Comprehensive Analysis of the Travel and Tourism Sector in the UK

This report provides a comprehensive analysis of the travel and tourism sector, focusing on the UK. It begins with an introduction to the sector and its significance, highlighting its historical development, from early travel to current trends. The report then explores the structure of the travel and tourism sector, including travel industry components like distributors and regulatory bodies, and tourism industry elements such as accommodations and tour operators. The analysis extends to the functions of government, government-sponsored bodies, and international agencies like the World Tourism Organization and VisitBritain, detailing their influences on the sector. Furthermore, the report examines the factors affecting tourism demand, the interplay of supply and demand, and the positive and negative economic, environmental, and social impacts of tourism. It concludes with strategies to mitigate negative impacts while maximizing positive ones, providing a well-rounded overview of the sector's complexities and dynamics.

Travel and Tourism Sector

TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................3
TASK 1 ...........................................................................................................................................3
Key historical developments in the travel and tourism sector.....................................................3
Structure of the travel and tourism sector....................................................................................5
TASK 2 ...........................................................................................................................................6
Analyzing the functions of government, government sponsored bodies and international
agencies........................................................................................................................................6
Influences of local and international agencies.............................................................................7
Implications of political change in different nations ..................................................................7
TASK 3 ..........................................................................................................................................9
Factors affecting tourism demand................................................................................................9
Effects of supply and demand ...................................................................................................10
TASK 4..........................................................................................................................................11
Positive and negative economic, environmental and social factors...........................................11
Strategies to minimize the negative impacts while maximizing positive impacts.....................12
CONCLUSION .............................................................................................................................12
REFERENCE.................................................................................................................................14
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INTRODUCTION
The word tourism refers to association of people to meet purposes such as recreation,
business work or leisure. This sector has extended and is now the largest industry of UK. There
are more than 600 million tourists who visit UK thereby contributes in total revenue earning of
the nation. 5% UK's growth is achieved through travel and tourism. In world, UK is 8th biggest
tourist destination (Boniface and Cooper, 2009). In UK, London has been the major tourist
destinations as it is place of various major and appealing attractions for ample of visitors from all
across the world. According to 2011, London was evidenced 15.3 million numbers of visitors.
The place is a location of famous art galleries and museums. Victoria and Albert Museum,
Natural History Museum, Science Museum, National Gallery etc are some of them. In this
report, key historical development of travel and tourism in UK has been focused. Along with
this, role played by different regulatory and government bodies have been analyzed. Focus has
been made on detailing the positive and negative impact of tourism with various factors.
TASK 1
Key historical developments in the travel and tourism sector
The key historical development in the travel and tourism sector of London has been
explained in the following points:
Early travel  It is the earliest stage where people in London travel from one
place to another for achieving basic needs.
 This had later been meant to find trade routes for doing business.
For example, development of Mediterranean and Nile Sea (Kimmm,
2012).
Empire Era Development in Empire era were made as:
 Pilgrims: With the collapse of Roman empire, distance was
reduced from 160 to 32 kilometers. People started moving at
Pilgrimages for holy reasons (Hall and Page, 2006).
 Renaissance: Development of Protestantism in London leads to
fall in Jerusalem.
 Grand Tour: Group of ambassadors and statesman leads to
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development of professionals. This leads to development of
various activities such as dancing, sporting, fencing etc.
Post industrial
revolution
 At the time of post industrial time, activities such as transport,
travel, hotels were made separately.
 Post industrial revolution in London developed when Thomas
Cook launched a package which provides different activities as a
whole.
 Business men took initiated of integrated service packages.
 This period was marked as a growth of bundle of activities in
combination for expansion of travel and tourism.
Current
developments
 The current developments in travel and tourism sector had
expanded.
 It now started providing various services such as transport,
holiday packages, medical facilities, time, money etc.
 In London, the competition developed with the rise of various
organizations who provided travel and torus packages.
 For example, current developments has shown growth of
restaurants, hotels, motels, inns etc.
There are certain factors which facilitate growth of travel and tourism industry of
London. It has been possible with the different factors detailed as follows:
 Technology: London has East London Tech City which is a cluster of technology in the
city. This provides the tourists and local people to utilize best of same for their
development and to meet various purposes.
 Infrastructure: For tourists, London has well equipped infrastructure facilities. For
example, The Thames Water Ring supplies water in London. There are about 188
telephone exchanges in the city itself. Different power stations provide electricity all the
time.
