If the tourist statistics on numbers of tourists are inexact, those on their expenditures are even more so. Some of the figures are relatively accurate, such as the amount of money spent on long-distance travel, hotel accommodations, and catering services within the hotels. Other statistics, however, present problems in analysis. How large a proportion of the sales of stores in or near resort areas can be attributed to tourist spending? Or how much do tourists spend on local transportation or entertainment? Even though it is difficult to arrive at exact figures for these expenditures, it should be noted that tourism benefits not only airlines, hotels, restaurants, and taxi drivers, among others, but also many commercial establishments and even the manufacturers of such varied items as sun-glasses, cameras, film, and sports clothing.
One of the principal reasons for encouraging a tourist industry in many developing countries is the so-called multiplier effect of the tourist dollar. Money paid for wages or in other ways is spent not once but sometimes several times for other items in the economy--the food that hotel employees eat at home, for example, or the houses in which they live, or the 'durable goods that they buy. In some countries the multiplier can be a factor as high as 3, but it is often a lower number because of leakage. Leakage comes from the money that goes out of the economy either in the form of imports that are necessary to sustain the tourist industry or in profits that are drained off by investors. In some tourist areas, it has been necessary to import workers. The U.S. Virgin Islands is one example. However, many of these workers cause leakages in the form of remittances to their home countries.
However, tourism results not only in sociocultural benefits but also in problems. Imagine the feelings of an employee in a developing country who earns perhaps $ 5 per day when he or she sees wealthy tourist flaunting money, jewelry, and a lifestyle not obtainable. Another example might be nude or scanty-clad female tourists sunbathing in a Moslem country. Critics argue that, at best, tourism dilutes the culture of a country by imposing the mass tourism market. Most resorts offer little opportunity for meaningful social interaction between the tourist and the host community. As a rule, only the lower positions are filled by the local people in the luxury hotels built by foreign developers.
On the other hand, proponents of the sociocultural benefits of tourism are able to point out that tourism is a clean and green industry, that most of hotels are built with concern for the environment and use local crafts people, designers, and materials. Tourism brings new revenue to the area; it also creates and maintains higher rate of employment than if there were no tourism. It may act as a catalyst for the development of the community because this revenue helps to provide schools, hospitals, and so on.
Another attraction of the tourist industry for the developing countries is that it is labor-intensive; that is, it requires a large number of workers in proportion to the people who are served. This is a common feature of service industries, which deal with intangible products--like a holiday--rather than tangible products-like an electric toaster.
The tourist industry is not a single entity. It consists of many different kinds of enterprises that offer different services to the traveler.
1.2 Tourism and transportation in the world
Being in a different place from one's usual residence is an essential feature of tourism. This means that transportation companies are one vital aspect in the total tourist industry, regardless of what other business (such as carrying freight) they may undertake. Without the modern high-speed forms of transportation that are available to large numbers of people, tourism would be possible only for a tiny fraction of the population.
During the 19th Century, railroads spread across Europe, North America, and many other parts of the world. They formed the first successful system of mass transportation, carrying crowds of people to such English seaside resorts as Brighton, Margate, and Blackpool. The tourists on Thomas Cook's first organized tour in 1841 traveled by railroad.
Steamships were developed at about the same time as railroads, but during the first half of the 19th Century, they were used for the most part on inland waterways. In the second half of the century, steamships that could cover longer distances were developed. By 1900, they were carrying passengers and freight on all, the oceans of the world. Historically, the North Atlantic route between Western Europe and North America has been the most important. In the period between the two world wars, steamships made scheduled crossings between New York and either Southampton or Cherbourg in only five days.
Unfortunately for those people who prefer leisurely travel, both railroads and steamships have lost much of their business in the past twenty years. The automobile has replaced the railroad for most local travel, especially in the United States, where the only remaining route that,offers adequate passenger service is between New York anc1 Washington. Passenger train service is better in Europe than in the United States, but it has been cut sharply on many routes. The New Tokaido Line between Tokyo and Osaka in Japan is one of the few successful passenger services to be operated in recent times.
