Introduction
International tourism can now be recognised as one of the biggest contributing sectors for many countries’ GDP. Moreover, it has transformed them in many aspects such as economic, socio-culture, and environment. International tourism involves activity of inbound and outbound tourist of a country and resident or non-resident visitors within the country (World Tourism Organisation 2014). The World Tourism Organisation has predicted the growth of tourism activities to increase by an average 3.3% up to the year 2030.
Nowadays, people’s awareness on environmental sustainability is growing. Technology and regulations are developed in order to promote this issue and prevent further exploitation that could cause damages. This essay discusses the impact that international tourism has on the environment and its impact in the next 10 years. The subjects in this discussion will be climate change and natural resource depletion as an impact from rapidly growing tourism industry.
Environmental Change
Environmental change can be defined as changes in the physical and biogeochemical environment, either caused naturally or influenced by human activities (GECAFS 2008). Many impacts in the environmental change come from one of the biggest growing industry in the world, which is International tourism. However, the relation between environmental change and the growth of international tourism is twofold. Cooper and Hall (2013) stated that it is almost inevitable that the growth of global tourism have great cost to the environment. Similarly, Mitchell (2013) also mentioned that international tourism is growing globally relatively in a faster rate than the environment can be renewed in most destinations. This occurrence could happen due...
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...pillover Effects.
Steer, A. (2013). Resource Depletion, Climate Change and Economic Growth. Global Citizen Foundation project “Towards a Better Global Economy.
Sustainable Tourism Cooperative Research Centre, (2008). The Carbon Footprints of Australian Tourism. Gold Coast.
United Nation, (2007). Climate Change and Tourism: Responding to Global Challenges, Advanced Summary. Available at: http://esa.un.org/marrakechprocess/pdf/davos_rep_advan_summ_26_09.pdf
World Resources Institute, (2013). World Resources Report 2013-14: Creating a Sustainable Food Future.
World Tourism Organization, (2014). Annual Report 2013. Madrid: UNWTO.
WTTC, (2014). Climate change - a danger to or saviour of tourism's future? | Global News | WTTC. [online] Available at: http://news.wttc.org/policies/climate-change-a-danger-to-or-saviour-of-tourisms-future/801707793 [Accessed 23 Apr. 2014].
Tourism impacts can be generally classified into seven categories with each having both positive and negative impacts. These impacts include; economic, environmental, social and cultural, crowding and congestion, taxes, and community attitude. It is essential for a balance on array of impacts that may either positively or negatively affect the resident communities. Different groups are concerned about different tourism impacts that affect them in one way or another. Tourism’s benefits can be increased by use of specific plans and actions. These can also lead to decrease in the gravity of negative impacts. Communities will not experience every impact but instead this will depend on particular natural resources, development, or spatial patterns (Glen 1999).
Strengths: This entry of the book is pretty up to date as it is published in 2017. That supports its reliability as well as its credibility. Moreover, it outlines that climate change and tourism are linked to each other and also affect each other.
In conclusion the impact of climate change due to global warming on tourism appears extensive. Tourism being one of the major activities of the national and international economy, countries should ensure that they put in place measures to stop global warming so that they can attract tourists internationally without fear.
The Threat of Winter and Summer Holidays to the Environment One of the most essential things for tourism to be successful in a particular place is the quality of the environment, both natural and man-made. But when do the people have enough time to see these sites, but on summer and winter holidays. However tourism involves many activities that have a negative effect on the environment. These occur when the level of usage is bigger than the amount of caring for the environment.
Tourism is often associated with traveling to places away from home. Tourism has a big impact on the economic growth of some countries, which define the shape of their cities by producing different sectors like historic districts, convention centers, museums, malls, hotels, restaurants, and the list can be endless. Furthermore, tourism elements have been developed by cities for a variety of reasons including: situating themselves in the world by drawing a positive image and attracting visitors and for their money.
Hospitality industries are playing a very important role in the development of environmental programs and green concepts. They are contributing to the promotion of various innovative products such solar panel and organic foods, although the classic environmental issues goes beyond the violation of preservation and destruction of the natural resources, ethical principles and the proper management of the environment. Human activities and industrial revolution which is also being practiced in hospitality industries such as waste disposal, toxic chemicals and other activities produces invasive damage to the environment. They can’t help but also to contribute to produce one of the worst problems of the world which is the climate change phenomena
The impact global mobility has had on tourism is ever increasing; the growth of tourism presents many difficulties to a country's environment. As the development of tourism become more extensive, negative changes in the environment began to show (Husband & Harrison, 1996), the capability to absorb large numbers of people are constantly being challenged (WTO, 1990) and environmental problems tend to rise. In relation to the case study, over the past two decades tourist arrivals onto the island of Mauritius have increased at an approximate annual rate of 9 % with an equivalent increase of approximately 21% in tourism proceeds. The tourist arrivals are constantly increasing, thus rising from 103,000 in 1977 to a significant 656,450 in 2001, this shows more than a 600% increase (WTO, 1990). These figures are substantial and could be the reason to why recently due to the development in global mobility; Mauritius has been facing some considerable negative environmental impacts from the tourist industry.