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 Attraction: In London, there are various places which are meant for tourist attractions.
They are Tower of London, Buckingham Palace, British Museum, London Eye etc. It
covers all aspects such as culture, entertainment, natural resources etc.
 Hospitality: London is rich in various places that are major attraction for tourists. They
get all the facilities with all resources and development needs.
 Social conditions: It covers the group of people residing in London. This city has vivid
group of individual who possess certain social group, lifestyle, background, working
class, demand, perception etc.
Structure of the travel and tourism sector
Travel and tourism in London is one of the leading destinations in the world. This sector
consists of various sub-sectors which are discussed as follows:
Travel industry
Following presented is the basis structure of the travel industry of London which is
classified in following ways as follows:
 Distributors: The work of distributors in this industry is to provide a linkage between
supply of goods and services. They connect customers with the firm, travel agents,
operators etc.
 Regulatory bodies: The role of these controlling bodies is to monitor the working of
different organizations in travel and tourism sector. For example, Civil Aviation
Authority (CAA), Association of British Travel (ABTA) etc (Damonte, Collins and
Megehee, 2013).
 Public sector organizations: Various departments of UK government also play role in
travel industry. For example, Department for Culture, Media and Sport, Department for
Transport (DfT), Department for Culture, Media & Sport (DCMS), Foreign and
Commonwealth Office (FCO) etc. Industry players: Certain organizations are outsources by companies to meet purposes.
For example, cab is hired by T&T Company for outing of their clients.
Tourism industry
On application of Leiper's Model, tourism system of London has been detailed on five
ways. These are departing Travelers, Traveler Generating Region, Transit Route Region, Tourist
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Destination Region and Returning Travelers. The Departing traveler works as an individual basis
whereas next three components are referred as geographic elements (VisitBritain, 2015). The
significance of tourism industry is to available various goods and services by considering factors
such as economic, technological, physical, political, legal and socio-cultural factors. Others have
been mentioned below in context to London:
 Accommodations: It is provided by varieties of alternatives available for tourists.
 Tour Operators: This is inclusive of four main firms namely, TUI, MyTravel, Thomas
Cook, First Choice. They have vertical integration which operate at more than one market
 Tourism agencies: There is a refgulatory body which includes office and board. They
work and are responsible for promoting UK oversee visitor named as Visit Britain.
 Conferences and exhibitions: They pave significance to location and add value and
services at place. The role of this sponsorship is to provide customer care.
 Public Sector Organizations: They are responsible for offering support to tourism and are
inclusive of DCMS, Visit Britain, English Heritage, FCO etc (Liu, 2006).
 Industry players: The Tourism Alliance shows views to the government and is firms such
as care hire organizations etc.
TASK 2
Analyzing the functions of government, government sponsored bodies and international agencies
UK has been emerged as a hub of travel and tourism in the world. It is made possible
with the support of various government functions, sponsored bodies and international agencies.
In UK, all the activities of T&T are achieved through various regulatory bodies. Some of them
are analyzed on basis of functions and roles as follows:
 World Tourism Organization: The international agency of United Nations who works for
providing sustainable T&T development. Promoting UK on economic, environmental
and other ways is the contribution of WTO (Tsiotsou and Ratten, 2010). The functions
are analyzed to boost Global Code of Ethics for Tourism, development of tourism
market, competitiveness etc.
 Department of Media, Culture and Sports: The department working at national level of
UK which provides support to culture and sport in London (Department for Culture,
Media and Sport, 2015). It promotes use of certain activities for example, digital
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economy, Olympic Games etc. They play role to give equal opportunities to various
industry players. The core lies in developing artistic and cultural heritage development.
 VisitBritain: In the same vein, there is VisitBritain which is a government tourism agency
and a non-departmental public organization in UK. Being funded by Department of
Culture, Media and Sport, it works to support T&T (James, 2000). They provide initiative
to create global network and create competitiveness. This is another way for engaging
people in maximum investment and partnership working.
Influences of local and international agencies
Local and national economic policy influences the success of the travel and tourism
sector in both direct as well as indirect ways. Travel and tourism is broader arena which takes
into account several facets. The economy of the country is affected as a whole when the business
organizations work to earn revenue and profit. Various external factors have different
implications with respect to influence the travel and tourism sector. Regarding UK, the role
played by local and national economic policy is responsible for growth of travel and tourism
sector. Influences of these bodies with reference to UK have been made. This has been
elucidated in the table given below:
Influence of policies
by local government
bodies
 It is a basic body that influences the working of travel and
tourism sector at basic level.
