Essay: Globalization, Technology, and Cultural Impacts on Tourism

This essay delves into the multifaceted aspects of global tourism, examining the key factors that have propelled its development. It highlights the significant influence of globalization, which has facilitated the discovery of new destinations, fostered cultural exchange, and reduced travel costs, thereby encouraging international travel. The essay further explores the role of technology, emphasizing its impact on advertising, information dissemination, and service accessibility, such as online booking systems. Additionally, it discusses the importance of cultural diversification, illustrating how interactions, education, and cultural events contribute to the promotion of tourism. The essay also acknowledges potential negative impacts, such as the homogenization of services and the challenges posed by cultural insensitivity, concluding with a comprehensive overview of the factors that shape the global tourism landscape.

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Global Tourism Issues
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Introduction
Tourism is an economic as well as social activity which involves people traveling to
different parts of the world for recreational purposes. However, tourism can also incorporate the
travel of new places for business purposes. According to Ferroni (2017, p. 19), tourism activities
have seen great advancement with much focus being placed on the hospitality and hotel
management to ensure that the visiting tourist get proper treatment during their stay.
International tourism has been facilitated by globalization as most people have an opportunity to
travel unlike before. This has seen the industry grow. There are quite a number of factors that
have influenced global tourism development. Among them include increased globalization,
technology advancement as well as diversification of cultures.
Factors influencing tourism development
Global tourism has seen great advancement over a period of years (Weissenberg 2017,
p.13). Measures to encourage people to take on tourism as a leisure activity have been developed
and championed on. Focus on various tourism sectors to ensure the industry thrives, have been
emphasized with various factors playing a key role.
Increased globalization
Globalization is a term used to refer to a situation where people pool resources together
to achieve a common goal. Globalization is a process where nations work together through
strengthening of already existing relationships among them, as well as creating new
relationships, to produce better goods and services and also create and expand markets for their
products. Globalization also creates a sense of unity and brotherhood among various states
(Sannomiya 2017, p.17). Globalization has aided the tourism sector in great ways. Through it,
new destinations have been discovered. The discovery of these new destinations has encouraged

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people to visit these new places and explore what they have to offer. This increased intention to
travel abroad is what has led to the development of the tourism industry globally (Menendez
2017, p. 21). Globalization also created a culture where people from different countries interact
with each other. Through this, people have managed to advertise their cultures to other people, a
factor that has seen others desire to experience the culture first hand. Globalization has also
played a key role in the reduction of the air travel fees. Through globalization, a variety of
airlines have developed with a large number offering standardized air travel fees. In the recent
years, air travel tickets have become cheaper making it possible for quite a number of people to
afford them. This has encouraged people who could not afford air travel tickets for flights
outside the country to purchase and travel to their desired destinations. Additionally,
globalization has created much employment opportunities for most people. Through this, many
individuals are able to have an influx of their disposable income, and therefore can save enough
to spend on vacations. They choose to visit other countries for their vacation rather than spend
time in their home country. However, as much as globalization has impacted positively on
travels and tourism, it has some of its negative impacts on the industry. For one, the industry is
trying to Americanize all its services. Some tourist destinations are designed in ways that are
similar to the American culture with the notion that they will attract more clients if they do so.
Secondly, most destinations have homogeneity in their products and services that they offer. This
homogeneity of products makes the global tourism industry to lag behind in terms innovation as
there is fear that if a destination deviates from the tradition of the services they provide, it will
more or less face a challenge or possible loss. The global tourism industry also lacks authenticity
as most of the tourist destinations’ have converted their cultures into commodities.
Improved technology

