Analysis of the Negative Impacts of Tourism: A Critical Essay

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The Negative Impacts of Tourism
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NEGATIVE IMPACTS OF TOURISM
Introduction
Tourism is the business or pleasure of travelling. It is also touring practice and a tour operating
business that includes accommodating, entertaining and attracting various people in certain
destinations. Tourism can be both international as well as within someone’s own country. The
origin of the world tourist was from the world ‘turian’ in 1772 which meant ‘turning into a lathe’
(Sharpley, 2018).
This essay will highlight the various issues related to tourism. It will also provide detailed
analysis of the negative impacts of tourism in socio cultural as well as environmental aspects. It
will also discuss about the burning topic of sex tourism in the present world and will highlight
the Doxey’s Irridex Model. Lastly, with recommendations a conclusion of the whole essay will
be provided.
Various issues related to tourism
The various issues that are related to tourism in the current world are plenty. Few major amongst
the various problems are –
 Taxation – this is major issue of the industry as tourism industry is the most taxed
industry. The various taxes are paid in flights, hotels and many more (Ateljevic and Page,
2017).
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 Marketing of travel – throughout years and advancement of media, various fraud and
unreal tourism offers has sprung up. The tourist lack trust on the genuine ones too and
often term them to be false in nature.
 Infrastructure – The infrastructure of mainly tourist destinations are not taken care of
and is very outdated and under developed in nature. This often disinterests tourists.
 Security of tourists – In many destinations, the security of tourist have been a major
concern (Andrades and Dimanche, 2017). Hence, the tourism industry should strengthen
their security infrastructure more. They should boost the security factor of the tourists
without affecting the experience level of travelling within the country.
Negative socio-cultural impacts of Tourism
The negative impacts of tourism in socio and cultural aspects has become a major issue as it
influences a lot of change and loss in local values, cultures as well as identity. Through tourism,
local cultures often turn into commodities as they are reduced as well as sanitized to please the
tourists and meet their expectations (Kim et al., 2015). This gives birth to reconstructed ethnicity.
Another thing countries often do is standardize things for pleasing the visitors. Apart from this, a
loss in the authenticity of the place is also a major problem. They often aim at adapting cultural
manifestations as well as expressions to cater to the demands of the tourists. In this process, the
authenticity and unique culture and beauty of the place is lost. The expectations of tourist also
majorly affect the art and craft industry. They often try to customize their own products to please
and earn more profit from the tourists. Apart from these, there are problems of various culture
clashes like economic inequality, friction of job level and many more. There are also many
ethical issues related to tourism. Some of the major issues are crime generation and child labour
(Caiazza and Audretsch, 2015).
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Doxey’s Irridex Model
The socio and cultural impacts of tourism are measurable with reference to the rate of offence.
Doxey’s Irridex Model is a method of direction often used for measuring the socio cultural
degree of impact. The theory contains a procedure divided into four phases. These phases have
returns in the attitude of the dwellers towards the tourists that is decreasing in nature. The first
phase is known as the phase of geographic expedition where there is a contact in between the
local dwellers and the tourists about frequent happenings (Roberts et al., 2017). The attitude of
these interactions focus on euphoria. The contacts are welcoming in nature and opens
possibilities of supplementing the income in household as major consequences of inflow. The
tourists become a part of the concerns of mundane that transforms the attitude at the onset to an
attitude that seeks interaction for gain that is in personal level.
The next part of the theory focuses on the factor of annoyance. The inundation related to tourism
disrupts the life of mundane with the waiting lines that are developing experienced in public
areas like local shops, jams and many more. A sense of disaffection towards the local people
arises among the tourists. Here the tourists become the main point of focus for incrimination for
developments of the country (Zhang et al., 2018). The impairment in attitude keeps increasing
and turns into a contemplation and comparing mirror for consequences of huge flow of tourists.
