Welcome to the I Can't Sleep Podcast,
Where I help you drift off one fact at a time.
I'm your host,
Benjamin Boster,
And today's episode is about tourism.
Thank you,
Heather Lamora,
For sponsoring today's episode.
If you'd like to cut the line of requests and sponsor an episode,
You can visit www.
Icantsleeppodcast.
Com and click on the Request a Topic button.
Tourism is travel for pleasure and the commercial activity of providing and supporting such travel.
UN tourism defines tourism more generally,
In terms which go beyond the common perception of tourism,
As being limited to holiday activity only,
As people traveling to and staying in places outside their usual environment for not more than one consecutive year for leisure and not less than 24 hours,
Business and other purposes.
Tourism can be domestic within the traveler's own country or international.
International tourism has both incoming and outgoing implications on a country's balance of payments.
The English-language word tourist was used in 1772 and tourism in 1811.
These words derive from the word tour,
Which comes from Old English tourian,
From Old French tourne,
From Latin tornare,
To turn on a lathe.
Which is itself from Ancient Greek tornos,
Lathe.
In 1936,
The League of Nations defined a foreign tourist as someone traveling abroad for at least 24 hours.
Its successor,
The United Nations,
Amended this definition in 1945 by including a maximum stay of six months.
In 1941,
Hunzinger and Kraft defined tourism as the sum of the phenomena and relationships arising from the travel and stay of non-residents,
Insofar as they do not lead to permanent residence and are not connected with any earning activity.
In 1976,
The Tourism Society of England's definition was tourism is the temporary short-term movement of people to destinations outside the place where they normally live and work and their activities during the stay at each destination.
It includes movements for all purposes.
In 1981,
The International Association of Scientific Experts in Tourism defined tourism in terms of particular activities chosen and undertaken outside the home.
In 1994,
The United Nations identified three forms of tourism in its Recommendations on Tourism Statistics.
Domestic tourism involving residents of the given country traveling only within this country.
Inbound tourism involving non-residents traveling into the given country.
Outbound tourism involving residents traveling to another country.
Other groupings derived from the above grouping.
National tourism,
A combination of domestic and outbound tourism.
Regional tourism,
A combination of domestic and inbound tourism.
International tourism,
A combination of inbound and outbound tourism.
Tourism has reached new dimensions with the emerging industry of space tourism as well as the trans-oceanic cruise ship industry.
The terms tourism and travel are sometimes used interchangeably.
In this context,
Travel has a similar definition to tourism but implies a more purposeful journey.
The terms tourism and tourists are sometimes used pejoratively to imply a shallow interest in the cultures or locations visited.
By contrast,
Traveler is often used as a sign of distinction.
The sociology of tourism has studied the cultural values underpinning these distinctions and their implications for class relations.
There are many varieties of tourism.
Of those types,
There are multiple forms of outdoor-oriented tourism.
Outdoor tourism is generally categorized into nature,
Eco and adventure tourism,
NEAT or NEAT.
These categories share many similarities but also possess definite and unique characteristics.
Nature tourism generally encompasses tourism activities that would take place outside.
Nature tourism appeals to a large audience of tourists and many may not know they are participating in this form of tourism.
This type of tourism has a low barrier to entry and is accessible to a large population.
Ecotourism focuses on education,
Maintaining a social responsibility for the community and their environment,
As well as centering economic growth around the local economy.
Weaver describes ecotourism as sustainable nature-based tourism.
Ecotourism is more specific than nature tourism and works toward accomplishing a specific goal through the outdoors.
Finally,
We have adventure tourism.
Adventure tourism is the most extreme of the categories and includes participation in activities and sports that require a level of skill or experience,
Risk and physical exertion.
Adventure tourism often appeals less to the general public than nature and ecotourism and tends to draw in individuals who partake in such activities with limited marketing.
It is important to understand that these definitions may vary.
Perceived risk in adventure tourism is subjective and may change for each individual.
Examples of these tourism types include nature tourism,
Hiking,
Walking,
Camping.
Ecotourism.
Guided tours focusing on education,
Summer camps,
Outdoor classes.
Adventure tourism.
Whitewater rafting,
Ice climbing,
Mountaineering.
According to the World Tourism Organization,
A tourism product is a combination of tangible and intangible elements such as natural,
Cultural and man-made resources,
Attractions,
Facilities,
Servings and activities around a specific center of interest,
Which represents the core of the destination marketing mix and creates an overall visitor experience.
