Tourism Essay Example for Free

Tourism EssayTourism is a complex topic, which involves most of the human and scientific elements such as economics, social, surroundal, cultural, religious and others. For this source, there argon umpteen different expositions depending on the purpose of the psyche, strung-out or research.One of the first simple definition appeared 200 years ago Leiper defined the touristry as a person engaged in a decadent style of break (Leiper 2004, p.39). However, the definition has been evolving seeing that the tourism keeps growing, which has been affecting all authors definitions. At the identical time, authors have different perspective of the tourism, and for this reason have been strong to make water a universal and standard one. Despite the inconsistencys, most tourism definitions character a common perspective, they attempted to define tourism in ground of who is a touring car ( smith 1988, p.182). star sign said (2007) definitions are essential for any discipline and each one identifies the foci of study. In tourism studies encountered with quad interrelated concepts and are the core of this subject tourism, touring car, tourism intentness and tourism resources.To ensure a soften chthonianstanding, the following essay will describe and analyse four main authors definitions, including their strengths and weakness in dress to select the most suitable one.BodyThe definitions have been divided in two helpful characteristics abstract and technical. The conceptual is a broad definition embrace a general definition as a whole, where non-researchers and non-specialize people are able to understand identifying the essential characteristics of tourism. Technical definition is more(prenominal) specific, providing special(prenominal) development for industrial, legislative and statistical purposes.Author 1 World Tourism Organisation (WTO)Tourism has different concepts depending in the authors interpretation. Holloway addresses his definition from the World Tourism Organisations, which is tourism comprises the activities of persons travelling to and staying in places outside their usual environment for non more than one consecutive year for leisure, business or other purposes (Holloway 2009, p.8).Smith explained (1995) that the usual environment it is the first criteria to distinguish the tourism from travel. Exist two elements for this, frequency and distance. The frequency is the regularity of times the person visit the place. The distance, as most of the countries have different view of this it is difficult to defined. However the WTO established that the 160km moldiness be the standard distance.In one hand, some strengths to strike is that this definition covers the three main paygrade aspects of the tourism, which are the purpose, distance and duration of travel. The definition specifically addresses the motivation of the holidaymakers and is classified as holidays, business, religious, academic and wellness treatme nt. For the WTO (1995) it is clearly define that the distance can vary from 0 100 miles and people are not considered as tourist if it is less of these miles. Additionally the duration of travelling need to be at least(prenominal) one overnight of stay to be a tourist.On the other hand, the weaknesses are the focus of tourists definition. The WTOs technical definition (2004) just engages the economic sector a tourist is a business traveller, a student, a sick person who visit for health treatment and a person visiting a family member. every(prenominal) these elements are focusing on how much money visitors spend.Exist circumstance situations that tourists are not considered as tourists, which this led that every year the tourist definition change and misleads many people from being tourist, affecting as well the statistic evaluation of the tourism. It is important that the definition requires a difference in between transit and tourist people. For some countries, still not clear when do these definitions applies, at the same time the distance of travel do not follow the WTO standard. A clear shell of this is United State Travel Data (1995) suggested that travelling one way of 100 miles are considered as tourists. However, for the Canadian government (2005) it is around 25 miles away of the persons residence. This indicates that WTO needs to be soaked on implementing the standards in lay other countries follows them.Author 2 Leiper, NeilFor Leiper, the tourism it is examined on a administration approach. Being a system means a set of interrelated companys coordinated to form a unified whole and organized to accomplish a set of goals (Goeldner 2009, p. 25).Under this approach, the tourism is the system involving the discretional travel and temporary stay of persons away from their usual place of residence for one or more nights, excepting tours made for the primary purpose of earning remuneration from points enroute. The elements of the system are touri sts, generating regions, transit routes, destination regions, and a tourist industry. These five elements are arranged in spatial and functional connections. Having the characteristics of an open system, the organization of five elements operates at bottom boarder environments physical, cultural, social, economic, political, and technological with which it interacts (Smith 1988, p. 181).The main strengths for Leipers definition is that creates and examines the tourism and tourist on a warlike way, join all