Executive Summary
Tourism is a phenomenon which was extensively developed during the 20th century when people became able to afford a vacation once a year. This paper thoroughly examines all the positive and negative consequences of the development of tourism.
First off, it concludes that tourism can improve the economy. Tourism, in the first, place creates jobs, and reduces unemployment. It also generates huge amounts of revenue that the government can collect through taxes.
In addition, all the other branches of the economy can be developed as consequences of a growing tourist industry. Environment and culture can also benefit from this industry because it provides a solid economic reason for preservation of customs and landscapes.
As far as costs of tourism are concerned, it can be said that they are numerous, and that in every domain where it can be useful, tourism can also be devastating if it is not conducted properly.
Therefore, in the economy, it can cause a country to become dependent on the capital generated in the industry. Furthermore, jobs in tourism are often insecure and poorly paid, and the money earned is often taken away from the country in which it is generated.
Costs are also felt in the domain of environment and culture. Huge amounts of waste generated by hotels, restaurants and entertainment complexes destroy the environment. Finally, culture is being viewed as one big show rather than an integral component of the local people’s lifestyle.
In the end, accomplishments and challenges of the newly emerging field of sustainable tourism are discussed. It is concluded that comprehensive theoretical models are lacking in this field, and that it demands long and expensive projects to be carried out before observable changes could take place.
Despite the unsolved issues, it seems that sustainable tourism is the only way to go if we are to prevent the industry from destroying itself.
Introduction
One distinguished scholar in the field of tourism, Allen Beaver, defined tourism in the following terms: “Tourism is the temporary, short-term movement of people to destination outside the places where they normally live and work and their activities during the stay at each destination.
It includes movements for all purposes (Beaver 313). This phenomenon has a long history since rich people have always wanted to see different places and experience different cultures.
Since the industrial revolution, the number of people who are able to afford such a luxury has been increasing constantly to the point where spending a vacation at some tourist center is no longer considered a luxury (Singh 189).
This increase in popularity of tourism has had a huge impact on the world economy, and tourism plays one of the most significant roles in some of the strongest economies in the world.
It is easy to conclude that tourism can have incredibly positive impact on human society; however, significant changes that the 21st century has brought are starting to reveal many problems related to tourism.
It is, therefore, essential to reevaluate the role of tourism in the 21st century, and reshape in the light of the ideas of sustainability.
Benefits of tourism
Economic benefits of tourism
It is widely accepted that countries can benefits tremendously from tourism in economic terms. This is because it is an industry that does not demand huge investments, like for example metallurgy, but can pay off just the same.
In modern market economies, tourism is for the most part run in the private sector, and governments earn large amounts of revenue through taxation.
Furthermore, large tourist complexes employ thousands of people whose existence is dependent upon tourism. Owners, on the other hand, can accumulate large amounts of capital which is then invested in other sectors of the economy.
Taxation of tourism
Even though in politics, it is a constantly debated question as to how much of the income generated through tourism belongs to the government, one thing is certain – the state can earn a lot of revenue from it.
In a recent study by Gooroochurn (2004), it has been confirmed that taxation in tourism is much more effective than taxation in any other domain of the economy.
The author studied the case of Mauritius, an otherwise underdeveloped state, and concluded that in poor countries that have such potentials, it is a good idea to attract investments in tourism, and earn revenue through taxation (Gooroochurn 2004).
Among the countries that earn a huge portion of their revenue from tourism are: Greece, Portugal, Spain, Egypt, Tunisia, etc.
Employment in tourism
Providing goods and services for thousands of tourists every day demands a huge labor force. Ever since the beginning of tourism, people saw the employment potential that it has. According to the national statistical data, 16.5 % of all the labor force or around 700 000 people in Greece are employed in tourism.
Furthermore, many people who do not have large amounts of capital, but live near tourist centers have great opportunities for self-employment. Most of those people run small cafes, trinket or souvenir shops or simply sell local food and drinks to the visitors.
International Labor Organization predicts that in the following decade the number of jobs in tourism is to increase significantly, and claims that it is one sector in which the greatest potential is seen after the crisis (Employment in Tourism Industry).