Including emotional aspects for the potential customers.
A tourism product is priced and sold through distribution channels and it has a life cycle.
International tourism is tourism that crosses national borders.
Globalization has made tourism a popular global leisure activity.
The World Tourism Organization defines tourists as people traveling to and staying in places outside their usual environment for not more than one consecutive year for leisure,
Business and other purposes.
The World Health Organization estimates that up to 500,
000 people are in flight at any one time.
In 2010,
International tourism reached $919 billion,
Growing 6.
5% over 2009,
Corresponding to an increase in real terms of 4.
7%.
In 2010,
There were over 940 million international tourist arrivals worldwide.
By 2016,
That number had risen to 1,
235 million,
Producing $1.
22 trillion in destination spending.
Tourism typically requires the tourist to feel engaged in a genuine experience of the location they are visiting.
According to Dean McCannell,
Tourism requires that the tourist can view the toured area as both authentic and different from their own lived experience.
By viewing the exotic,
Tourists learn what they themselves are not,
That is,
They are unexotic or normal.
According to McCannell,
All modern tourism experiences the authentic and exotic as developmentally inferior to the modern,
That is,
To the lived experience of the tourist.
Travel outside a person's local area for leisure was largely confined to wealthy classes.
Who at times traveled to distant parts of the world to see great buildings and works of art,
Learn new languages,
Experience new cultures,
Enjoy pristine nature,
And to taste different cuisines.
As early as Shulgi,
However,
Kings praised themselves for protecting roads and building way stations for travelers.
Traveling for pleasure can be seen in Egypt as early on as 1500 BC.
Ancient Roman tourists during the Republic would visit spas and coastal resorts,
Such as Bayi.
The Roman upper class used to spend their free time on land or at sea and traveled to their Villa Urbana or Villa Maritima.
Numerous villas were located in Campania,
Around Rome,
And in the northern part of the Adriatic,
As in Barcola near Trieste.
Pausanias wrote his description of Greece in the 2nd century AD.
In ancient China,
Nobles sometimes made a point of visiting Mount Tai,
And on occasion,
All five sacred mountains.
By the post-classical era,
Many religions,
Including Christianity,
Buddhism,
And Islam,
Had developed traditions of pilgrimage.
The Canterbury Tales,
Circa 1390s,
Which uses a pilgrimage as a framing device,
Remains a classic of English literature,
And Journey to the West,
Circa 1592,
Which holds a seminal place in Chinese literature as a Buddhist pilgrimage at the center of its narrative.
In medieval Italy,
Petrarch wrote an allegorical account of his 1336 ascent of Mont Ventoux that praised the act of traveling and criticized frigida incuriositas,
A cold lack of curiosity.
This account is regarded as one of the first known instances of travel being undertaken for its own sake.
The Burgundian poet Michel Théauvent later composed his own horrified recollections of a 1430 trip through the Jura Mountains.
In China,
Travel record literature became popular during the Song Dynasty.
Travel writers such as Fang Chengda,
1126-1193,
And Xu Xiaka,
1587-1641,
Incorporated a wealth of geographical and topographical information into their writing,
While the Day Trip Essay,
Record of Stonebell Mountain by the noted poet and statesman Xu Xi,
1037-1101,
Presented a philosophical and moral argument as its central purpose.
Modern tourism can be traced to what was known as the Grand Tour,
Which was a traditional trip around Europe,
Especially Germany and Italy,
Undertaken by mainly upper-class European young men of means,
Mainly from western and northern European countries.
In 1624,
The young Prince of Poland,
Władysław Sigismund Wasa,
The eldest son of Sigismund III,
Embarked on a journey across Europe,
As was in custom among Polish nobility.
He travelled through territories of today's Germany,
Belgium,
The Netherlands,
Where he admired the siege of Breda by Spanish forces,
France,
Switzerland to Italy,
Austria,
And the Czech Republic.
It was an educational journey,
And one of the outcomes was introduction of Italian opera in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.
The custom flourished from about 1660 until the advent of large-scale rail transit in the 1840s,
And generally followed a standard itinerary.
It was an educational opportunity and rite of passage.
Though primarily associated with the British nobility and wealthy landed gentry,
Similar trips were made by wealthy young men of Protestant northern European nations on the continent,
And from the second half of the 18th century from South American,
U.
