The Development of the Tourism Sector in Eastern Asia: An Analysis

This essay provides an overview of the tourism sector's development in Eastern Asia. It highlights the economic importance of tourism, driven by factors like intraregional travel, socio-economic conditions, and historical aspects. The essay discusses the benefits, such as income generation and employment, but also acknowledges shortcomings like resource overexploitation and uneven distribution of benefits. It explores how governments and organizations view tourism as a tool for development, poverty eradication, and community empowerment. Furthermore, the essay addresses the criticisms of tourism's impact, the integration of political relations in the analysis, and the importance of cross-border and domestic tourism. It concludes by emphasizing the role of economic growth and government policies in the continued development of tourism in the region, while also pointing out the neglect of health issues associated with tourism.

Running head: Tourism in Eastern Asia 1
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Development of Tourism Sector
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Tourism is a business where information, accommodation, transportation among other services is
offered to tourists. It is considered a very important sector by many countries since it generates a
lot of income and foreign exchange. However, maintaining the level of tourists in a country can
be a challenging task. This is because, apart from factors controlled by human such as beauty of
a tourist attraction site, other natural factors determine the level number of tourists visiting a
certain region. Hence, the number of tourist can go down at a certain season, leading to low
income to the country.

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Tourism is the backbone of many countries’ economy (Basu, 2017). Over years, the tourism
sector in the East Asian region has been developing at a complete rapid rate. This is mostly
because of elevated intraregional travel in the midst of East Asian regional residents (Mowforth
& Munt, 2015). Social-economic factors such as accessibility and accommodation,
environmental factors such as good climate and historical factors, have also contributed greatly
to growth of tourism in the region (Sinclair & Yokes, 2018). In the past, tourism in the East
Asian region was regarded as a mere source of income, source of employment or even a social-
cultural event. This has greatly changed since now it is viewed as a tool to cultivate
developments that are locally driven and beneficial to the citizens (Sinclair & Yokes, 2018).
Also, organizations in the region such as governments as well as non-governmental
organizations, view tourism as a great tool to help them achieve their goals of poverty
eradication, empowerment of the community and diversification of livelihood (Mowforth &
Munt, 2015). As much as development of tourism sector in the East Asian region has aided a lot
of benefits in the region, it is evident that it has a number of shortcomings associated with it.
This is because there has been upcoming complains from the residents claiming that the
resources have been overexploited and the benefits gained from tourism have not been evenly
distributed, among other complaints (Basu, 2017). Regardless of all that, there has been creation
of awareness concerning the tourism sector. In the East Asian region, tourism is no longer
confined to apprehending its concussion or local responses but indeed, focuses on coming up
with practical ways in which tourism can serve as a drive to developments (Sinclair & Yokes,
2018). Nevertheless, there has been regular criticism on tourism for development, where it is
viewed as completely small-scale and increasing inequalities among locals (Mowforth & Munt,
2015). A number of various studies are putting political relation in their analysis to investigate

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ways in which tourism can be at per with national policies, ensuring developmental success
(Wood, 2018). Tourism developers and policy makers in the East Asian region have begun view
tourism as a tool to increase foreign exchange as well as ensure growth of economy (Basu,
2017). Encouraging cross-border and domestic tourism is a strategy used in East Asian region to
ensure that the benefits gained from tourism increase, particularly considering the raising
spending power of the economies in the region. Despite the impacts that tourism has positively
made, it remains questionable on up to what extent it can contribute to developments. Health
issues are completely neglected by tourism. Matters such as women health, child mortality and
prevalent disease are not taken into consideration (Sinclair & Yokes, 2018). Conclusively, the
development of tourism in the East Asian region will highly depend on continuous growth of
economy and how willing the governments are, to let foreigners and their own citizens visit their
countries and attractive sites.

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References
Basu, P. K. (2017). Is sustainable tourism development possible? Broad issues concerning
Australia and Papua New Guinea. In Tourism and Economic Development (pp.
140- 149). Routledge.
Mowforth, M., & Munt, I. (2015). Tourism and sustainability: Development, globalization and
new tourism in the third world. Routledge.
Sinclair, M. T., & Yokes, R. W. A. (2018). The economics of tourism in Asia and the Pacific.
In Tourism in south-east Asia (pp. 218-231). Routledge.
Wood, R. C. (2018). The Routledge Handbook of Tourism in Asia, CM Hall, SJ Page (Eds.),
Routledge, London and New York (2017), xx+ 393 pp.,(Hbk.),£ 175 ISBN:
978113878458,(Ebk.),£ 135 ISBN: 978131576825.