Leisure Travel is today one of the largest and fastest-growing global tourism markets in the world. In an actual sense, many locations are now keenly involved in developing their tangible and intangible travel chattels. This is mainly to develop comparative advantages in an increasingly competitive tourism marketplace. Additionally, it is meant to generate local uniqueness in the face of globalization. Together, leisure travel and creative industries are increasingly being used in the promotion of destinations and in enhancing their competitiveness and pleasant appearance to enhance tourism (National Geographic).
When it comes to assessing the impact of leisure travel on tourism, there is the need to observe the rising connection that exists between tourism and leisure travel. This is mainly in connection with how they have together become major drivers of the attractiveness and competitiveness of destinations (National Geographic). Recent case studies indicate that the different facets of the relationship between leisure travel, tourism, and the attractiveness of a region can be used in enhancing the region as a tourist destination. The strong connection can also be cultivated to assist places to become more eye-catching to tourists as well as growing their competitiveness as locations for tourists to visit, work, and invest in (National Geographic).
In many ways, the inter-relationship that exists between leisure travel and tourism is more often than not confronted by several stratums of intricacies. This is because the very nature of leisure travel indicates that it is not stationary, rather it is dynamic. It evolves and changes giving it an all-around relationship that it shares with tourism (Robinson-English). Additionally, the composition and practices in tourism are never isolated from the aspects of life. This is because tourism in structural terms involves a set of social practices that are normally interconnected with all the aspects of people’s daily lives. Tourism as an aspect touches on people’s associations with other people, places, and history.
Regarding policy issues, tourism cuts across the fields of planning, education, health, environment, transport, development, and culture (Robinson-English). As a result, the overlaps and the contending priorities have always made it very difficult for policymakers to come up with the right policy frameworks that can effectively divulge information on issues dealing with tourism and leisure travel. Consequently, the issues involved become more and more multifarious as the themes merge and intersect (Robinson-English).
One of the defining principles of tourism lies in the fact that it involves people physically traveling to places that are outside their daily life and as such, they end up familiarizing themselves with other environments (Robinson-English). It is, therefore, the different places that allow people to live out a variety of touristic activities. As a result, in the process of having encounters with and participating in different cultures, the vital elements of tourism are then lived out (Robinson-English).
In its widest sense, leisure travel offers a set of substantial and symbolic resources that are logically abundant in supply. It is based on international tourism that leisure travel has facilitated the growth of tourism (Robinson-English). Additionally, leisure travel has also allowed the involvement of a range of civilizations and sections to be part of the development process. Over and above, tourists do not come across customs as some value-neutral form or process; rather they make sense of leisure travel about social places and times (National Geographic). This is basically about the particular recognized and easy knowledge systems that are accumulated through experience to come up with tourism packages (Robinson-English).
In most cases, leisure travel is a runny and challenging perception to deal with. It is in this regard that it is mostly taken to mean a people’s ways of life. This includes the intangible aspects like values, ideals, societal practices, habits, and customs and the tangible aspects like monuments, buildings, and objects among others. In many ways, these are the things that convey the demonstrations of the values and beliefs of a society. From a touristic perception, leisure travel comes about people and their everyday societal uniqueness, customs, and day-to-day models of activities which differentiate them as special (Robinson-English).
Within the context of tourism, a variety of dimensions are exploited with each part autonomously positioning itself in the mobilization of monetary functions. It is usually of utmost importance to recognize that the tourism sector involves creativity that draws upon the fullest range of expressions of leisure travel (Robinson-English). As a result, leisure travel provides tourism with the products it needs for tourists to explore. Among the dimensions are aspects like cultural heritage, diversity, and creativity.
All in all, tourism in its widest sense mobilizes leisure travel as the central means that it uses to make sense of visible and invisible aspects. Administrators, academics, travel writers, artists, aw well as poets often use tourism as a way of translating and making meaningful the social life of the people they visit or encounter (Robinson-English ). In the same way, mobilization of leisure travel in the field of tourism involves the use of tour operators, tour guides, and tourism planners that package the particular types of artifacts, spaces, stories, and social places into discourses, products, and events that are accessible to tourists (Robinson-English).
Eventually, such translations and packaging, coupled with the right intercultural exchange, result in ‘commodifications’ that transform original configurations and meanings to put them in such a way that outsides and tourists can easily understand. Consequently, leisure travel blends with tourism to bring about abundant cultural destinations that many in the world can experience to tap into.
Works Cited
National Geographic. Smart Traveler: Therapy with a View. National Geographic. 2005.
Robinson-English, Tracey. Travel Getaways with a Cultural Theme. Ebony. 61.3 (2006): 87-92.