Impacts of Tourism on Society: A Sociological Perspective

Sociology and tourism

Essay topic – What are the impacts of Tourism on society?
Talking in relation with the tourism, it has always been the most interesting as well as
attracting types of spending time for most of the people across the world. as an industry,
tourism is very profitable and is regarded as a financial saviour for the nations particularly
those, which are not so strong from the perspective of economic as well as industry
development, however are attractive because of their historical places along with rich
architecture. Nevertheless, in the recent past, tourism has started showing the fouler side. The
actions of tourists and investors is posing a negative impact on the social-cultural values and
environmental resources of the society around the globe (Sharpley, 2018). Thus, the current
essay deals with investigating the relationship between the tourism and the society and the
ways they influence each other. Further, sociology of tourism is an emergent area concerning
the study related to relationship, institutions and touristic roles along with the impacts on
tourists and the societies who takes them. Consequently, the essay will include a discussion
on the relationship between tourism and society through examining sociological theories,
practice and principles. Further, emphasis will also be done on determining different impacts
of social-cultural, political as well as economic contexts impacts the practices and principles
of sustainability. This topic is being chosen because it will support in having knowledge of
the collaboration and inter-dependence of people, places and processes embraced in tourism
and this will help in development of tourism and society in the coming future. For fulfilling
this aim, the essay has been segregated into three sections, wherein the first section will
emphasize on inter-relationship amid tourism as well as society, the second section deals with
the impacts of tourism. the third section deals with the details about the behaviour of tourists
and expectations of consumption of travel.
Tourism is defined as the activities of people travelling from one place to another and
spending their valuable time in varied places and staying outside from home. Further, tourism
helps in bringing people together which belongs to different religion, race, colour,
background and languages as per the socio-cultural viewpoint. It helps in betterment of the
society and its people and thus, both the phenomenon is inter-related. It is one of the largest
industries of the globe and look upon as a major medium of attaining community
development. According to Korneć (2020), it is one of the quickest growing industries of the
globe and engines for expansion. Additionally, it is a communal, monetary and cultural
phenomenon that includes the people’s movement to places and nations far away from their
natural environment. Tourism helps in boosting the revenue of the economy, offers
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employment opportunities and provides a supportive hand in the infrastructural development
of the nation. It can be said that this sector has developed quite quickly in line with the rising
demands which can be depicted in the graph below:
Figure 1: Relative distribution of tourist arrivals
(Roser, 2022).
The above chart depicts the relative distribution of tourist’s arrivals through region.
From the year 1950 two thirds of the tourists were arrived in Europe and over the following
sixty-eight years, the relative significance was reduced to around fifty percent, however, it is
still the most crucial touristic region. Further, the Asia and the pacific region were given
small significance but now in the recent past years, almost every fourth tourists arrive in this
region. This can be very well understood with the tourism life cycle model, which is being
projected by Butler. This model can be utilized for studying tourists’ destination to see the
manners in which they change over a period of time. There are six important stages of this
model. The very first is the exploration stage, which encompasses initiation of the basic phase
in which the government and the local people are not involved in making money as there are
very limited number of visitors. An example of destination could be the City of Hammett
(Alazaizeh and et.al., 2016).
The second stage is of involvement, wherein the number of people visiting the
destination increases and some economic advantages can be observed through offering
facilities such as water, food and accommodation. The third stage is the development stage in
which the areas become highly recognized partly due to high level of marketing and
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