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Fig 1: Curve of Doxey’s Irridex Model
(Source: Zhang et al., 2018)
Negative environmental impacts of Tourism
The most negative impact of tourism is on the environment of the tourist spots. A lot of harm has
been caused too many big as well as small countries, which cannot be undone. Tourism has led
to the devastation of ecosystems by increasing septic zones. It has also led to the decline in the
amount as well as quality of available fresh water for drinking. Soil taint and extinction of
wildlife is also a major issue along with many other issues (Zaman et al., 2016). The monolithic
presence of the tourists destroys the ecosystems. This is mainly because often the resource of a
country falls short and unsustainable for the amount of tourists they receive.
Apart from this, the issue of soil taint arises with human activities, which result in the alteration
of chemical environment, and reduces the output of harvest. Trees are also depleted and cut
down for building huge hotels for accommodating tourist. This affects the wildlife in the
particular place too. This leads to unregulated city planning. The major thing of tourism that ha
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turned out to be a serious problem is the huge piles of waste from the hotels and other public
places. They are often dumped in oceans and other water bodies. The non-biodegradable wastes
like plastic often cause death of the marine life. It has been seen that tourism contributes 5% to
the global emissions of greenhouse gases (Dogan et al., 2017). About 90% of this emission is
caused due to the excess transportation used by the tourists all the over the world.
Prostitution and sex tourism
With the growth in tourism, commercial sexual exploitation of women and children are
increasing. It provides an easy access to a lot of sexual exploitation. Sex tourism has become a
major issue. This is the kind of travelling is done for sexual activities. Mainly prostitutes sex
tour. It affects the sexual relationships commercially in between tourists and the local residents
of the destination. Some people who travel to engage in activities of sex are often subjected to
prostitution laws in the jurisdiction of that particular destination. There are ample amount of
times when sex tourism includes children, sex trafficking and non-consensual sexual
engagements. It is illegal in nature in both the tourist destination and the individuals homeland.
When an individual travels all over his or her own country for sexual engagement it is known as
domestic sex tourism (Kempadoo and Ghuma, 2017). Trans national sex tourism is when people
travel across borders to engage in sexual activities.
The industry has a lot of money and resources. It is almost a billion dollars industry growing
rapidly every day. This industry is also beneficial to several other industries like the airkines,
hotels and many more. A few countries very well known for sex tourism are Brazil, Kenya,
Thailand, Amsterdam, Costa Rica, Cuba and Bali. The countries specifically popular for female
sex tourism are Spain, Italy, Jamaica, Egypt, Phuket and many more. Male sex tourism is very
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famous in countries of Japan and Australia. Asia is the largest female sex trafficking hub of the
world (Chambers, 2018).
Fig 2: Countries with sex tourism
(Source: Kempadoo and Ghuma, 2017)
Recommendations
The very first recommendation to overcome the negative impacts of tourism is sustainable and
eco friendly tourism. They focus on sustainability of resources which is a major problem related
to tourism. Tourism drains out a lot of resources like water. Hence, this can be a solution to that
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particular problem. Secondly, the tourism industry should focus on efficient waste management.
They should develop technology that recycle and reuse waste and manage non-biodegradable
wastes. This will save the environment from being affected by plastics and result in more cleaner
oceans and will save a lot of marine life. Thirdly, the host countries can develop more strict laws
for preserving the ethnicity of the tourists destinations and maintaining the local culture and
people. Lastly, countries should keep a strict check in airports and dockyards for preventing sex
tourism and more specifically illegal trafficking of women and children. This will reduce illegal
prostitution of people in the tourist destinations.
Conclusion
Tourism is a thing for rejuvenation and enjoyment. It also has many positive effects. They have a
positive impact on globalisation as well the physical and mental health of the tourists. However,
everything has a positive as well as negative dimension to it. This essay has discussed how
tourism negatively impacts socio cultural and environmental aspects of the tourist spots. It has
also discussed the Doxey’s Irridex theory for explaining the relationship in between tourists and
the local people. It has also highlighted the burning issue of sex tourism. Lastly,
recommendations are provided for reducing such negative impacts. It can be concluded that
tourism industry have major negative impacts on the world which needs to be considered.
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Reference
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Chambers, D., 2018. Whiteness, women and sex tourism.
Dogan, E., Seker, F. and Bulbul, S., 2017. Investigating the impacts of energy consumption, real
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