Unsustainable Tourism Case Study

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Unsustainable tourism Introduction With the development of transportation and the acceleration of globalisation, tourism has become an important means to stimulate economic growth. According to the world tourism organisation (UNWTO), tourism has become the world’s fastest and largest economic sector. Moreover, international tourists have increase dramatically from near 25 million in 1950 to 996 million in 2011(Chang et al., 2014). However this figures have put high stress on not only environment but also on society and economy for the local areas. Impacts Unsustainable tourism would have continuous impacts on society, environment and economy. The unsustainable tourism would create problems of local environment such as the depletion of …show more content…

Expansion of tourism sometimes has overcrowding phenomenon(Damon & Vaughan, 1995), which not only congests the roads, but also degrades the aesthetic of this district. Moreover, Greenwood(1977) notes that tourism could trigger commoditisation, while unsustainable tourism increases its probability. According to MacCannell(1973), commoditisation can eliminate the authenticity of local cultural products and human relations. Actually, tourists can feel the fake and change of aboriginal cultural products. As a result, the tourists may seek for other destinations as substitute of the changed historic places. Moreover, the increasing number of tourists could pull up the demand of services, which could disturb the residents’ normal life. This may cause contradiction between tourists and local people and even lead to social conflict finally. In the long term, these social impacts could affect indigenous further …show more content…

The economy of tourism destinations may be unstable and show obvious fluctuations in prices and seasonal workforce. For example, in Gambia, nearly 30% of citizenry depend on tourism to make a living (OECD, 2009). The development of tourism caused 8% increase in prices in Belize (UNEP, 2006). The dependence on tourism to develop economy is another severe problem, especially for developing countries. For these countries, they may find that tourism is the best way to get immediate profits so that they place too much attention and investment to promote its development. This results in the dependence on tourism to develop economy. Malta is a country with 380,000 residents, but was visited by 1.2 million tourists in 1999; tourism contributes approximately 40% of GDP directly and indirectly (UNEP, 2006). Besides, the environmental and social impacts of unsustainable tourism will cause economic consequences,requiring more cost to compensate the destruction caused by tourism on environment and

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