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Technology is another key factor that has led to the development of the global tourism
industry. It is through technology that various tourism destinations have managed to advertise
their services to the wider global market. For instance, in airplanes, they run commercials of the
potential tourist destinations in the countries the passengers are headed to. This information
makes one desire to visit the advertised places for leisure. Additionally, television, as well as
radio stations, have been used as agents of information dissemination especially regarding the
tourist destinations in the industry (Smith n.p.). Most of these advertisements run during
commercial breaks and thus giving people a chance to consider visiting the destinations to
experience the events themselves. Additionally, it is through improved technology that
information about the world’s leading tourist destinations is posted on the internet (Vong 2015,
n.p.). This information is accessible by anyone who has access to the internet. This means that as
a person is deciding on which tourism destination he or she should visit, they can just look up
online for their preferred location and get the necessary information that will be useful in
choosing the particular destination center (Twiat 2016, n.p.). In addition, technology has eased
up services such as hotel bookings and air ticket purchases. Interested persons can just book their
flights as well as hotels through online means at their own convenient time. In summation,
technology has played a huge role in the development of global tourism (Torres 2017, p. 14).
However, there are the negative impacts of technology in regard to global tourism. For instance,
some advertisements may depict a picture of a perfect and mind-blowing destination, only for the
tourist to arrive and experience something completely different from their expectations. This
ends up creating a bad image for other genuine destinations in that particular country.
Technology is also a site where cons pitch their tent ready to scam unknowing individuals. For
example, as one can book flights and hotels via online, it is possible that a person can present

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themselves as agents of a particular destination and ask the individual to pay quite some money
so as to get first class treatment on arrival. These conmen pose very interesting and attractive
deals and as the client wants royalty treatment, the end up paying. The number of extortion cases
has been on the rise in the recent years. As a result, many loyal and honest agents end up losing
their jobs as fewer people prefer to book their services themselves.
Diversification of cultures
Culture refers to the way of living adopted by a particular community. Culture plays a
vital role in encouraging people to adopt as well as understand the various cultural practices in
the world. It plays a key role in the orientation of people when it comes to interactions (Demonja
2015, n.p). Culture can be diversified in many ways with the most common one being through
interactions. Education also plays a vital role in this concept. For example, there are those
students who travel to foreign lands to further their education. This can be through student
exchange programs or the students’ self-sponsored programs. As they are in the foreign lands,
they get to learn about their culture and reciprocate this act by sharing their home cultures
(Noonan 2017, p. 22). This creates an interest where the host country students’ desire to travel
and experience culture first hand. These students also introduced the concept back to their
homelands creating the same desire. As a result, there is increased travel and through this, global
tourism is promoted. Inclusively, students can also learn about the various cultural activities in
different parts of the world, and this spikes up their interest to experience it (Borowieck and
Castiglione 2015, p.245). They may end up organizing study group travels where they travel and
learn about what they learned in class and relate it to the real-life situation as they see it. Culture
is also diversified through the various souvenirs, and art performances presented by
representatives of different states at festivals. It is in these festivals that people get to identify the

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numerous variety of the existing cultures. As they continue to interact, they encourage each other
to travel to experience more of what is presented and as a result they promote tourism.
Additionally, the local embassies also promote the cultures of their home industries by providing
cultural information on their countries as well as running campaigns that advocate for that. Some
cultures however can be similar to others and this makes tourist to disregard visiting different
places to have the same experience. In such a situation, the attempt to use culture as a tourism
attraction focus fails to be successful thereby affecting a country’s tourism sector and the global
tourism industry in general. In addition, some cultures may be similar to others thus losing their
interest as well as their captivating nature. As much as culture is a key and vital consideration for
the development of tourism, there are those individuals who are ethnocentric in that they have
little or no regard for other cultures. Additionally, the experience from culture shock might be
too much to handle thus people may just prefer to disregard it.
Conclusion
Global tourism refers to the interactions between people of different nations who visit
other places for leisure, or business purposes. Global tourism has seen great advancement over
the years. This advancement has been championed by various factors among them including
globalization, improved technology as well as diversification of cultures. Globalization has set
the pace in the promotion of global or international tourism in various ways including
subsidizing costs for air travels, development of new tourism destination places, and the increase
in disposable income which allows people to travel to new areas for vacations. Technology has
played a vital role in that people can now access their destination requirements and information
through the online websites and sites having information on their preferred destinations. Through
technology, many people are able to access details on what a country offers and make plans to

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visit the land. Culture, on the other hand, has also played a vital role in promotion and
development of global tourism in that people are able to experience the culture they learn about
on first-hand experience basis. There is, however, an additional number of issues that encourage
and promote the global development of tourism. Bodies such as the United Nations are also key
contributors to the development of global tourism.
References

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