INTRODUCTION:
Tourism is no more an occasional past-time for wealthy and adventurous people.
Nowadays, everyone is participating in the tourism industry, may it be a catering company,
a hotel or an entertainment business. In fact, tourism has an impressive impact on its host
countrys economy. It increases growth rate, national profit, investment and country
celebrity as well, going from short term to long term improvements. However, it has
crucial negative impacts on other sectors, mostly, the environment. Gradually, the
ecosystem has been affected taking with it an increase of pollution and a decrease in
natural resources of the country. Dubai is good example to take in order to analyze the
impacts of tourism on the short and long runs, taking into account its advantages and
disadvantages on the economic and natural environment of the country.
Dubai is a fast growing country which will welcome 15 million tourists by the year 2010
according to Salem bin Dasmal, Chief Executive Officer of Dubai Tourism Development
Company (DTDC). (1) Hence, a huge number of investments have been accomplished in
order to get prepared for the coming visitors. Therefore, the impact it is creating, both
positive and negative, is the topic we will discuss afterward.
Indeed, tourism has many harmful impacts on the environment. It increases pollution in
many ways. We will focus, on the second part of this paper about how does it happen, what
measure the national government have taken and what can be done to decrease those side
effects of tourism.
POSITIVE IMPACTS OF TOURISM:
Dubai makes a considerable promotion of the country to give a positive picture known as
one of the best destination in the world. The economy has been boomed over years thanks
to the development of the tourism sector, by the improvement of infrastructures in the
country. Dubai has betted huge investment on this area: especially roads, airports and now
the construction of metro. Truth is that the number of tourists who came to the Middle East
in 2000 increased by nearly 10 per cent to 20 million. This surge is attributed to the major
economic development and investment in the areas tourism infrastructure underlined
Anne-Birte S. in her article (1). This action will facilitate the flow of tourism coming to
Dubai. As a result, consumption will go up knowing that prices of most products have
increased recently. Therefore, profit will rise ending up with an augmentation of national
profit (GDP).
Secondly, the hotel industry has known an unbelievable expansion during the past years. In
