Tourism

Introduction:

Tourism is related to travelling and travelling in naturally a human character. Man need change and travel provides the change. The great American writer Mark Twain has aptly said that even heaven can be boring after a while. Travel has had a fascination for man. He has been travelling throughout the ages. During that time travel was there but “tourism was not there”. Because travel was not undertaken for the purpose of pleasure at that time and their motive was not to seek holiday from the routine work. The primary motive of their travel was trade and commerce or pilgrimage or to explore. The basic concept of tourism is pleasure at leisure but this was not there at that time. When people learned to travel for pleasure, the concept of tourism started. Learning to differentiate between work and leisure created tourism. So tourism is related to the movement of people from the place to another in leisure time for the purpose of getting pleasure.

The word “Tourism” did not appear in English language until the early nineteenth century. The word was derived from French language “tourisme”. The literal meaning is “the practice of touring or travelling”. It is a new concept and its significance was fully realized recently. Tourism is the most recent and significant phenomena of modern times.

Some authors describe tourism as a system. Tourism as a system consists of four interrelated parts: Market, Travel, Destination and Marketing. Market is the customer or potential customer as tourist. The second segment of tourism is travel, which includes mode of transport. Third segment is destination. The destination includes attractions, accommodation and facilities. The business organizations involved in this process jointly or individually encourage people to travel through the process of marketing and different organization are involved in providing services. So in this sense tourism involves different aspects.

Tourism is a compound of different elements. It does not exist in isolation. To understand tourism it is necessary to know about the various components, which together make tourism. Tourism is made of four aspects as follows:

Attraction-Local

Accessibility that is transport

Accommodation

Amenities-Facilities/Services

All the above of definitions and discussions bring out the two main aspects the first is the purpose of travel and their second is the time limit. In this sense we may include following points while discussing tourism.

1.       Tourism arises from a movement of people to various destinations. All tourism includes an element  of travel but all travel is not tourism. Routine and local travel is not included within tourism.

2.       Tourism is an economic activity. The movement and the activities of the non-resident need to generate economy at the destination they visit.

3.       Tourism involves two basic activities: The journey to the destination and activities at the destination.

4.       The movement to destination is of a temporary, short term character, with the intention to return within a few days, few weeks or months.

5.       Tourism is the creation of leisure for the purpose of pleasure.

6.       Tourism involves the element of trust.
7.       Tourism has the element here and there.