Emerging trends in sociology of tourism

Abstract

Tourism is an invisible export in that it creates a flow of foreign currency into the economy of a destination country, thereby contributing directly to the current account of the balance of payments. Like other export industries, this inflow of revenue creates business turnover, household income, employment, and government revenue. However, the generation process does not stop at this point. Some portion of the money received by the business establishments, individuals, and government agencies is resent within the destination economy, thereby creating further rounds of economic activity. These secondary effects can in total considerably exceed in magnitude the initial direct effects. Indeed any study purporting to show the economic impact made by tourism must attempt to measure the overall effect made by the successive rounds of economic activity generated by the initial expenditure. The process has been documented with attention drawn to the strengths, weaknesses, and limitations of the various approaches.1 Domestic tourism has somewhat similar economic effects on the host regions of a country. Whereas, however, international tourism brings a flow of foreign currency into a country, domestic tourism redistributes currency spatially within the boundaries of a country. From the point of view of a tourist region within a country, however, domestic tourism is a form of invisible export. Money earned in other regions is spent within the host region creating additional business revenue, income, jobs, and revenue to local government. The process of secondary revenue, income, and employment generation within the host region is then the same as for a national economy. The principal difference during these secondary stages, however, is that individual regions within a country are usually less economically self-contained, and, hence, a far greater proportion of the money is likely to leak out of the regional system into other regions. The secondary effects in individual regions are far lower in magnitude than for the national economy as a whole. Moreover, tourism seems to be more effective than other industries in generating employment and income in the less developed, often peripheral, regions of a country where alternative opportunities for development are more limited. Indeed, it is in these areas that tourism can make its most significant impact. In such places many of the local people are subsistence farmers or fishermen, and if they become involved in the tourism industry their household incomes increase by a very large amount. The growth of tourism in such areas may provide also a monetary incentive for the continuance of many local crafts, whereas the tourist hotels may create a market for local produce. Indeed, the introduction of a tourism industry into such areas can have a proportionally greater effect on the welfare of the resident population than the same amount of tourism might have on the more developed parts of the same country. The paper is an attempt to look into the emerging trends in Sociology of tourism.