Tourism is of major economic and social significance Essay -- Personâ€e

Tourism is of major economic and social significance. More than 720 million tourists spend $480 billion annually in places outside their own country (WTO, 2004). This is one of the largest items in the world’s foreign trade. The significance of tourism has been recognized in both developing and developed countries. This can be seen in the establishment of sophisticated and well resourced government departments of tourism , widespread encouragement and sponsorship of tourism developments, and the proliferation of small business and multinational corporations contributing to and deriving benefits from the tourism industry. In 2005, the tourism sector accounted for 3 % to 10% of the GDP of developing countries. The contribution of tourism to economic growth and development is reflected in the form of exports since it represents 40 percent of all xports of services, making it one of the largest categories of international trade (UNWTO, 2006). There is widespread optimism that tou rism might be a powerful and beneficial agent of both economic and social change, some even advocating that it might be a force for world peace. Indeed, tourism has stimulated employment, investment and entrepreneurial activity, modified land use and economic structure, and made a positive contribution to the balance of payments in many countries throughout the world. At the same time, the growth of tourism has prompted perceptive observes to raise many questions concerning the social and environmental desirability of encouraging further expansion. Do the expenditures of tourists benefit the residents of destination areas? Is tourism encouraging prostitution, crime and gambling? Does tourism rejuvenate or erode the traditional arts and crafts of host culture... ...o contain a mixture of both positive and negative strands and affect both hosts and guests (Opperman, Chon 1997; Cooper et al. 1998). As a result, in spite of the fact that some researchers regard socio-cultural change as one of the evils of tourism development, any form of economic development will, by definition, carry with it implications for social structure and cultural aspects of the host population (Cooper et al. 1998) Though originally most of the research tended to look at rural areas in the English speaking world (e.g., Long et al., 1990; Murphy, 1985) and then subsequently with reference to the impact of tourism on the communities and indigenous people (e.g., Ryan & Aicken, 2005), more recent research has looked at tourism impacts in the non-English-speaking world among the cultural representatives of those countries (e.g., Eraqi, 2007).