S.
,
And other overseas youth joined in.
The tradition was extended to include more of the middle class after rail and steamship travel made the journey easier,
And Thomas Cook made the Cook's Tour a byword.
The Grand Tour became a status symbol for upper-class students in the 18th and 19th centuries.
In this period,
Johann Joachim Winckelmann's theories about the supremacy of classic culture became very popular and appreciated in the European academic world.
Artists,
Writers,
And travelers,
Such as Goethe,
Affirmed the supremacy of classic art,
Of which Italy,
France,
And Greece provide excellent examples.
For these reasons,
The Grand Tour's main destinations were to those centers where upper-class students could find rare examples of classic art in history.
The New York Times recently described the Grand Tour in this way,
300 years ago,
Wealthy young Englishmen began taking a post-Oxbridge trek through France and Italy in search of art,
Culture,
And the roots of Western civilization.
With nearly unlimited funds,
Aristocratic connections,
And months or years to roam,
They commissioned paintings,
Perfected their language skills,
And mingled with the upper crust of the continent.
The primary value of the Grand Tour,
It was believed,
Laid in the exposure both to the cultural legacy of classical antiquity and the Renaissance,
And the aristocratic and fashionably polite society of the European continent.
Leisure travel was associated with the Industrial Revolution in the United Kingdom,
The first European country to promote leisure time to the increasing industrial population.
Initially,
This applied to the owners of the machinery of production,
The economic oligarchy,
Factory owners,
And traders.
These comprised the new middle class.
Cox and King's was the first official travel company to be formed in 1758.
The British origin of this new industry is reflected in many place names.
In Nice,
France,
One of the first and best established holiday resorts on the French Riviera,
The long Esplanade along the seafront is known to this day as the Promenade d'Anglais.
In many other historic resorts in continental Europe,
Old,
Well-established palace hotels have names like the Hotel Bristol,
Hotel Carleton,
Or Hotel Majestic,
Reflecting the dominance of English customers.
A pioneer of the travel agency business,
Thomas Cook's idea to offer excursions came to him while waiting for the stagecoach on the London Road at Kibworth.
With the opening of the extended Midland Counties Railway,
He arranged to take a group of 540 Temperance campaigners from Leicester Campbell Street Station to a rally in Loughborough,
11 miles away.
On July 5th,
1841,
Thomas Cook arranged for the rail company to charge one shilling per person.
This included rail tickets and food for the journey.
Cook was paid a share of the fares charged to the passengers as the railway tickets,
Being legal contracts between company and passenger,
Could not have been issued at his own price.
This was the first privately chartered excursion train to be advertised to the general public.
Cook himself acknowledged that there had been previous unadvertised private excursion trains.
During the following three summers,
He planned and conducted outings for Temperance societies and Sunday school children.
In 1844,
The Midland Counties Railway Company agreed to make a permanent arrangement with him,
Provided he found the passengers.
This success led him to start his own business,
Running rail excursions for pleasure,
Taking a percentage of the railway fares.
In 1855,
He planned his first excursion abroad,
When he took a group from Leicester to Calais to coincide with the Paris Exhibition.
The following year,
He started his grand circular tours of Europe.
During the 1860s,
He took parties to Switzerland,
Italy,
Egypt and the United States.
Cook established inclusive independent travel,
Whereby the traveller went independently,
But his agency charged for travel,
Food and accommodation for a fixed period over any chosen round.
Such was his success that the Scottish railway companies withdrew their support between 1862 and 1863,
To try the excursion business for themselves.
In the 19th century,
In order to foster the development of tourism in the colonies,
Touristic enterprises used tourist media to present them as attractive destinations for European travellers.
Consequently,
Tourism media not only promoted the colonies as touristic destinations,
And helped shape popular conceptions about them,
But also helped consolidate ideas of Western cultural superiority.
One notable example is Thomas Cook's travel enterprise established in the United Kingdom in 1841,
And his travel newspaper called The Excursionist.
Cultural and natural heritage are in many cases the absolute basis for worldwide tourism.
Cultural tourism is one of the megatrends that is reflected in massive numbers of overnight stays and sales.
As UNESCO is increasingly observing,
The cultural heritage is needed for tourism,
But also endangered by it.
The ICOMOS,
International Cultural Tourism Charter,
From 1999,
Is already dealing with all of these problems.
