Contemporary Issues: Research Report on London Tourist Attraction

This research report, prepared for Southampton Solent University's QH0313 unit, examines the travel and tourism sector in London, focusing on the Tower Bridge as a primary tourist attraction. The report includes an introduction to tourism, followed by a detailed analysis of the Tower Bridge, its hist...Read More

The Research Report

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

INTRODUCTION
Tourism is mainly related to act of the travelling to various locations either pleasure
purposes or business. Travel is concerned to moving from the one location to other. It can be
long run travel, short distance, domestic and different forms. Travel sector has the numerous
aspects of service sector that cater for requires and also desires of those which have travelled
from the single part of world to other. Thomas Cook Group was British global travel group. This
was established on 19th June, 2007 through merger of the Thomas Cook AG and the MyTravel
Group. The main focus of this organisation is to provide the better travelling services to tourists
so that they can gain the better travelling experience (Ainsworth, 2019). The present research is
based on travel and tourism in London. There will be considered the London Bridge as the
tourist attract in London and also analyse the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats.
MAIN BODY
Tourism is the act of movement from one place to another or moving inside and outside
the city, countries and continents. It helps in bringing up the relationship with the strangers and
help to learn the different cultures. Before travelling anywhere one should keep in mind things
like income,time,accommodation and interest. It is basically a time one should spend away from
the home and also get relaxed from all the stress. Tourism somehow refers to the business by
providing accommodations and services. It is a period of short term moment of people from their
residual places. United Kingdom is biggest tourist destination in world with more than 37 million
visiting in year 2018. Tourism sector mainly contributed to GDP. The tourism is developing
sector in United Kingdom and expected to be develop by 3.8% until 2025 (Baecke, 2016).
London is one of the most beautiful destination visited by the tourist and helps the tourist
to attract them by their beautiful places. It has great museums,,theatres, galleries as well as the
best shopping place in the world. Different places make the tourist to stay for long time and visit
the London night life which is amazing as well. Different restaurants are set up at different area
with all types of food available like Italian, Egyptian, Chinese, Thai and at a very affordable rate.
Urban transports are very efficient and buses are the good option to travel London during Day
time (Vane, Beriro and Turner, 2020). There are several things we can see and do in London like
London's west ends presents the musicals like opera which is liked by the people most as this
shows occur twice a week only. Buckingham palace is one of the most visited palace by the

tourist as it is the residence of the royal family (Cookson, 2015). There is a top tip for London in
which the passes are purchased by the person and can visit top 15 museums and the passes are
valid for 7 days. The notable attraction is the London Eye which is a great Ferris wheel located at
the edge of River Thames.
Tower Bridge
Tower bridge is one of the oldest bridge and a famous landmark of London. It is bascule
and a suspension bridge in London on River Thames. It is the movable bridge and is most
attracted by the tourists , between the bridge there is paired of glass walkways which are popular
among the tourists. The base of each tower holding the machines and helps in lifting its parts so
that bridge can allowed passing of river traffic below it. The London bridge is so close to the
Harbor so it was necessary to make in a way so that passing of the ship can be possible. Tower
Bridge is the major crossing of the Thames River. In the year 2008 the Tower Bridge started the
renovations which is lasted for last four years in which metals parts are repaired and lightning
done in a proper way. Next renovation in planned in 25 years. The north side of the bridge is
known as Tower Hill and the south side of the bridge is known as Bermondsey in the area of
Southwark. Various activities takes place inside and outside the bridges for the entertainment of
the tourist these includes the art exhibitions of different artist which is also the major source of
attraction of the artists. The tower of London is an historic place and landmark built by the
William the Conqueror (Davidson and Maitland, 2018). Tower bridge of London is quite heavy
as they have a weight over 1100 tons. The bridge is powered by the coal Burning steam engines
when it was first opened but know they are replaced by electricity and oil. The tower was used to
be less colourful then today as it was of Red, white and Blue in 1977 to celebrate queens silver
jubilee and before this the colour of tower is old brown but now there is a transformation again
the bridge is of bright blue and white. For building the tower bridge 432 workers are needed to
complete the bridge works in 8 years. Tower bridge was built because of the London's fast
growing population which help them in crossing the bridge during ancient time. The bridge
construction was started in the year 21 June 1886 and finished on 30 June 1894. It is the most
striking bridge because of its lifting central sections and when it was opened it is most
sophisticated bascule bridge in the world. The bridge was designed by the Sir Horace Jones,
tower bridge was get its name as it is located next to the Tower of London (Travers, 2015).
SWOT Analysis

It is strategic planning technique that used to help an individual or company to determine
strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats concerned to the business competition. It helps
with decision making and strategic planning as introduces the opportunities to firm as forward
looking bridge to be generating the strategic alternatives. The SWOT is necessary to be point out
that the weaknesses and strengths are backward or current looking, opportunities and also threats
are the forward looking (Deiter, 2020). There has been the SWOT analysis conducted about the
Tower bridge mention below:
Strengths
The Tower Bridge is most recognizable symbol in London. The main strength of Tower
Bridge is Exhibition. In this, people sees the photos, interactive displays, films and also
explaining about the reason of Bridge construction. This destination is for the all age groups like
children, adults, adolescent and old. This must see the attraction for tourists in the London. From
this attraction place, tourists are enjoying the stunning views of the River Thames and famous
landmarks. The Tower Bridge is ornamental of the bridges of London and also has received the
dozens of accolades rather the extraordinary designs (Goodall and Ashworth, 2013). It is one of
the major attraction of London which is attracting large number of tourists for the country which
is the strength of this attraction. With the help of it, the economy of the nation is developing as it
is contributing in the enhancement of national income by increasing the number of tourists every
year.
Weaknesses
The main weaknesses of Tower Bridge is that walkways situated among towers were
closed and being haunt for the prostitutes and pickpockets. Funding is one of the main
weaknesses as for development of the attraction place, government requires the more funds. The
transport for London city have been prioritise the three main cycleway routes as this mainly
seeks to be discourage use of car (Knowles and et. al., 2016). The main weakness of this
attraction is that it requires huge funding for yearly development due to which the government is
required to spend monetary resources to develop it. If the local authorities will not have
sufficient funding then it may leave negative impact upon the mind set of tourists who are
visiting the country on yearly basis. It has been analysed from the weaknesses is that government
or tourism sector of London should focus on make some improvement in the Tower Bridge so
that large number of visitors can be attracted towards it.

