Advantages And Disadvantages Of Touristm
Tourism is the world’s biggest industry in the 20th century and has taken place for a very long time, it recognized as an important economic and social phenomenon. We are certainly believes that modern tourism can bring more advantages than disadvantages to popular tourist areas in terms of the culture, economic, environmental and society. In the following, we will focus to discuss the benefits and drawbacks of modern tourism in several areas which are mentioned before.
In terms of society, high amount of tourist arrival can lead to create more occupation opportunity to the citizen in that city or country, consequence that can reduce the unemployment rate of that country. According to research of UNWTO Tourism Highlight, The report mentions that “the international tourist arrival of the world has 2.9% rises on the average annual growth” (UNWTO, 2010). It can be positively estimated that increase of tourism can increase the demand in service and tourist industry such as travel agencies, hotels, restaurants, bars, theme parks and sightseeing attractions. Thus, it cause the companies create more job positions to provide service to the tourist. Secondly, Tourism is the largest single industry in the world and it regarded as an exciting global business nowadays. According to the special designated topic of tourism on ‘Independent Educational Magazine’, it mentions that “In the UK alone, 2.1 million people work in jobs supported by visitor spending. Both home and abroad, careers in the tourism industry attract a wide range of people with all sorts of interests and ambitions.” (Tourism: The world’s biggest single industry, 21 September 2006) In brief, it can be said that the tourism industry can effectively to create more job opportunity as well as reduce the unemployment rate to that country.
However, the modern tourism will bring several negative effects in our society. A vigorous of modern tourism causes concentration of tourism employment which is means the employees are lopsided in one of the tourist industry on that country. According to the Travel Daily News, “Dublin has the highest concentration of tourism employment, with one-third of the total, followed by the BMW region with 25% and the south-west which has 15%. In 2004, Faille Ireland trained just under 10,000 people for careers in hospitality and tourism”. (Theodore, 2005) In Dublin and other popular tourism of country, they will be facing a serious problem, because there have concentrated employment in one or few specific industry (e.g. hotels, bars, theme parks, transportation company). Consequently, the industry of the country will be focused on one-sided to the tourism and will put less effort to develop other area of industry, for example, the expense on education, citizen welfare or medical expense on general public. Furthermore, if the tourism becomes more saturated, the poor employment opportunities would be offered to the workers such as the job is often seasonal, exploited and low-paying. Secondly, the modern tourism may affect the security problem in popular tourist areas, consequence that country will become more serious and hazards to visit and stay, for instance during the World Cup 2010 event, the robbery and car hijackings are frequently occur in South Africa. From the travel news “World Cup 2010: crime threat to visitors is exaggerated”, it mentioned that “Much has been said in the build-up to the World Cup about South Africa’s crime problem and the threats to visiting supporters. The crime is a serious problem in South Africa, the country’s murder rate is 37.3 per 100,000 in 2009-10, and it is extremely high when compared to the global homicide rate of 7.6 per 100,000.” (Burger, 2010). It can be say that the rise of crime rate can be caused by tourism. Base on the not fully developed law system e.g. Africa, many lawbreakers will decide street robbery or muggings to the tourist when in high arrival rate of tourist during hosting the world event. In China, Pickpocketing, which is different to robbery, is more common in touristy areas especially in the crowed area (train stations, shopping hotspots, sightseeing attractions), because the criminals can easier to leave and Pickpocketing is easier happening on the foreign tourists. Thus, the crime activities can be increased by the modern tourism. Thirdly, the population problem will occur on some of countries or cities which are not big enough. Because of mass of the tourist arrival to the small city, the city becomes more crowded. For example, Hong Kong is a small city in China. Though, there have a mass of tourist travel in the city. There were 16.9 million of international tourist arrivals in Hong Kong in 2009 (UNWTO, 2010), In fact, many people and cars in the street and the place is very crowded no matter in the tourist spots, shopping Centre, restaurants and the hotels are always fully reserved by the tour agency. In short, the tourism will cause population problem to some small country or city that may certainly cause the citizen feel worse.
