Tourism Industry Analysis

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Introduction
The tourism industry has seen tremendous growth in recent decades, becoming one of the most fundamental tools in the promotion of greater overall economic health of many countries today. One of the greatest economic impacts has been the creation of vast employment opportunities for nations at a global scale, including both the developing and developed worlds.
From a much broader perspective, employment within tourism as a whole has been advantageous to many economies and communities at all ends of the spectrum. However, from a gendered perspective it’s evident that what has failed to be recognised by many, are the divisions and inequalities that exist within in it. As with society, individuals are continuously subject to segregation …show more content…

The tourism sector is flexible in nature (WTTC, 2014), allowing for the employment of individuals with varying levels of skill, from the unskilled to the most highly skilled workers. According to the UNWTO 2014 statistics, tourism currently accounts for 9% of the world’s GDP, with one in every eleven people employed in a tourism related job. Employment in the industry can be divided into two sectors – formal and informal (Opperman, 1993, Sharma, 2004) and further be divided into three subcategories: direct, indirect or induced (Rapaport, 1999). Direct employment referring to employment generated from businesses largely dependent on tourism i.e. hotels, travel agencies, airlines and restaurants. Indirect employment refers to jobs created by businesses that are reliant, in part, on tourism such as taxis and aviation mechanics. Induced employment relating to the extra employment which comes from the tourism multiplier effect whereby money “permeates throughout the economy” and locals begin to re-spend money earned (Mathieson & Wall, 1982, Sharma, 2004). As the world becomes more globalised and countries move towards more “labour intensive service industries”, employment in all areas in tourism are said to rise (WTTC, …show more content…

It wasn’t until the 1990’s that gender began featuring in tourism academic writing. Its introduction to tourism literature began with the works of and Kinnaird et al (1994) and Swain (1995), who identified three issues central to understanding gender in tourism. First, they identified that the tourism process comes from “gendered societies” controlled by “gendered relations”, second, that with time these gendered relations “inform and are informed by” by many different parts of society that are involved in the development of tourism i.e. a society’s culture, its economy and its politics. And third, that “power, control and equality issues” in tourism practices are expressed through race, class and gender relations (Kinnaird et al 1994:5, Swain, 1995:249). And thus, as a result of the gender influenced societies we as individuals come from, men and women are seen to play different roles in constructing and consuming tourism (Swain, 1995:249). Sharpley et al (2002) suggest that it is the acknowledgement of these differences that have likely led to the “reinforcement and transformation of gender divisions” amongst employees in the tourism

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