hotel management to ensure that the visiting tourist get proper treatment during their stay. International tourism has been facilitated by globalization as most people have an opportunity to travel unlike before. This has seen the industry grow. There are quite a number of factors that have influenced global tourism development. Among them include increased globalization, technology advancement as well as diversification of cultures.
Global tourism has seen great advancement over a period of years (Weissenberg 2017, p.13). Measures to encourage people to take on tourism as a leisure activity have been developed and championed on. Focus on various tourism sectors to ensure the industry thrives, have been emphasized with various factors playing a key role.
Globalization is a term used to refer to a situation where people pool resources together to achieve a common goal. Globalization is a process where nations work together through strengthening of already existing relationships among them, as well as creating new relationships, to produce better goods and services and also create and expand markets for their products. Globalization also creates a sense of unity and brotherhood among various states (Sannomiya 2017, p.17). Globalization has aided the tourism sector in great ways. Through it, new destinations have been discovered. The discovery of these new destinations has encouraged people to visit these new places and explore what they have to offer. This increased intention to travel abroad is what has led to the development of the tourism industry globally (Menendez 2017, p. 21). Globalization also created a culture where people from different countries interact with each other. Through this, people have managed to advertise their cultures to other people, a factor that has seen others desire to experience the culture first hand. Globalization has also played a key role in the reduction of the air travel fees. Through globalization, a variety of airlines have developed with a large number offering standardized air travel fees. In the recent years, air travel tickets have become cheaper making it possible for quite a number of people to afford them. This has encouraged people who could not afford air travel tickets for flights outside the country to purchase and travel to their desired destinations. Additionally, globalization has created much employment opportunities for most people. Through this, many individuals are able to have an influx of their disposable income, and therefore can save enough to spend on vacations. They choose to visit other countries for their vacation rather than spend time in their home country. However, as much as globalization has impacted positively on travels and tourism, it has some of its negative impacts on the industry. For one, the industry is trying to Americanize all its services. Some tourist destinations are designed in ways that are similar to the American culture with the notion that they will attract more clients if they do so. Secondly, most destinations have homogeneity in their products and services that they offer. This homogeneity of products makes the global tourism industry to lag behind in terms innovation as there is fear that if a destination deviates from the tradition of the services they provide, it will more or less face a challenge or possible loss. The global tourism industry also lacks authenticity as most of the tourist destinations’ have converted their cultures into commodities.
Technology is another key factor that has led to the development of the global tourism industry. It is through technology that various tourism destinations have managed to advertise their services to the wider global market. For instance, in airplanes, they run commercials of the potential tourist destinations in the countries the passengers are headed to. This information makes one desire to visit the advertised places for leisure. Additionally, television, as well as radio stations, have been used as agents of information dissemination especially regarding the tourist destinations in the industry (Smith n.p.). Most of these advertisements run during commercial breaks and thus giving people a chance to consider visiting the destinations to experience the events themselves. Additionally, it is through improved technology that information about the world’s leading tourist destinations is posted on the internet (Vong 2015, n.p.). This information is accessible by anyone who has access to the internet. This means that as a person is deciding on which tourism destination he or she should visit, they can just look up online for their preferred location and get the necessary information that will be useful in choosing the particular destination center (Twiat 2016, n.p.). In addition, technology has eased up services such as hotel bookings and air ticket purchases. Interested persons can just book their flights as well as hotels through online means at their own convenient time. In summation, technology has played a huge role in the development of global tourism (Torres 2017, p. 14). However, there are the negative impacts of technology in regard to global tourism. For instance, some advertisements may depict a picture of a perfect and mind-blowing destination, only for the tourist to arrive and experience something completely different from their expectations. This ends up creating a bad image for other genuine destinations in that particular country. Technology is also a site where cons pitch their tent ready to scam unknowing individuals. For example, as one can book flights and hotels via online, it is possible that a person can present themselves as agents of a particular destination and ask the individual to pay quite some money so as to get first class treatment on arrival. These conmen pose very interesting and attractive deals and as the client wants royalty treatment, the end up paying. The number of extortion cases has been on the rise in the recent years. As a result, many loyal and honest agents end up losing their jobs as fewer people prefer to book their services themselves.