Secondary economic benefits
Since all parts of the economic structure are interconnected, an economic boom in one of the component parts automatically overflows into all other parts. The income generated by the entrepreneurs is injected into other parts of the economy according to their ideas for further investment since every entrepreneur knows that money has to be invested further.
It has been noticed that one of the most common domains where money earned from tourism is invested is infrastructure. Investors are aware that improving the infrastructure, roads, water and electricity supply, railways, etc. can increase the number of visitors to their tourist complexes.
Furthermore, the government also recognizes the potential in tourism, and is often willing to subsidize the improvement of infrastructure (Karim 2011).
Apart from the infrastructure, other domains of the economy which are often developed as a result of a country’ success in tourism industry are food and drink industry, agriculture, etc.
Noneconomic benefits of tourism
One can argue that in a capitalist society all the positive phenomena can be described in terms of the economy. That might very well be the case; however, all the positive changes that occur in a country as a result of the development of tourism, and which are not directly related to the economy can be discussed under the label non-economic benefits.
Cultural benefits
Since the industrial revolution, together with the development of tourism, there has been an increase in the number of educated people. Their fascination with the historical heritage and cultural diversity of the world made way for the development of the so called cultural tourism.
On the other hand, under the pressure of economic forces, local people are adopting the new ways of life, and because of the lack of time and resources, they are slowly losing their cultural heritage. The fact that there is little to be gained financially from being involved in the traditional customs causes many people to lose interest in them.
For that reason, Weiner (2010) argues that cultural tourism is, in fact, the force that helps to preserve local customs and traditions. The interest of foreigners in local culture, according to Weiner, is what gives the economic value to the culture.
He uses the example of Turkish baths in which he enjoyed while on vacation and concludes that the custom would have been extinct if it had not been for the tourists who were willing to pay to experience it. However, anthropologists argue that this way of preserving culture is deflationary and imperialistic (Menkedick 2010).
Environmental benefits
As in the case of culture, tourism has huge impact on the environment. There are both positive and negative environmental consequences of tourism; however, in this section only the positive ones are discussed.
When a country is industrially underdeveloped, it usually possesses locations with well-preserved environment. In the course of the development of a country, it can be decided that those locations should be used for industrial development, and then polluters like mines and factories are built.
Obviously, this has tremendous environmental consequences. Of course, it can be decided that the location be preserved in the original state which entails opportunity costs, but this seldom happens. Finally, it seems that the best solution is to build tourist complexes, and develop that branch of the economy.
This course of action provides economic motivation for maintaining parks, funding research in resource management, improving environmental education and introducing strong legal framework for environment preservation (Sawkar et al. 8).
Other benefits of tourism
It is certain that benefits of tourism cannot just be reduced to economic, cultural and environmental ones. Surely, there are many other positive phenomena that occur as consequences of the development of tourism. First off, tourism helps in cherishing positive attitudes towards different cultures and customs.
Secondly, it is a very good way of destroying negative attitudes towards foreigners, and rejecting xenophobia, stereotypes and prejudices about others. Thirdly, it affords immense psychological satisfaction which stems from the interaction with others (Ritchie & Goeldner 373-383).
Tourism can also benefit individuals who have some health problems, and various resorts offer extensive treatment programs employing leading experts in therapeutic procedures.
Costs of tourism
Many people are inclined to think that tourism is a socio-economic phenomenon with only positive consequences; however, in reality the global economic system and the nature of tourism as a branch of the economy lead to some difficult economic problems.
Furthermore, huge seasonal changes in the population which are caused by travel and tourism pose serious cultural and social challenges for the local communities.
Finally, despite the fact that tourism can have positive effects on the environment and culture, if conducted improperly, it can have a devastating environmental and cultural impact.
Economic costs of tourism
Seasonal jobs
As we saw, the development of tourism has the potential to create a large number of jobs. However, the downside of this fact is that in most centers, these jobs are seasonal and not very well paid. This has some obvious negative consequences.
First off, many people who work in the industry are dependent upon it for their existence. For that reason they are virtually employed for only 5-6 months per year due to the seasonal nature of their employment. This causes them to face severe financial problems during the period of the year in which they have no employment and income.
