Development of Contemporary Tourism: Positive and Negative Impacts on Economy, Environment, and Socio-Cultural Factors

This essay discusses the development of contemporary tourism and its impacts on the economy, environment, and society. It covers the positive and negative economic impacts of tourism, such as GDP generation and cost of living increase, the positive and negative environmental impacts of tourism, such as wildlife conservation and pollution, and the positive and negative socio-cultural impacts of tourism, such as brotherhood promotion and cultural identity threat.

Development of
contemporary tourism

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................3
MAIN BODY...................................................................................................................................3
The development of contemporary tourism and significant factors................................................3
Discuss the positive and negative economic impacts of tourism....................................................4
Discuss the positive and negative environmental impacts of tourism ..........................................4
Discuss the positive and negative socio-cultural impacts of tourism..............................................5
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................6
REFERENCES:...............................................................................................................................7
Books and Journals.....................................................................................................................7

INTRODUCTION
Tourism is referred to a set of travelling and touring activities performed by humans to
pursue recreation and relaxation. It is a process of finding pleasure by spending some time away
from home. Tourism as an industry, covers the same things in its fold but from a monetary point
of view. Tourism has now become a great source of revenue for the country as people are getting
engaged more and more in it (Richards,2021). Tourists are increasing at a very high rate.
Travelling is what people prefer to do in their leisure time. In this essay, there is an explanation
about the development of contemporary tourism and its significant factors. (Mekawy, 2019)The
positive and negative impacts drawn on economic, environmental and socio-cultural are also
discussed in brief.
MAIN BODY
The development of contemporary tourism and significant factors.
Tourism is a great source of self-employment for people having good knowledge of their
city. Guides and tourist agents earns a lot because people are becoming adventurous and
wanderlust. Social media is the best platform to show what a country has. Tourists click and
posts pictures on various social media like Instagram. WhatsApp, etc., which make their friends
and relatives curious to know and visit that place.(Wondirad, Kebete and Li, 2021) This increase
in people willingness to explore new cities and places has ultimately lead to the development of
contemporary tourism. This development enhanced country's financial treasures and its image of
what it actually is. Tourism is the act of recreation humans tend to do in their leisure time, away
from home, with their loved ones or alone as per their wish (Dogru, and et.al., 2020). Tourism
agency provides with services of hospitality along with travelling. These agencies provides
people with a full package of tour from leaving their home to entering their home. Their hotel or
resort, stay, night, food, tour, guide and many other facilities. There are various packages of
different prices available for the customers. They can choose accordingly. During the pandemic,
people got irritated and frustrated while sitting at home. As soon as the lockdown was over, they
felt like as if they were being set free from a cage after years of imprisonment. Gradually, all this
lead to a rise in the tourism industry. There are major impacts made by the development of
contemporary tourism on a country and the lives of its people in various ways. Economic factors,

technological factors, socio-cultural & environmental factors and political factors are the four
key factors which primarily development of tourism industry makes an impact on.
Discuss the positive and negative economic impacts of tourism
Tourism impacts a market and a country's economy in various ways. Tourism may have
positive but can also have negative impact over the economy.(Din, 2018) These impacts may be
direct, indirect or induced. A direct, positive impact of tourism on economy is the rise in GDP
generated. Hotels, travel agents, airlines, tour operators, restaurants, etc., all deal with the
tourism directly. This increases the financial treasures of the country as these activities is quite a
good source of revenue. Another perk of tourism, economy has, the employment generation.
Development in tourism gave employment to a number of people. This reduced the
unemployment of the country. This not only helps eliminating poverty from the country but also
gave people a means to survive. (Sharpley, 2020). Tourism is quite a wide concept and covers in
its fold various jobs of various fields. These jobs give people an opportunity to have the basic
needs of life of food, cloth and shelter. As stated above, UK is quite dependent on tourism for
income and employment. However, this dependency proved to be a burden and was crashed to
the grounds when the pandemic came. Covid 19 was quite disastrous for the whole world. But
for UK, it took its revenue sources. No tourists, no income. The occupancy rate of rooms in
hotels began to fall unexpectedly.(Dixit, 2019) Restaurants, airports, hotels, resorts, cafes, clubs,
bars and more got closed due to the pandemic. Tourism played a major role in increasing the
strain UK faced on the economy those days. Another major negative impact of tourism on the
economy is that it increases the cost of living of the people living there. Tourists often buy
second homes for short periods where they like to spend their vacations. This is particularly the
case in places with popular coastal areas (Alexova, and et.al., 2021).. This increases the cost of
the properties which makes it difficult for the local people to buy their first property.
Discuss the positive and negative environmental impacts of tourism
When it comes to count the positive impacts of tourism on environment, it can be easily
counted on fingertips. In UK, a number of former industrial sites and areas are developed and
have been preserved to be a tourist spot.(Nikazachenko And et.al., 2018) Natural environment
have been conserved and protected for tourists to see and maintain the beauty of the place.
Protection of the wildlife creatures is another major perk enjoyed because of tourism. Protection

