Major Aspects

Now there is one other thing, which we need to think about as well. When people become tourist they travel, they may travel by car, they may travel by air, they may travel by boat. International tourists then travel in all these dimensions.

When we look at the heading: International transport passenger services to non-residents. What this means is that a Chinese traveling to London flying on British Airways He is giving that airfare to British Airways. The money leaves China. On the other hand, if the Chinese tourist uses, let’s say Air China then the money stays in the country. So when we talk about non-residents, this means services provided by a country, which are purchased by non-residents. Look at the figures, we think then it’s about 216 US billion a year, which is an average of 4 billion dollars each day. That should be added to the tourism receipts figures.

Why do people travel? One of the most fundamental questions in tourism, because if we know why people travel, then we can develop our tourism industry, our tourism business to match those expectations. And again the most recent figures available from UNWTO in 19 nations were tourism organization. It’s that 53% of people travel for leisure purposes. Leisure is a huge term, it means anything traveling for cultural reasons, traveling for sports reasons, traveling for recreational reasons, traveling to go to the beach. So many other things under this umbrella, 13% travel for business and professional reasons. We call these business travelers. 17% for other reasons. V.F.R. simply means visiting friends and relatives. So Chinese go to London, why? Because they got relatives there.

And this is often a major motivator in determining travel patterns. Religious purposes. If we look at the figures in India, then you find in domestic tourism certainly. We are over 40% of all trips are for religious reasons. More people are now traveling for health reasons and some sectors of tourism. Which is emerged probably of the Last 15 years is medical tourism. And 7% people we don’t know why they travel. This is outside the focus of my lecture. But the purpose of travel is incredibly important in understanding tourism demand, and also in understanding what it is we have to supply to meet that demand.

World’s top tourist destinations. When we look in again in international tourism arrivals, look at those figures, France 82.6 million United States 75.6 Spain 75.6. Look at China then this tells that China receives almost 60 million foreign tourists each year. Okay, ten years ago China wouldn’t have been in the top 10,

so just show you two things: how China has developed its tourist destination and secondly how important it is to the economy. If you look at the receipts, very unusual here, at the top you got the United States, and they are a well developed destination, but of course they’re next to Mexico, and they next to Canada, which means cross-border travel is relatively small. Spain again very very high in term of visitors and earnings. But look at Thailand, Thailand only ranks about 10 or 12 in the tourist destinations list, but it attracts tourists who spend a lot of money there.

Look again No.4 China, ten years ago China wouldn’t have been in the top 10, so what we find now is the emergence of China as a tourist destination, and tourism then is a major aspect of the Chinese economy. I know the Chinese government have described it as a pillar industry particular in western China where it is particularly important. So those brief figures I don’t want to dwell on, but those brief figures will tell us why tourism has become an important international activity.