Tourism and Society: Impact on Society and Relationship with Culture

This essay explores the relationship between tourism and society, highlighting its impact on the economy, culture, and environment. It discusses the Tourism Life Cycle model, PESTLE analysis, and tourist typologies to understand the dynamics of the industry. The essay also emphasizes the importance of sustainability and growth in the tourism industry.

Tourism and Society

Contents
INTRODUCTION ..........................................................................................................................1
MAIN BODY...................................................................................................................................1
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................5
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................6

INTRODUCTION
The topic of the essay is Tourism and society. Its main aim is to understand the
relationship between tourism and society and how tourism affects the society. Tourism refers to
the process and activities of people who spend time away from home in pursuit of refreshment,
relaxation and pleasure. It is considered to be very important component for the global economy
as it is one the fastest expanding service industry with vast growth, generating millions of dollars
as revenue , creating employment and thus resulting in enhancement of the living standard of
people (Fang, 2020). It is also stated that tourism has an impact on the society. It can be done on
the basis of three perspectives such as economic, social and cultural, and environmental. When
we see from economical point of view, tourism creates wealth as well as employment. From
social point of view, tourism had brought people together from various background irrespective
of race, gender, culture and tradition that promotes peace. Culture is a major factors that attract
most of the tourism destinations. From environmental point of view, tourism help in better
protection of nature and local resources as it generates investment in environmental
infrastructure and services. Tourism provides various benefits to the society but at the same time
being gender bias affects the society in negative manner as majorly tourism industry is male
dominating and women does not enjoy the freedom and space. In general sociology is the
scientific study of human behaviour, social problems, changes and causes (Abramand and
Waldren, 2021). The sociology of tourism is concerned with the study of touristic motivation,
roles and relationship, and their impact on tourists and the society. Governments of the
respective states are also associated with the tourism industry and support it in development for
touristic highlights. Tourism should make several changes in modifications and advancements.
MAIN BODY
Tourism is the phenomenon of social, cultural and economical activity which entails the
temporary movement of an individual. The activities may directly relate to the tourist i,e., staying
in the hotel, ordering a meal or visiting a tourist attraction sites. It is the industry that provides
services for getting travel experience to different persons. Tourism can be divided into Domestic,
Inbound and Outbound. The tourism industry of UK is one of the growing industry al over the
world. It has become one of the leading destination place for sporting, travelling, business,
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conference, etc. basically it is known for its high quality facilities. UK evolved the tourism
industry in 17th century which contributes in the development of the country's economy other
than this country also faces some challenges as well as issues which is declining the position of
UK tourism industry . The industry is building up the competitive edge over the others. The
below is the graph representing the growth of the tourism in UK.
This statistics states the growth in total contribution of travel and tourism to GDP in the United
Kingdom from 2012 to 2018 and forcasting the future for the year of 2028. There are different
models which shows the relationship between the tourism and society such as Tourism Life
cycle, Leipers Tourism system model and Push and pull influences. Out of these models one has
been discussed here in. the model that has been discussed is Tourism Life Cycle which was
proposed by Butler in 1980. Tourism Life Cycle goes through six stages that includes
Exploration, Involvement, Development, Consolidation, Stagnation and Rejuvenation.
Exploration is the first stage of the model. In this model as tourism are limited in number so
therefore the social and economical benefits are also small (Dodds, R., 2019). It is the starting
point where government and the local bodies start to think about improving the tourism. The
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second stage is involvement. As the name suggest, it marks the involvement guest houses, visit
of foreigners. Due to this, government may come under pressure to develop the tourism facilities.
Development stage is the next stage. It will have new buildings, hotels, transportations, and
hospitality which may also emerge new tourists. In this marketing and promotion of tourism
destination can increase the awareness of that place to people. The fourth stage is consolidation.
Under this stage, number of visitors are partially higher than local residents and tourism growth
slows little. The next stage is stagnation. It shows the decline in the tourism industry. It may
happen when the destination is no longer desirable and in trend even after consistent effort by
government and local bodies. This effects the economy of the nation. Rejuvenation is the last
stage of the life cycle. In this stage the destination is no longer attractive to new visitors leading
to decline market conditions. For instant, London is the most beautiful city in the world as well
as in UK because of the famous tourist attraction where many tourist visits every year. Famous
places in London are Big Ben, The Tate Madern Museum, The famous London Eye, Borough
Markets and AI Shard Tower Bridge. London (UK) have always welcomed the tourists and
leaves a positive impact on the experience of visit to London.
Tourism is an industrial service which helps people to travel for recreation and leisure. It
impacts the society in different manner with positive as well as negative way which has been
highlighted shown here with the help of PESTLE analysis. It is the framework that is used to
study the external factors (Tereshko and Gintciak, 2020). The analysis consist of factors such as
Political, Economical, Social, Technological, Environmental and Legal. Political factors include
those factors that is influenced by the government activities and policies that may include
taxation, fiscal policy and trade dispute. Corruption from government side can add high cost to
the prices of tourism which will lead to low demand and low profit which will have negative
impact on tourism industry and society. Economical factors include factors related to finance and
economy. These factors include inflation, interest rates, employment and exchange rates.
Tourism industry helps the country to enhance the economic growth and increase foreign
exchange reserve; it boosts up the GDP of the country. Social factors are those factors that affect