Secondly, well-developed tourist destinations are very often located in very poor countries such as Maldives, Jamaica, Dominican Republic etc. In these places, unemployment is incredibly high and the average income is very low.
Consequently, employers are in a position to give very low wages, and avoid hiring employees to work in their complexes on a regular basis. For that reason, the turnover of the labor force is immense, and it is very difficult to protect labor rights in that context.
Economic dependence
The fact that profits in the tourism industry can be so high can cause the entire economy of a country or a region to steer towards that industry. This can be very dangerous for several reasons. It is well-known that tourism is not a firm basis for an economy because it is not a productive industry, and it is located in the domain of services.
This has some very important consequences. First off, in case of a crisis, people usually sacrifice the expenses that they regard as luxuries, and their annual vacation is very often one of the first items on the list. Such events as crises can push a country into a severe depression if it is extremely dependent on tourism.
For example, the recent financial crisis of 2008 significantly damaged the economy of Hawaii, which is extremely dependent on tourism because more than one third of the country’s revenue comes from tourism.
Because of the financial crisis that hit the Western world, the tax revenue of Hawaii was reduced by more than 10 per cent, and the country lost 4.9 billion dollars in foreign spending (Woo).
Furthermore, an economy which is extremely dependent on tourism runs not only the risk of economic crises, but also natural disasters. Many of the world’s most famous tourist centers are located in the areas which have the highest risk of natural disasters like earthquakes, volcanoes, tornados, tsunamis, etc.
Such events can not only destroy tourist seasons, but also devastate the infrastructure and buildings of great importance, thereby deleting the region from the world’s tourist map. One recent example is the earthquake in Haiti.
Just as Haiti was recovering from a long history of social and economic problems by developing tourist centers, an earthquake of 7.0 Mw destroyed most of the hotels and buildings leaving the country in ruins (Curley 8).
Other Economic Issues
The economy consists of such a complex set of relations between humans that one should not be surprised to discover that the effects of one phenomenon can have so many economic consequences, both positive and negative ones.
One additional economic cost of tourism is the fact that the structure of the capital within the industry can be such that very small percentage of the total revenue remains in the country where all the tourist complexes are located.
Globalized economy, such as the one we have at the beginning of the 21st century, allows the rich people and corporations from the Western world to build huge tourist complexes in Kenya or Nigeria, for example.
If that happens, they usually attract Western tourists who are interested in buying Western food such as McDonald’s or clothes, such as Nike. All of that creates a seasonal Western market in Africa.
An unfortunate fact for the local population is that all of those companies, at the end of the season, take their revenue back to the Western countries, and they are left with very little money that they could earn competing with those Western giants (Sunyer 2010).
Environmental costs
It is quite a paradox that while thousands of people visit a location with intact nature and beautiful landscapes, by doing so they are slowly destroying that very same landscape. To make things even worse the more interesting and beautiful the landscape is, the more people it attracts, and the quicker it is destroyed.
From building hotels, restaurants and entertainment centers to the basic elements of infrastructure like heating, water supply and roads, tourism causes significant reshaping of the original landscape, and the environment suffers a lot.
Moreover, supporting thousands of people during the season demands immense amounts of food, fresh water and fuel. All of that creates large quantities of waste. Therefore, it is necessary to carefully plan and construct landfills and sewage systems.
Both of these basic constituents of an urbanized location have to cause some amount of pollution; however, it is essential that this pollution be kept at the minimum.
It has been confirmed that leaving all of these concerns to the market will not do the job because meeting all the necessary requirements costs a lot, and in unregulated circumstances those who are careful to meet them simply cannot remain competitive.
In this way locations which were originally attractive to tourists, within few years, become more polluted than some industrial centers.
Therefore, it is absolutely essential to construct environmentally sound regulations to prevent the self-destruction of tourism in a country (Buckley 401).
Cultural costs
The final danger which comes with the development of tourism is that it can have devastating consequences for the local culture.
By now it is noticeable that economy, environment and culture are the three domains that can benefit the most from the development of tourism, but at the same time it in these three domains that tourism can have the most devastating consequences.
Moreover, it seems that culture is the one domain in which there is no way to establish control and make tourism fully sustainable. This is, for the most part, because of the fact that culture is constantly changing, and it is very difficult to control the direction of that change.