In recent years, tourism marketing has gone through strategic changes with the improvement in new technologies, the chase of a relationship between customers and suppliers as well as the importance of sustainability issues in marketing. Marketing Tourism reconsiders the needs of the tourists but does not overlook on the long term economic, environmental, social and cultural interests of the local population. So, it means that marketing consider both the tourist demand and effect to society as
New Zealand tourism is largely reliant on 'Eco-tourism' so to maintain the tourism industry it is imperative that our environment is conserved. However tourism itself can have negative effects on the environment. The tourism sector must act responsibly in its use of the environment and any use must be sustainable.
Industrialization and modernization are two necessary steps for a country to develop. While industry has grown up, the harmful effects of the industry on environment and society have also been increasing at the same time. Tourism in Vietnam is a typical example. According to Joan C. Henderson, Vietnam’s economy has improved after the reform of “Doi Moi” promulgated by the Communist Party at the Sixth Party Congress in 1986 (271). Since this event happened, Vietnam has encouraged the international tourists. The number of visitor arrivals in 1986 was 54,353 and rapidly increasing. In the early 1990s, foreign arrivals were raised by 40 - 50% on average per year (Nguyen and Le, 1997). Recently, on the first ten months of 2014, the total foreign arrivals reached 6,608,391 that rise eight percent higher than the same phase last year (“International”, 2014). However, the development of tourism in the beaches, especially in Vung Tau city, Vietnam causes water pollution, which affects the health of people who live near the beach.
The uncontrolled tourism increase is threatening many natural areas around the world.with the uncontrollable levels of tourism this can put great deal of pressure on an area, andthis could end up leading to negative environmental impacts on the air and the water quality, thevegetation,the soil.the wild life and the possible job opportunities.
Tourism is the one of economic and social activities that increasingly vital. Number of travellers domestic and international is increasing. In fact, several countries in present world develop tourism sectors as primary sector which generate national income. According to Salah Wahab and Cooper (2003). Tourism is also sector which involves role that mutually link between government, private sector and also public.
In the more economically developed countries (MEDCs), synonymous mainly with the industrialised countries of the northern hemisphere there, has been an explosion in the growth of leisure and tourism industry, which is now believed to be the worlds second largest industry in terms of money generated. In order to differentiate between leisure and tourism it should be recognised that leisure often involves activities enjoyed during an individual’s free time, whereas tourism commonly refers to organised touring undertaken on a commercial basis. Development in the two areas could be attributed to changing patterns in working lives within the last four decades. Generally, people now have more disposable wealth, work shorter hours, receive longer, paid annual leave, retire earlier and have greater personal mobility. In addition, according to Marshall & Wood (1995), the growth of the tourist industry per se can be associated, in part, with the concentration of capital; the emergence of diversified leisure based companies, sometimes within wider corporate conglomerates and often associated with particular airlines. Furthermore, the development of tourism can generate employment both directly, in jobs created in the hotels, restaurants etc, and indirectly, through expenditure on goods and services in the local area. Nevertheless, although the tourist industry is competitive, which essentially keeps down the cost of foreign travel, the success of tourism in any one area can be ‘influenced by weather, changing consumer tastes, demographics, economic cycles, government policy, not to mention international terrorism and other forms of conflict.’(1) Although such factors may have a detrimental affect on the economy of a popular tourist destination (or even tourism in general, in light of September 11th 2001), the consequence of tourism in general is often three fold: environmental, social and cultural, which in turn has prompted a search for new ‘friendly’ approaches that are less destructive.
In the world, climate change is becoming more apparent that it is causing flooding, landslides and extreme temperatures. It is affecting the wildlife, human and the nature. Because of the change in climatic condition, in different nations, summer periods could be extended or winter may be longer than usual. Dr. Viner David and Agnew Maureen (11-14 January,2000,) comment that the impacts of climate change on tourism are likely to manifest themselves in a number of different ways according to local conditions. The most serious impacts will result from the effects of sea level rise on small island states and low lying coastal resorts.
At the present time, one of the inseparable parts of the economic growth is considered as tourism industry. Commonly, tourism is the movement of people to other places for business or leisure purposes as well as covers their activities. Holloway and Humphreys defines that the places where tourists come and spend their money are called as “tourist destinations” in other words “receiving areas”. Many countries have been improving tourism to overcome economic difficulties since it is growing fast. The industry activities have been demonstrated a general positive trend in the economy and it has already become the inherent part of economic development. In host countries, tourism has led to such positive consequences as the improved infrastructure,