the approaches and elements that interact or are related to the tourism into a complex and lengthened definition. As well, the definition includes the consumer and the interaction of all the industries bear on with the consumer. As per Leipers framework, such approaches would facilitate multidisciplinary studies of particular aspects of tourism and more significantly would give interdisciplinary studies of various facets and perspectives a common point of reference book (Leipe r 1979, p. 395).It is clearly noticed that the definition covers the tourism as a whole including individual, organisations and business to reach the same goal, which is to nominate service and deliver the experience to the tourists.The main weakness to consider is the complexity of this definition, which covers all the elements and approaches and sometimes might affect the main objective of the definition. At the same time, Leipers (2004) still creates confusion for the tourists definition and people have different perception of this. One person think that group of people are tourists, a second one might perceive sightseers as tourists, a troika one might regard the cruise people as tourists. Because of this range of concepts and connotations, what delimits the boundaries between tourists and other visitors is difficult to define in a order that suits everybody.Author 3 Smith, StephenOn this section, Smith focuses on a supply side definition, which focuses on the commodities as t he core element of the tourism. Most of the authors defined it in terms of goods and services, which is the demand side, not the characteristics or motivations of their consumers. Smith perceives the tourism as the aggregate of all businesses that directly provide goods or services to facilitate business, pleasure and leisure activities away from the home environment (Smith 1988, p.183)The strengths of Smiths goal is to develop a tourism definition based on tourists and characteristics that can be like with other industrial definitions. Other important characteristic is the inclusions of business and pleasure activities. Smith tries to make it transparent that the motivations of a traveller are unimportant to the definition, although they are extremely important to the marketing sector of the industry (Smith 1988, p.183). At the same time, clarifies the distance or duration of the stay from a technical perspective. In addition, Smith developed a supply side definition in order to allow meaningful par with other industries.On the other hand, one of the weaknesses of this technical definition is a scale of tourism businesses, these are hotels, restaurants, airport, souvenir shops, transport and to mention others. The tourism has two types of businesses the ones that would not be able to survive without tourism (Tier 1) and businesses that could survive without tourism (Tier 2) (Coope 2005, p.9). Some clear examples for Tier 1 are hotels and airports for Tier 2 would be transports and restaurants. Some businesses are not direct elements of the tourism as they can survive without it. This can create a conflict if should be part of the tourism business or not.Author 4 Burkart and MedlikOn this case, Burkart and Medlik developed a holistic or conceptual definition adopted by the International crosstie of Scientific Experts in Tourism (AIEST) tourism is the sum of the phenomena and relationships arising form the travel and stay of non-residents, in so far as they do not lead to permanent residence and are not attached to any earning activity (Burkart 1981, p.40).One of the main strengths is that a various range of international organizations has recognized this definition. All its features recognises that tourism goes around the principal one, which is the tourist. At the same time, for the reason that it is not part of an academic discipline, allows interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary approaches study the tourism. As well mentioned the time or duration element stating the permanent residence is not a tourist.An essential weakness to be considered is that it is a holistic definition and creates a difficult conjoin in between other industries because describes the tourism as a whole essence of a subject. Certainly, as Leipers mentioned (1979) it is an ambiguous meaning and does not specify methodical applications. Furthermore the definition was developed coherent time ago and tourism has been evolving since then, which this definition creates just a general idea of the tourism and general meaning. In terms of boundaries, this definition does not include the business people, it is focusing for people travelling under leisure and pleasure purposes.ConclusionSeveral meanings of tourism were identified and analysed. Tourism is a complex, vast and multifaceted, which it is inevitable to have different approaches to study the specific field that suits everyone. It is important to clarify distinctions between basic definitions and the elements and characteristics involved in order to have a better perception. These definitions are a guide in order to have a better understanding of the tourism and from which sector people wants to be and understand.To conclude, the WTO should be consider as the standard definition for the reason is an international organisation and includes the main tourism elements purpose of travel and time element. Furthermore it is a clear definition where everyone can have access and better under standing.