Culture refers to the way of living adopted by a particular community. Culture plays a vital role in encouraging people to adopt as well as understand the various cultural practices in the world. It plays a key role in the orientation of people when it comes to interactions (Demonja 2015, n.p). Culture can be diversified in many ways with the most common one being through interactions. Education also plays a vital role in this concept. For example, there are those students who travel to foreign lands to further their education. This can be through student exchange programs or the students’ self-sponsored programs. As they are in the foreign lands, they get to learn about their culture and reciprocate this act by sharing their home cultures (Noonan 2017, p. 22). This creates an interest where the host country students’ desire to travel and experience culture first hand. These students also introduced the concept back to their homelands creating the same desire. As a result, there is increased travel and through this, global tourism is promoted. Inclusively, students can also learn about the various cultural activities in different parts of the world, and this spikes up their interest to experience it (Borowieck and Castiglione 2015, p.245). They may end up organizing study group travels where they travel and learn about what they learned in class and relate it to the real-life situation as they see it. Culture is also diversified through the various souvenirs, and art performances presented by representatives of different states at festivals. It is in these festivals that people get to identify the numerous variety of the existing cultures. As they continue to interact, they encourage each other to travel to experience more of what is presented and as a result they promote tourism. Additionally, the local embassies also promote the cultures of their home industries by providing cultural information on their countries as well as running campaigns that advocate for that. Some cultures however can be similar to others and this makes tourist to disregard visiting different places to have the same experience. In such a situation, the attempt to use culture as a tourism attraction focus fails to be successful thereby affecting a country’s tourism sector and the global tourism industry in general. In addition, some cultures may be similar to others thus losing their interest as well as their captivating nature. As much as culture is a key and vital consideration for the development of tourism, there are those individuals who are ethnocentric in that they have little or no regard for other cultures. Additionally, the experience from culture shock might be too much to handle thus people may just prefer to disregard it.
Conclusion
Global tourism refers to the interactions between people of different nations who visit other places for leisure, or business purposes. Global tourism has seen great advancement over the years. This advancement has been championed by various factors among them including globalization, improved technology as well as diversification of cultures. Globalization has set the pace in the promotion of global or international tourism in various ways including subsidizing costs for air travels, development of new tourism destination places, and the increase in disposable income which allows people to travel to new areas for vacations. Technology has played a vital role in that people can now access their destination requirements and information through the online websites and sites having information on their preferred destinations. Through technology, many people are able to access details on what a country offers and make plans to visit the land. Culture, on the other hand, has also played a vital role in promotion and development of global tourism in that people are able to experience the culture they learn about on first-hand experience basis. There is, however, an additional number of issues that encourage and promote the global development of tourism. Bodies such as the United Nations are also key contributors to the development of global tourism.
References
Borowiecki, K.J. and Castiglione C. 2015, Cultural participation and tourism flow: An empirical investigation of Italian provinces. Tourism Economics, 20(2): 241-62.
Demonja, D. 2015, [Online] “Cultural Tourism in Croatia after the Implementation of the Strategy of Development of Cultural Tourism” [Accessed 27 November 2017]
Ferroni, L. 2017, Hospitality, and tourism. Global Economic Impact and Issued 2017 pp. 19.
Menendez, C. J. 2017, Partnering for inclusive growth from digital divide to digital dividend. Global Economic Impact and Issued 2017 pp. 21.
Noonan, J. 2017, Culture and Strategy in the travel and tourism sector. Global Economic Impact and Issued 2017 pp. 22.
Sannomiya, K. 2017, The JCB way: Payment and Glocalization. Global Economic Impact and Issued 2017 pp. 17.
Smith, E. n.d, Technology Used in Hospitality & Tourism. Retrieved on 27 November 2017 from https://smallbusiness.chron.com/technology-used-hospitality-tourism-31033.html
Torres, R. 2017, Technology trends and the future of travel. Global Economic Impact and Issued 2017 pp. 14.
Twist, T. 2016, The impact of technology and the tourism sector. Retrieved on 27 November 2017 from https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/impact-technology-travel-tourism-sector-tom-twist
Vong, K. 2015, How Technology in Tourism is Taking Travel to the Next Level. Retrieved on 27 November 2017 from https://www.trendreports.com/article/technology-in-tourism
Waddell, D. K. 2017, Tourism, and World. Global Economic Impact and Issued 2017 pp. 19.
Weisenberg, A. 2017, Trends Defining the Global Travel Industry in 2017. Global Economic Impact and Issued 2017 pp. 13.
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