While cultural heritage like, for example, the summer festivals of Scotland is preserved precisely because tourists come from all over the world to experience it, it is absolutely certain that it is not the same in all cases.
From the anthropological point of view, it is questionable whether this way of preserving culture deserves praise at all. Some scholars, like Anthony Smith, would claim that it is not:
“Tourism places the whole of the visited culture on sale, distorting its imagery and symbolism, turning its emotions loose, transforming a way of life into an industry…A culture…is turned from subject to object, from independent to dependent, from audience-in-its-own-right to spectacle” (quoted in Sunyer 2010)
The argument is that culture is not really culture if it is not lived. The anthropologists would claim that this way of viewing the culture robs it of its essence.
For them, the claim that reducing the culture to a mere spectacle helps in preserving it is similar to the claim that we have the culture of the 18th century France alive and existing when we are watching a play about Napoleon.
Sadly, it is difficult to see any way in which sustainable tourism can account for this problem. After all, reducing the local culture to a mere spectacle is an integral part of cultural tourism, and there is nothing that can be done in that aspect, legally or otherwise.
Sustainable tourism
As it has been explained so far, it is very difficult to imagine tourism disappearing as a social category at this point in history. In fact, given all the beneficial aspect that it has, mirrored mostly in economics, very few people would want it to disappear.
Nonetheless, it is obvious that tourism implies some very difficult problems, in particular, its devastating impact on the environment and its imperialistic view of culture.
Scientists and scholars have recognized this as a problem, and have been trying to find a solution for several decades now in the field called sustainable tourism.
Sustainable tourism is based on the assumption that it is possible to have all the beneficial effects of tourism, while at the same time making as little detrimental impact on the local environment and culture.
It is an interdisciplinary approach to constructing policies that will account for all the relevant factors in order to maximize the positive economic aspects, and minimize the negative cultural and environmental ones.
Sustainable tourism should also be viewed as a global movement that tries to educate people on the benefits of what they call Responsible tourism. Responsible tourism is something very similar to a tourist’s ethical codex.
Its principles oblige tourists to be sensitive towards local cultures, and perform their environmental duties while on vacation. Some of these duties are: producing as little waste as possible, recycling, etc.
However, this whole notion of responsible tourism implies that the visitors are informed about the harms they can potentially make, and the ways in which they can prevent those harm from taking place. Moreover, sustainable tourism is not a strictly defined set of strategies applicable to all contexts.
It demands an analysis of all the relevant factors, and constant awareness of one’s actions from every visitor. As we can see sustainable tourism is a long term mission, which demands a lot of state intervention, education and responsibility. The real question at this point is whether there is time for such a long project.
Some of the results of this global effort are quite obvious. For example, there are more and more customers coming to tourist agencies, and asking for locations that promote sustainable tourism.
On the other hand, what is very disappointing is that there is very little consensus among the experts as to which indicators should be used in order to evaluate whether a resort is practicing sustainable tourism.
Moreover, some of the experts are not even sure where to draw the line between sustainable and unsustainable tourism (Miller 10).
Conclusion
In conclusion, tourism is a widespread and very popular social phenomenon, and people enjoy it for multiple reasons such as: health, education, sport, recreation, religion, or even pure hedonism.
Furthermore, there is a strong economic motivation for the existence of tourism: jobs are created, states and entrepreneurs collect huge amounts of revenue and infrastructure is developed.
Preservation of environment and culture also gets its economic basis in tourism. However, tourism causes some very deep social, cultural and economic issues. History has taught us that many countries, after a certain period, tend to become economically dependent on it, which has its consequences in very deep recessions, seasonal unemployment, etc.
Environment and culture also suffer because of the unplanned and irresponsible practice of tourism. Huge amounts of waste are being generated and culture is being viewed as one big show.
Such practices have been referred to as unsustainable tourism because after a certain period such locations lose their attractiveness to visitors because the hotels are no longer solvent or environment and culture are no longer authentic and intact.
Therefore, the only solution is the introduction of sustainable tourism which is a field in which many experts are trying to define ways to make tourism viable for future generations. It is certain that there are many reasons which make tourism worth struggling for.
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