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Higher Diploma in Hotel Management
HOM 140 H
Fall 2008
Importance of Tourism industry in Destinations around the world.
An introduction to tourism:
The subject of tourism:
In historical terms, tourism activity is a relatively new development and only recently has
it been considered worthy of serious business Endeavour or academic study. However, the
tourism industry is of sufficient economies importance and its impact upon economies,
environments and societies is significant enough for the subject of tourism to deserve
academic consideration. There is no doubt in our minds that tourism is a subject area or
domain of the study, but that at the moment it lacks the level of theoretical underpinning
that would allow it to become a discipline. Tourism as a subject is showing signs of
maturity with a growing academic community, increasing numbers of both journals and
text books which are becoming specialized rather than all-embracing, and a number of
professional societies both internationally and within individual countries.
Tourism destinations:
Because of the simultaneous nature of production and consumption within the tourism
sector there are far more wide-reaching implications for this form of development than
there are with many other development options. The presence of tourist brings with it
environmental and socio-cultural impacts as the economic impacts. Therefore, the choice
to pursue tourism as a development option needs to be made after considering all of the
factors relating to its impact and the resources upon which tourism will draw. The main
driving force that explains the rent less growth of tourism industry over the past century is
the economic benefits associated with it. To understand the economic significant of
tourism it is necessary to look at the structure of the local economy and the level of
dependence that exists upon the income employment and foreign exchange earned form
tourism. In order to understand the economic policy relevance of tourism to a destination it
is necessary to turn attention to the economic impacts of tourism and their associated
multiplier values.
A simple tourism impact scenario illustrates. Lets say a region attracts an additional 100
tourists, each spending $100 per day. Thats $10,000 in new spending per day in the area. If
sustained over a 100 day season, the region would accumulate a million dollars in new
sales. The million dollars in spending would be distributed to lodging, restaurant,
amusement and retail trade sectors in proportion to how the visitor spends the $100.
Perhaps 30% of the million dollars would leak out of the region immediately to cover the