As a result of the tourist hazard,
For example,
The Lascaux cave was rebuilt for tourists.
Overtourism is an important buzzword in this area.
Furthermore,
The focus of UNESCO and war zones is to ensure the protection of cultural heritage in order to maintain this future important economic basis for the local population.
And there is intensive cooperation between UNESCO,
The United Nations,
The United Nations Peacekeeping,
And Blue Shield International.
There are extensive international and national considerations,
Studies and programs to protect cultural assets from the effects of tourism and those from war.
In particular,
It is also about training civilian and military personnel.
But the involvement of the locals is particularly important.
The founding president of Blue Shield International,
Carl von Hadsburg,
Summed it up with the words,
Without the local community and without the local participants,
That would be completely impossible.
Mass tourism and its tourist attractions have emerged as among the most iconic demonstrations of Western consumer societies.
Academics have defined mass tourism as travel by groups on pre-scheduled tours,
Usually under the organization of tourism professionals.
This form of tourism developed during the second half of the 19th century in the United Kingdom.
And was pioneered by Thomas Cook.
Cook took advantage of Europe's rapidly expanding railway network and established a company that offered affordable day trip excursions to the masses.
In addition to longer holidays to continental Europe,
India,
Asia,
And the Western Hemisphere,
Which attracted wealthier customers.
By the 1890s,
Over 20,
000 tourists per year used Thomas Cook and Son.
The relationship between tourism companies,
Transportation operators,
And hotels is a central feature of mass tourism.
Cook was able to offer prices that were below the publicly advertised price,
Because his company purchased large numbers of tickets from railroads.
One contemporary form of mass tourism,
Package tourism,
Still incorporates the partnership between these three groups.
Travel developed during the early 20th century and was facilitated by the development of the automobiles and later by airplanes.
Improvements in transport allowed many people to travel quickly to places of leisure interest so that more people could begin to enjoy the benefits of leisure time.
By the mid-20th century,
The Mediterranean coast became the principal mass tourism destination.
The 1960s and 1970s saw mass tourism play a major role in the Spanish economic miracle.
In the 1960s and 1970s,
Scientists discussed negative sociocultural impacts of tourism on host communities.
Since the 1980s,
The positive aspects of tourism began to be recognized as well.
In more recent times,
Mass tourism is something which has become a negative experience for local residents of cities and destinations that experience heavy tourism,
Especially in summer months.
In July 2024,
For example,
Protests by local residents in Barcelona,
Spain were held in the city where thousands of people joined an anti-tourism protest amid rising housing costs.
Niche tourism refers to the specialty forms of tourism that have emerged over the years,
Each with its own adjective.
Many of these terms have come into common use by the tourism industry and academics.
Others are emerging concepts that may or may not gain popular usage.
Examples of the more common niche tourism markets are agritourism,
Tourism involving agriculture,
Beach tourism,
Leisure activity and cultural phenomenon,
Bicycle tourism,
Holidays with bicycles,
Burst tourism,
Travel to give birth in another country,
Business tourism,
Coastal islands tourism,
Tourism blending land-sea activities with cultures,
Culinary tourism,
Tourism with the aim of exploring the food,
Cultural tourism,
Geographical tourism around a country or a region,
Domestic tourism,
Traveling for pleasure or business within one's country,
Ecotourism,
Tourism visiting environments,
Extreme tourism,
Film tourism,
Tourism connected with film appearances,
Geotourism,
Tourism associated with the geological attractions and destinations,
Heritage tourism,
Tourism based on cultural heritage sites,
Medical tourism,
People traveling abroad to obtain medical treatment,
Nautical tourism,
Tourism by boat travel,
Nocturism,
Touristic experiences after dark,
Pop culture tourism,
Religious tourism,
Travel to religious sites,
Whether spiritual or sightseeing,
Science tourism,
Travel to notable science locations,
Sports tourism,
Tourists observing or participating in sports,
Tallest buildings tourism,
Trains tourism,
Heritage railways and model railways,
Virtual tourism,
Simulation of an existing location,
War tourism,
Tourism for old war zones,
Wellness tourism,
Tourism for the purpose of health and wellness,
Wildlife tourism.
Other terms used for niche or specialty travel forms include the term destination in the descriptions,
Such as destination weddings,
And terms such as location vacation.