 They formulate policies and plans to manage the working
of tour operators and organizations.
 Their policies are generated with an aim to cover the aspects
such as resorts, locations etc.
 The significance of framing these policies lies in creating
roles and responsibilities with an intention to do work
efficiently.
 They influence the working of travel and tourism industry to
develop working at healthy pace.
 It secures the working and operations to go through
negatively influenced that affect the organization.
 Local government develops new policies and altered some
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of the existing ones.
 For instance, security is one of the aspects that local
authorities in the country are paying a lot of attention to.
Additionally, some changes also have been made to
economic policies of the country.
 These aspects support increase revenue through this sector,
tax rates on different travel and tourism products etc.
Influence of
International
organizations
 The influence of policies formulated by international
organization also supports the travel and tourism operations
in healthy manner.
 Various international bodies are inclusive of both
government and non government bodies.
 The core behind their policy formulation lies in looking
after the roles and responsibilities at a large scale in case of
arising problems.
Influence of United
Nations World
Tourism Organization
 Since it is a specialized agency of the UN.
 The influence of these international bodies in framing of
policies and plans are also widened.
 It acts as a practical provider of global forum for the
activities and the unsolved issues.
 They play role to influence the working and operations of
Tours and travels business by generating Global Code of
Ethics.
 The core lies in developing tourist attraction and positive
influence of the organization on various customers.
 In this regards, policies occupies a major and significant
position.
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Implications of political change in different nations
The dimension of travel and tourism has now expanded at global level. As evidenced
from visitors who came from various nations to UK, may cause direct and indirect implications.
However, in similar fashion, there are different nations who do not have similar structure and
working. Hence, it becomes essential to work in accordance with the political stability for the
prosperity of every nation or individual who is a part of travel and tourism (Law, 2000).
However, it is crucial to study the implication of political change in different nations of the
world. The central idea behind the same is to bring stability in work and positive consequences
of economic status. In order to examine the political implication, following three nations have
been discussed as follows:
Ukraine:
Ukraine has been a major attraction place for the tourist. With about more than 20 million
of visitors coming from abroad, it has enabled it to become 8th most famous tourist destination in
the world (Inskipp, 2008). The place has been developed with effective location of
accommodation, infrastructure, transport and other facilities of Travel and Tourism. However,
since the nation is backward in some extent, the country has backward image. But, it possesses
rich cultural, religion and historical aspects.
Regarding political factor prevailing in Ukraine affect the working and operations in
certain ways. In similar regards, there are certain travel and tourism policy formulated in
Ukraine. For an example, in this light of policy at Ukraine, visitors from outside now can enter
into Ukraine without Visa. The significance of this policy made by Ukraine is to attempt positive
promotion of developing traveling in its nation (Major and Evans, 2008). However, in contrary
to same, negative impact of this policy may have on nation. Therefore, strict regulation and eye
on tourists are to be kept by Ukraine on other nations.
China
The working and operations of this nation are progressive at gradual basis. All the top
leaders of the nation and senior officials are responsible for forming different policies and
programs for supporting country's growth and progress. This is evidenced from the fact that
China is the 4th largest country in the world with population of about 55 million as per 2007
(Iwashita, 2008).
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Regarding travel and tourism received by China from other nation is supported by 41.9
billion US dollars (Dickinson and Lumsdon, 2012). In respect to the travel and tourism of this
nation, the political stability also focuses on political condition of the country. Overall good
spending shows that traveling in this country has been developing. This is all because of political
changes that are bought by the China. For example, the country has developed National Tourism
Policy which carries an objective of bringing new changes in the nation. The core lies in
developing travel infrastructure in China. In this way, China and its political system is working
to continuously bring improvement in planning strategy for attracting number of tourists.
TASK 3
Factors affecting tourism demand
According to the given scenario, the TUI Group has appointed a new manager. As a part
of new job, it is vital to make him aware regarding the things that are required to be considered
for taking into account in fulfilling the demand of customers. In an order to provide the best of
experience regarding travelling and destinations trip, there are various aspects which are required
to be considered for meeting the taste and preference of visitors to give the best of travelling
experience on behalf of TUI Group.