As regards the Economy of the country, the modern tourism will bring a high economic income to that country. In the UNWTO Tourism Highlights, Edition 2010 which mentioned the data of tourism receipts, it said “the international tourism receipts reached US$ 852 billion (611 billion euros) in year 2009” (UNWTO, 2010) which shows the country can get a high income from the tourist expense and therefore boost the economics of that area. Because the visitors expense their money on shopping, transportation, accommodation and dinning by spend theirs holiday in the unusual place. Moreover, the income comes from the tourism can be used on the national society. For example, it can used to improve the education system, infrastructure, welfare and promote its country. Eventually, the industry of economy of that country can be improved by the expenses of the modern tourism. Secondly, the modern tourism can provide more business opportunity and support to the small local company such as boat operating company, the souvenir shop. In Thailand, most of the local boat operating company provides some boat tour service to transport tourist to different islands for holiday to sightseeing and sea activities. Also, most of fishing boat will converse to the tour boat in the seasonal travel period, the fishing boat use to transport the tourist to gain additional income from tourism other than fishing. As a result, the local company and the fish boat operator can received more income from the tourism to support their own business.
On the other hand, the modern tourism can easily affected by the unstable economic market. For example, in the Late-2000s financial crisis in 2008 to 2009, the worlds’ tourist industries were facing a serious problem, because most of peoples were turn down their travel plan and cancel theirs trip even they reserved a tour. Due to the depressed economic environment, most of the employee was dismissed by the company and the hotels, bars, shops were forced to close, as well as the industry in current country were attacked deeply. Eventually, the modern tourism will be destructed by the seasonal and unstable economic market.
With regard to the Environment, the environmental sense of the general public can be improved by having environmental travel, because of environmental travel promotes environmental awareness to the traveler. In terms of Ecotourism, it means the tourists travel in the unpopular tourist spot, natural, and usually protected areas for example Amazon, New Zealand, South Africa (A. Martin, Lindsay D., 2011). Its purpose is to educate the tourist to protect our surrounding such as forest, river and the sea. On the other hand, the tourism activities of tourist will damage the environment and pollute the area. According to report of ‘Air Pollution from Ground Transportation’ from United Nations (2002 edition), it said “Transportation involves the combustion of fossil fuels to produce energy translated into motion. Pollution is created from incomplete carbon reactions, unburned hydrocarbons or other elements present in the fuel or air during combustion” (Gorham, 2002) Therefore, the transportation (airplane, tourist coach, etc.) causes air pollution which releases the green house gases, various gaseous and liquid vapor such as carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, dust particles and soot to our atmosphere during transporting to the destination place, seriously those product of combustion is responsible for the greenhouse effect. Moreover, the behavior of the tourist is needed to concern when they are traveling. Some low civism sense of the tourist may damage the historical relic and public property in the tourist spot. Consequence, the valuable historical relics are injured and cannot to repair at all.
In terms of Culture, tourism activities can speed up the spread of dangerous diseases from one country to another country by the modern transportation systems such as airplane, train, coach. According to the Globalization 101 of Health and Globalization report, it stated that “Between 2007 and 2008 there was a 1.8 percent increase in international travel. In the same way that ancient caravans and seagoing vessels carried illnesses from city to city, modern transportation systems do the same thing, only at a vastly greater speed.” (Globalization101, 2010) Also, it mentioned increase of international travel have played a major role on spread of HIV and AIDS. Some scientist found that the HIV virus was originated in West Africa. However, unfortunately, it spreads out to other region. The main reason is global travel can cause increased dispersion of contagions and also disease can spread by traveling to different place. For example, the passengers take a long distance flight on airplane, recirculate air may cause a significant threat to passengers for contracting diseases such as tuberculosis, which is common lung disease and it is extremely contagious in air. Therefore, the other passengers may have high chance to get sick after taking a long flight, if one of the passengers is carrying virus to take flight.
After we were focus to discuss the benefits and drawbacks in four dimension area (our society, economy, environment, and culture). It can be conclude that there are more advantages than disadvantage to popular tourist country or in specific area. The modern tourism can bring our government or industries receive more income and financial support. Also, more opportunity will be created by company to cope with a large amount of tourist arrival, and provide more job opportunity to the worker and small company. However, there still have many problem instigated by the modern tourism activities, we strongly believe that the government can completely solve these problems by setting up corresponding policy.