the social believes such as values, norms, and culture. It impacts the living standards of the
people, family size, ethnic and religious trends and consumer beliefs etc. In present competitive
era, to retain consumers, tourism industry have to maintain with the trends caused due to tastes
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and preferences to make profit. Technological factors are the factors related to technologies and
media. This is basically done for tourism marketing; the mode of media can be television,
advertisement, newspaper, magazines, radio and social media etc. Legal factors are those factors
that is related to laws and orders affecting the tourism industry and leaving an impact on the
society. This factors may include licencing, industry regulation, intellectual property laws,
employment laws, Health and safety laws etc. Government and the local bodies imposes various
laws to provide different services to the tourists. Environmental factors include those factors that
reflects the environment condition which has impact on both tourism industry as well as the
society. These are caused due to climate change, air and water etc. Some of the places are best to
visit in some specified seasons but this factor affect the tourism industry in negative manner but
is also have advantage to some of the communities and local people as during the peak time of
the tourism season for seasonal destination, the local people and the tourism industry try to earn
a lot of profit (George, R., 2021). It is understood from the PESTLE analysis that tourism
industry will grow in the recent future due to economic, technological, and political advantages.
UK has been affected by the Tourism industry in both positive as well as negative
manner (Gill, 2018) . Tourism industry indirectly helps to develop the economy of the country
because it creates various employment opportunities to many of the students who have opted
tourism as a subject or to the people who have interest in tourism industry; they then pay taxes to
the government which thus helps to generate more and more income in the country's economy
and leading to create sustainability in the country. Other than the benefits, tourism industry also
faces disadvantages such as creating gender gap by being the tourism industry to be male
dominating, inequalities and the gaps among the employees etc. So therefore, it is very important
to maitain sustainability and growth of the industry over advantages and disadvantage. There are
several types of tourist typologies such as Cohen Tourist Typology, Amex Tourist Typology,
Smith Tourist Typology, and Plog's Tourist Typology. One of the typologies are being described
here. Cohen Tourist Typology states to categorise tourist into different types based on their
knowledge of sociology and anthropology and has divided the tourist in four different categories
such as Organised mass tourist, Individual mass tourist, Explorer and Drifter. Organised mass
tourist refer to those group that are organised and seeks the familiar over novelty. They usually
purchase package tour and had little connection with the local culture or people. The individual
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mass tourist are mostly similar to organised tourist and travel alone. They mostly preferred
centralised booking, schedule flights etc (Yoo, and et.al., 2018). The next category is Explorer as
they tends to travel new places and tends to explore new cultures experience and actively
participate and rely on modern amenities. These category people enjoy local food and shop. The
next category is drifter. They have real and deep immersive experience to stay with local people
rather than staying in the hotel. In comparison to others, these tourist prefer to stay for long term.
They opt novelty over familiarity. This typology is easy to use as it categorize the tourists. It
helps to understand the tourist demand and desire to improve overall quality of tourism. People
belonging to several religion, culture, values and beliefs meet, so it is quite obvious that
differences of culture will occur but at the same time behaviour of the tourist that the difference
is being praised or criticised by them. Thus we can say that tourism and the culture have neutral
relationship which can sometimes strengthen the competitive and attractiveness of the
destination. Tourists are motivated through intrinsic and extrinsic travel. Intrinsic travel
motivation generally refers to motivation got from personal satisfaction. In other words, it is
determined by an internal factors. Extrinsic travel motivation refer to those motivation that is
determined by the external forces of possible rewards or prevention of negative result.
CONCLUSION
In the above essay, we have focused on providing an overview of tourism industry and its
positive as well as negative impact on the society which has been highlighted through different
sociological, theories, practices and principle. And also have discussed about the importance of
tourism growth and development. We have also highlighted Tourism Life Cycle model which
has been used to show the relationship of tourism and the society. This essay also included the
study of external factors of tourism industry having impact on the society through PESTLE
analysis. Tourism on the one hand generates employment and improves standard of living and
on the other it also contributes to the GDP of the country. Tourism helps to maintain the
traditional things and the culture as many of the tourist mainly visit the for experiencing the
beauty of that country's tradition and culture. We can thus say that tourism has several
consequences, that are influenced by a large number of factors, especially the ability and
willingness of the community to accept changes. For some people, tourism is one of the options
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for economic survival. Overcrowding of the tourist make create complications and pollution in
the country. The tourism industry in UK is planning to maintain the sustainability of tourism
industry and to protect the environment against the pollution. For that the government can
implement strict restrictions towards the pollution.
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REFERENCES
Books and Journals:
Abram, S. and Waldren, J., 2021. Introduction: Tourists and tourism—identifying with people
and places. In Tourists and Tourism (pp. 1-11). Routledge.
Dodds, R., 2019. The tourist experience life cycle: a perspective article. Tourism Review.
Fang, W.T., 2020. Tourism in emerging economies. Springer Singapore.
George, R., 2021. The Tourism and Hospitality Marketing Environment. In Marketing Tourism
and Hospitality (pp. 183-219). Palgrave Macmillan, Cham.
Gill, A.M., 2018. Understanding the evolving relationship between tourism and nature in an era
of sustainability. The Sage handbook of nature, pp.79-104.
Tereshko, E. and Gintciak, A., 2020, November. Regional Innovation System in Context of
Pandemic COVID-19. In Proceedings of the International Scientific Conference-Digital
Transformation on Manufacturing, Infrastructure and Service (pp. 1-7).
Yoo, and et.al., 2018. Tourist motivation: an integral approach to destination choices. Tourism
Review.
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