Introduction To Tourism And Environment For Business In Tourism

Essay Objectives

Describe about the Introduction to Tourism and Environment for Business in Tourism.

Current Problem:

In most of the places where there are tourism sites where tourists are attracted to come and behold, there is usually some hostility that comes from the host. Certain motives tend to propel the host community members to behave strange to the visiting tourists. According to Marschall (2010), tourism has the potential of creating intense pressure on the local resources such as water, land, food, and energy that were previously scarce in the local community. They mostly result from the exhaustive usage of land and water resources by leisure and tourism facilities. Secondly, changes occurring in the landscape coming from the building of facilities, buildings, and infrastructure (Travis, 2011). Stabler (1997) writes that the direct local influences on both the environment and local people at destinations are usually affected by the concentration of time and space.

Essay Focus:

The objective of the paper is to study and analyse the various factors that cause hostility and antagonism between incoming tourists and the people from the host community. Secondly, having established those factors, the paper will undertake to determine how they affect the advancement of tourism.

Thesis Statement:

 The manner in which the affairs of the local people have been conducted in the past years should be shunned, and ways that are more effective pursued.

Background

Historical Overview:The social-cultural impacts of conventional tourism described in this paper include the impact on host people that have either direct or indirect dealings with tourists and closer contact in the travel and tourism industry. For a variety of reasons, the locals tend to be fragile while interacting with their tourist visitors. The arising impacts emanate when tourism triggers changes in behaviour and value systems of people, thus threatening the indigenous identity of locals.

Changes tend to arise in a community configuration, morality, ceremonies, communal traditional way of living, and family relationships (Bramwell & Lane, 2000).

Little information exists exploring the impacts of antagonism between tourists and locals in different areas of the world. It is felt that only a few places have been studied. What about the rest?

Minor Point 1:Conventional tourism is bound to cause changes and loss of local identity and values, and sometimes may bring some unwanted influences. This is the number one reason why locals always fear to face, and would do anything to antagonise with their tourists. While writing about commercialization of local culture, Travis (2011) informs that tourism has the impact of turning the indigenous culture into commodities when people’s sacred festivals, local customs, and traditions are subjected and reduced to adapt to tourist expectations. Further, Garrod & Gössling (2008) add that destinations always risk standardization in the process of satisfying tourist desires.

1. Minor Point 2: The Arising Consequence

Current Problem

This is because aspects such as food and beverages, accommodation, and landscape are made to satisfy tourist desires. Attempting to adapt to tourist demands is always problematic, and that is the reason Getz, Carlsen & Morrison (2004) writes that tourists have a tendency to want locals’ cultural manifestations, crafts, arts, and souvenirs. In most of the tourist destinations, artisans are compelled to respond to the growing demand by making changes in the design style of their products.  Gouldson (1994) observes that cultural erosion is bound to happen in the process of commercialising cultural goods.

1. Major Point 2: The Physical Influences that Cause Social Stress

The physical impacts that have the potential to increase tourism can cause simple social stress since it influences the host community. Social cultural demerits comprise of cultural decline, unlawful removal of cultural of cultural heritage items, pilferage, littering, and vandalism of cultural heritage, which further change the historical surrounding landscape. Fights with land users in the host community tend to arise in seaside regions where the building of shoreline tourist facilities and hotels disconnects any access for the locals to recreational usage of these areas (Harrison, 2014).

1. Minor Point 1: Deteriorating Employment and Working Conditions

A study by Standa-Gunda & Braedt (2005) indicates that many of the jobs found in the tourism sector have employment and working conditions that tend to leave out some of important details such unstable employment, long hours, and little training. Apart from these, recent developments in the tourism and travel trade seem to strengthen the trend towards employment that is more flexible and other precarious conditions (Jenkins & Schröder, 2013).

Since tourism embodies people movement to differing geographical sites and setup of social relationships between individuals who hardly meet, cultural backlashes can occur following differences in levels of prosperity, lifestyles, value, religious and ethnic groups.

Major Point 3: Being Denied Economic Share from the Tourism Revenue

Sources have documented that most of the community members where there are tourist attractions do a lot to ensure full enjoyment of the incoming tourist. The setback arises where the tourists are charged a lot of money for the products and services offered for that tourism by the mandated body, or majorly the government and the Ministry of Tourism. In nearly all countries across the globe, the Ministry of Tourism is the best performing and stable in terms of revenue earnings (Smith, 2001). What the Ministry of Tourism fail to do is to appreciate the locals for their instrumental role in ensuring the success and continuity of tourism. The locals are the ones who welcome and entertain the tourists. Their presence near the tourist site bespeaks the cultural heritage of the host country. Nevertheless, when the money is paid, none of it goes to them, and they end up remaining poorer and desperate as usual (Leslie, 2015).

Essay Focus

The failure to be recognised and appreciated in a proper way has triggered antagonism from these locals. The only parties who benefit are the Government and its Ministry of Tourism and the few employed people such as the game ranchers and security personnel. The anger of the locals causes disastrous effects, disrupting the activities of tourism and damaging the relationship and trust, these tourists have in the host country (Travis, 2011). 

In order to realise a sustainable tourism strategy, there is need to define the key priority issues, the potential objectives, the stakeholder community, and a core methodologies that would be used to attain these objectives. The suggestions raised in this paper that have the potential of bringing a closer and knitter relationship between tourists and the locals should be explored. Such include:

enabling firm cultural development in the region;

maximising on the local revenues coming from tourism investments, and channelling the same to the benefit of the locals;

developing regionally specific factors of the country’s economy that can be interwoven with the tourism sector; and

conserving specific local landscapes and habitats in bid to make the area attractive and protected by the conservation legislation (Tapper & World Tourism Organization, 2010).

Conclusion

Restatement of Thesis: The manner in which the affairs of the local people have been conducted in the past years should be shunned, and ways that are more effective pursued.

B. Next Steps: Having these factors and issues affecting tourism, the paper has brought to light certain aspects that should be captured in case any government wishes to have long term and successful ventures in the tourism sector.

References

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