The tourists play very vital role in development of travel and tourism of the nation. In
similar context, UK also paves great importance to its customers as visitors from different
nations of the world. This is only made effective and possible because of the best of services and
facilities that are provided by the tour operators groups such as TUI Group who are so committed
and dedicated for giving varied travelling experience to different destinations of the world to
clients. Therefore, significance is given to provide various tourists with the various facilities and
arrangement that support in making their travel and trip successful. In the same vein, there are
various factors which are required to be considered which influence or affect the demand of
tourist. For instance, economy factor is one such category which is includes exchange rates, price
level of the country (George and Swart, 2015). Political change is one more factor that should be
consider in expansion of EU, environment and taxation policy of the UK government. In a
streamline, hazards such as terrorism, earthquake, flood etc are also considered which affect the
UK and its working. Some more factors that affect the tourism demand in UK are discussed with
respect to TUI Group and are as follows:
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 Economies: It includes various aspects such as population of UK, their lifestyle, standard
of living etc. This is considered as a factor which affects the economy and travel and
tourism of nation as their classification into various group influences and determines the
demand of certain things. TUI considers and takes it as very biggest factor in
implementing varied services and facilities for its customers. Place, region, location, age
group, gender, their preference, perception are all sub factors which have direct influence
on the demand. For an example, majority of UK population includes old age people. This
calls for an establishment of Grey tourism which refers to travel and tourism for large
group of population who are above age of 55 years. This is the speculation which is made
generally that this old age group will cause adverse impact on tourism and thereby affect
the economy of UK. Manager at TUI must take in account all the above specified factors
while planning its travelling plan.
 Level of political stability in a country: Political regulation is required to manage the
working of the UK. It is required to be balanced for carrying out the suitable exchange of
tourists from all over the globe. Therefore, UK is required to undertake practice of
activities which matches well with the factors such as religion, culture, tradition, social
group of the country. In similar fashion, rules and regulations of the UK government
reform and change from time to time (Pownall, Jones and Meadows, 2008). For example,
in UK, equal working and growth opportunities exist for private and public sector
organizations. This attracts the tourist to meet every type of their demand and need.
Hence, by considering the way of doing its services and operations in UK, the TUI is
firmly dedicated to carry out its roles and responsibilities in adherence with Political
environment.
 Influence of currency exchange rates: The currency rate has always been the most crucial
factor which is required to be taken care. For example, when tourist from another nation
comes, all the payments are essentially to be made in currency of home country. In
context of adverse situation, where there occurs fall in UK currency, the pound may
affected thereby affect the travel and tourism. TUI arranges trip for its clients all across
the world. Hence, they are requiring managing their workings and operations as per the
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prevailing currency of the country in which they are conducting its trip or destination
visit.
 Work patters and workforce: The employee employed by UK is British citizens. In order
to meet the different need and demand of people coming from abroad, UK is requiring
being equipped. In contrary to same, if they were not met with any kind of need, they
would not be able to enjoy the trip to UK. Therefore, workforce need to be well
developed as well to support appropriate travel and tourism. For TUI, customers are very
crucial and hence they believe in developing their destination trip according to taste,
preference and habits of customers and their demand. On the other way round, the focus
of TUI manager should be on its employees and their training for gaining good feedback
with respect to customer satisfaction.
 Environmentalism: Tourism is highly affected by the suitable and clean environment. In
similar vein, UK also takes it into consideration (Sigala, 2012). Travel and tourism of
UK, therefore provides various products such as green tourism, Eco-tourism, etc. This is
because of rising demand of the visitors coming from, abroad. Every planning of TUI
must comprise of policies and plans that are formulated with respect to environment.
Effects of supply and demand
Travel and tourism has emerged as a global business which covers certain aspects. The
central idea has now focuses mainly on earning revenue and profit. Organizations in UK who are
involved in providing various packages and services have been developed. TUI is one among the
major tour operators in UK. By considering travel and tourism sector, there objective of these
tour operators is to offer maximum varieties of services and facilities to accommodate the tourist
and customers (Major and Evans, 2008). For example, TUI, which is one of the pioneer tour
operators accommodate tourist from all over the world in the best way possible. Commencing
from simple holiday package provided by similar tour operators to the vivid accommodation
facilities, the efforts are infused to provide and meet their demand with the supply. For example,
TUI provides packages which are designed on the basis of levels and affordability of the
customers. It is available in various forms according to the requirement of room, food and
facilities. It is all determined on the basis of customers need and aspiration. These are some
aspects which are planned by keeping into consideration the demand of the tourists.
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