Opportunities
There is an opportunities to travel and tourism sector to invest in developing the Tower
Bridge. From this, parents could rest assured that children will be effectively entertained. The
children of all the ages can be try giant hopscotch, roller ball and deck quoits. Other than this, it
is necessary that government should provide the proper guidance about protecting historic
environment. It is necessary that the Tower Bridge management plan should be reviewed on
continuous basis. It is necessary to arranging the funds for long term conservation plans, funding
and prioritised on the basis of conservation requirements. This will help in make the attraction
place better and more attractive or secure (Meng, Cave and Zhang, 2018). It is necessary that
government of London should focus on providing the better facilities to the tourists which come
from different countries. This help in attracting the large number of tourists at Tower bridge.
Threats
Terrorism is one of the main threat for Tower Bridge in London. There was the plotted
terror attack on different tourists hotspots in London. It is a main reason to falling down in
number of the visitors. The another threat for Tower Bridge in London is that there are large
number of the tourist attractions such as Tower of London, The British Museum, Big Ben,
Buckingham Palace and others (Thompson, 2019).
Possibility for its expansion in the future
Tower bridge can be innovative by a creative thinking or by giving the look of 3D in the
bridge which make it more attractive for the tourist. They also use the self sensing materials
through which it can create a real sensors in the mind of people walking on that bridge. The
construction should be made digitally which remove the use of in tower bridge (Pinch, 2015) .
The path way of the bridge can be made up of the transparent glass which give the real feel of
walking on it or by putting the lights bright of the bridge which give a great look during night
times and attract the tourist most can also changer the colour of the bridge by changing it to the
sea green and white which looks bright and create attraction. The bridge should have an another
way of crossing for paddlers due to high traffic on the bridge. Or it can designed in a way where
the top way of the bridge is constructed only for the paddlers so that there is easy crossing of The
river .Their should be an another way if the bridge get broke by mistake so there should be
facilities by which they can protect themselves (Santos and Varejão, 2017). The bridge should
be made up of proper raw material which makes the bridge stable for the long time. The design

of the bridge can also be changed which is also an major point of attraction for the tourist. Tower
bridge can use the fountains sensors on both sides of the bridge (Powell and Iankova, 2016).
CONCLUSION
It has been concluded from above mention information that travel and tourism sector in
London is mainly contributes towards the economy of country. There are different destination
places which attract the people from the different countries. There has been discussion about the
travel and tourism of London. Tower Bridge has been considered as one of the most famous
attraction place in London. There has been SWOT analysis conducted over the Tower Bridge.
Possibility for expansion of Tower Bridge in the future has been studied in detailed manner.

REFERENCES
Books & Journals
Ainsworth, W. H., 2019. The Tower of London. BoD–Books on Demand.
Baecke, E., 2016, September. Reconstruction of Blackfriars railway bridge, London, UK.
InProceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers-Bridge Engineering(Vol. 169, No. 3,
pp. 191-202). Thomas Telford Ltd.
Cookson, B., 2015.Crossing the River: The History of London's Thames River Bridges from
Richmond to the Tower. Random House.
Davidson, R. and Maitland, R., 2018.Tourism destinations. Hodder & Stoughton.
Deiter, K., 2020. Recasting and Refashioning the Tower of London in Milton’s Eikonoklastes
and Paradise Lost.The Seventeenth Century, pp.1-24.
Goodall, B. and Ashworth, G. eds., 2013. Marketing in the Tourism Industry (RLE Tourism):
The promotion of destination regions. Routledge.
Knowles, T. and et. al., 2016. The development of environmental initiatives in tourism:
responses from the London hotel sector. International Journal of tourism research.1(4).
pp.255-265.
Meng, Y., Cave, M. and Zhang, C., 2018. Spatial distribution patterns of phosphorus in top-soils
of Greater London Authority area and their natural and anthropogenic factors.Applied
Geochemistry.88. pp.213-220.
Pinch, P., 2015. Waterspace planning and the River Thames in London.The London
Journal.40(3). pp.272-292.
Powell, R. and Iankova, K., 2016. Dark London: Dimensions and characteristics of dark tourism
supply in the UK capital.Anatolia.27(3). pp.339-351.
Santos, L. D. and Varejão, J., 2017. Employment, pay and discrimination in the tourism
industry.Tourism Economics.13(2). pp.225-240.
Thompson, R., 2019.Chronicles of London Bridge. Good Press.
Travers, T., 2015. London Boroughs at .50. Biteback Publishing.
Vane, C. H., Beriro, D. J. and Turner, G. H., 2015. Rise and fall of mercury (Hg) pollution in
sediment cores of the Thames Estuary, London, UK. Earth and Environmental Science
Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.105(4). pp.285-296.
Watson, C. M., 2020. The Authenticity of Mass Tourism Attractions: Evidence from American
Millennials Visiting the Tower of London.

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