of animals will not only help the country preserve them for the future generation but also help
them from being extinct. Now comes the negative impact (Seyfi, and Hall, eds., 2018). There is
an endless list of these impacts. One of the major impact is pollution - whether it comes to air,
water or noise. Each one of them is equally caused by tourism. Overuse of water resources is
depleting them. Tourists, generally, throw the leftover after eating food wherever they feel like
lake, beach,etc. This causes water pollution. They also play music in loud volume which causes
noise pollution. Now the most important, the transports which they use to travel from one place
to another produce smoke that causes air pollution (Rahmafitria, and et.al., 2020). Air pollution
is the worst scenario to have a look on. Managing litter and solid waste is quite a challenging
task for the government and another negative impact of tourism on environment. Tourists throw
waste here and there rather than in dustbins. Because of all that litter, local people suffer. This
makes their surroundings dirty and untidy. Cleanliness and proper hygiene is very important to a
healthy life but all this waste will not be able to maintain cleanliness. The country should impose
some strict rules for everyone to follow to avoid throwing waste anywhere they feel like.
Discuss the positive and negative socio-cultural impacts of tourism
Tourism often leads to various positive and negative impacts. These can be economic,
environmental, as discussed above, or socio-cultural. Socio-cultural impacts are related to the
society in general. These impacts are for interrelated persons.(Mu, Nepal and Lai, 2019) One of
the best thing about tourism is that it enables people to meet new people. This helps them
understand and learn new culture which promotes brotherhood among the society for different
classes of people. Increased tourism also help people increase their social status and skill. This is
another perk of the socio-cultural impact of tourism.(Kapera, 2018) Tourists often gain respect
for the way they live or for their status. The local people of the place where they visit treats them
very kindly and gently. This make tourists maintain their social status. Now let's jump to the
negative impacts of tourism on the socio-cultural factors (Pawson, Richardson, and D’Arcy,
2018). The most common negative impact that the society faces is the conflict between tourists
and the guide or the people living in that area. Generally, it is the anti - social behaviour of the
tourists which makes the local people angry and a conflict among them arose. But it is not
always on the part of the tourists, sometimes the anti – social behaviour of the local people
living there is the reason for the conflict (Boluk, Cavaliere, and Duffy, 2019). It is the most

common socio- cultural impact of tourism that is faced by the society. Threat to an area's cultural
identity is quite a serious note to think on.

CONCLUSION
As per the above report, it has been concluded that tourism is quite important for the
country. It is an act of spending some leisure time, away from home, for recreation or relaxation
of an individual's body. Tourism has increased from the past few years. This development of
contemporary tourism has been discussed in this report. There are various impacts tourism have
on economy, environment and society. These impacts may be positive and negative. Tourism
helps in GDP and employment generation. But at the same time, over dependency on tourism
crashed the economy to the grounds. Tourism helps in the preservation and conservation of
plants and animals while at the same time at harms our natural resources. Tourism promotes
brotherhood among the society but also is the reason of threat to the culture of an area. Thus,
tourism has its own advantages and limitations.

REFERENCES:
Books and Journals
Alexova, D. and et.al., 2021. Contemporary Challenges to the Sustainable Development of
Tourism in the National Resorts of Bulgaria. In SHS Web of Conferences (Vol. 120). EDP
Sciences.
Boluk, K.A., Cavaliere, C.T. and Duffy, L.N., 2019. A pedagogical framework for the
development of the critical tourism citizen. Journal of Sustainable Tourism.
Din, K.H., 2018. Dialogue with the hosts: an educational strategy towards sustainable tourism.
In Tourism in South-East Asia (pp. 327-336). Routledge.
Dixit, S.K., 2019. Gastronomic tourism: A theoretical construct. In The Routledge handbook of
gastronomic tourism (pp. 13-23). Routledge.
Dogru, T. and et.al., 2020. The nexus between tourism, economic growth, renewable energy
consumption, and carbon dioxide emissions: contemporary evidence from OECD
countries. Environmental Science and Pollution Research, 27(32), pp.40930-40948.
Kapera, I., 2018. Sustainable tourism development efforts by local governments in
Poland. Sustainable cities and society, 40, pp.581-588.
Mekawy, M.A., 2019. 8 Rural Tourism Development in Egypt: Contemporary
Insights. Sustainable Destination Branding and Marketing, p.82.
Mu, Y., Nepal, S.K. and Lai, P.H., 2019. Tourism and sacred landscape in Sagarmatha (Mt.
Everest) National Park, Nepal. Tourism Geographies.
Nikazachenko, A.L. And et.al., 2018. Modern approaches to assess tourism industry-related
environment. Journal of Environmental Management & Tourism, 9(2 (26)), pp.298-303.
Pawson, S., Richardson, S. and D’Arcy, P., 2018. Temples, Tuk-Tuks and Orphanages: A
Contemporary Examination of Tourism Development, Management and Community-
Based Tourism in Cambodia. In Managing Asian Destinations (pp. 125-140). Springer,
Singapore.
Rahmafitria, F. and et.al., 2020. Tourism planning and planning theory: Historical roots and
contemporary alignment. Tourism Management Perspectives, 35, p.100703.
Richards, G., 2021. Evolving research perspectives on food and gastronomic experiences in
tourism. International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management.
Seyfi, S. and Hall, C.M. eds., 2018. Tourism in Iran: Challenges, development and issues.
Routledge.
Sharpley, R., 2020. Tourism, sustainable development and the theoretical divide: 20 years
on. Journal of sustainable tourism, 28(11), pp.1932-1946.
Wondirad, A., Kebete, Y. and Li, Y., 2021. Culinary tourism as a driver of regional economic
development and socio-cultural revitalization: Evidence from Amhara National Regional
State, Ethiopia. Journal of Destination Marketing & Management, 19, p.100482.