The automobile offers convenience. The traveler can depart from his own home and arrive at his destination without transferring baggage or having to cope with any of the other difficulties that would ordinarily confront him. The apparent costs of a trip by automobile are also lower, especially for family groups, although the actual costs, including such hidden items as depreciation (a lowering or falling in value), may be greater than realized. A very large percentage of domestic tourism now takes advantage of the automobile for transportation. In Europe, where the distance from one national boundary to another may be very short, automobiles are also used extensively for international journeys.
For long-distance travel, the airplane has replaced the railroad and the ship as the principal carrier. The airplane has become so commonplace that we often fail to realize what a recent development in transportation it really is. The first transatlantic passenger flights were made only a few years before World War II began in 1939. Frequent service came into being only after the war, and it was not until jets were introduced in the 1950's that passenger capacity began to expand to its present dimensions.
The railroads have suffered on short-distance routes as well as on long-distance routes. Motor buses, or coaches as they are called in England, have replaced railroad passenger service on many local routes. Most small towns in the United States are served only by bus.
Regularly scheduled steamship passenger service has disappeared from almost all transoceanic routes. Ships still play an important part in tourism, however, for the purpose of cruising. A cruise is a voyage by ship that is made for pleasure rather than to arrive quickly at a fixed destination. The cruise ship acts as the hotel for the passengers as well as their means of transportation. When the tourists reach a port, they are usually conducted on one-day excursions, but return to the ship to eat and to sleep. A majority of cruise ships operate in the "warm seas," the Caribbean and the Mediterranean. Wider-ranging cruises-- around-the-world, for example, or even into Antarctic waters off the tip of South America--have been offered for the more adventurous. Many of the liners that once sailed on transatlantic or transpacific routes have been converted for cruising, but they are often unable to operate economically on cruise routes. Smaller and lighter ships that are especially designed for cruising have been built in recent years. Ships play another part in modern tourism as car ferries. Particularly in Europe, the tourist who wants to have his car with him on a trip can take advantage of car ferries across the English Channel or the Strait of Gibraltar. Car ferries even ply across large bodies of water such as the North Sea between England or Scotland and Scandinavia. The city of Dover on the English Channel now handles the largest volume of passenger traffic of any port in the United Kingdom primarily because of car ferry services.
Another travel phenomenon of recent times that has grown up as a result of the prevalence of the automobile is the car rental agency. If you don't want to take your own car with you, you can rent one for local travel at just about any tourist terminus in the world today. Many of the agencies--such as Hertz and Avis--that began in the United States now operate on a worldwide basis.
Because the airlines are now so prominent in the tourist industry, it is important to remember that there are in fact two kinds of airline operations, scheduled and nonscheduled. A scheduled airline operates on fixed routes at fixed times according to a timetable that is available to the public. A nonscheduled airline operates on routes and at times when there is a demand for the service. The nonscheduled airline is, in other words, a charter operation that rents its aircraft. The competition between the two has been so intense in the last few years that the media has called it the "Battle of the North Atlantic."
The scheduled airlines aim their services primarily at business travelers, at people visiting friends and relatives, and at others who travel alone or in small groups. A scheduled airline flight is usually filled with strangers going to the same destination. Until very recently, a scheduled flight on some routes needed a load factor of only a little over 50 percent at regular fares to assure a profit. The load (actor is the percentage of seats that have been sold on a (light.
As seating capacity increased with the introduction of newer, larger, and faster planes, the airlines were able to offer a percentage of their seats for sale through travel agents or tour operators. By means of these special fares, they were able to increase their business substantially on such major tourist routes as the North Atlantic, the northeastern United States to the Caribbean, and northern Europe to the Mediterranean. The greatest growth in tourism began with the introduction of these ITX fares, as they are called, in the 1950's and 1960's.
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