An Introduction to Tourism Impacts(2)

The last knowledge point in the introduction is about fundamental truth. A scholar named McKercher in 1993 argued that although the impacts of tourism are well documented. However, there is little research has been conducted into why impacts appeared to be inevitable. He claimed that there is a number of what he referred to as structural reality. He used the term fundamental truth which explain why the various effects, particularly adverse effects of tourism are felt. Regardless of the type of tourism activity. McKerchers fundamental truth can be considered as a major influence on tourism impacts. As showed in the slide, tourism consumes resources and creates wastes. Tourism is essentially a resource-based industry. These resources are natural,man made or cultural resources.

Tourism is a consumer of resources. The resources are typically part of the public domain. For example, woodlands, mountains,and hence tourism can be very invasive. Tourism is the industrial activity that creates with sewage,rubbish, and car exhaust fumes common by-products. The next one, tourism has the ability to over-consume resources. The nature man made and cultural resources that tourism relies upon are liable to be over-consumed.

If threshold limits have been reached,adverse effects over large area can occur. This can be in relation to the natural man made or cultural resources.

Tourism competes with other resource users and needs to do this is to survive. To survive it may be necessary for tourism to gain supremacy or competitors. Tourism and other, non-tourism, but leisure related activities often share the same resources. Two people may be doing the same activity, For example,mountain biking,with one being a classified as a tourist, the other as being only involved in recreation. Tourism may also compete with other non-leisure activities, such as agriculture and forestry trip in rural locations.

Tourism is private sector dominated. As much tourism is private sector dominated,the profit motive is the key one. Investment is far more likely in profit centers than a cost center. Governments have had a key role in promoting and developing tourism. But have little involved in controlling it. Voluntary compliance of the industry with environmental protection is almost impossible. The other point,tourism is multi-faceted and is therefore almost impossible to control. Tourism is a very diverse industry, including producers, government agencies as well as a very large number of consumers. In Australia, for example, there were approximately 45000 tourism businesses in the early 1990s. The great majority of these are small independently owed family businesses. Unity only comes through trade associations,which are usually voluntary organizations.

This makes controlling tourism extremely difficult. It is, however, the most difficult challenge facing industry and government agency. In a free market system, it will be very difficult to control, and to restrict expansion of,a diverse and highly unregulated industry such as tourism. Tourists are consumers, not anthropologists. Most tourists are consumers who want to enjoy tourism experiences. Tourists are pleasure seekers and except for minority ,they are not anthropologists. Tourists are trying to escape their everyday life and hence tend to want to over-consume and are generally not interested in modifying their actions in relation to the host committee or environment.

Tourism is entertainment. Most touring products have to be manipulated and packaged to satisfy the needs of tourists to be in the entertained. This can lead to the commercialization of local cultures and traditional activities.

Existing products such as dances, festivals or even religious activities may need to be altered to satisfy the tourists demand. Questions of authenticity are likely to be raised as a result. And this new term, I will explain later. Unlike other industrial activities, tourism imports the clients rather than exports a product. Tourism does not export products, but bring clients to consume the products. This means tourism cannot exist in isolation from the host community. Tourism consumption usually takes place in concentrated geographical spaces. When planning for tourism, local religion and national governments should be aware of the stresses on the physical and social environment. Host communities also need to be aware that tourism is likely to cause a wild range of impacts.

Okay,we finish this part of the fundamental truth. Okay,everyone. now I plan to make a summary. So in this part, we have provided you an introduction to the study of tourism impacts. It has indicated that although tourism impacts tend to be multi-faceted,

It’s conventional to sub-divided them under the following heading: economic, socio-cultural and environmental. It is also convention to present tourism impacts as either positive or negative a smile or a cry face. The nature of particular tourism impacts is related to a variety of factors, including what type of tourism is under discussion, where it is happening, when is happening, as well as the infrastructure for tourism. Ideals put forward by McKercher in 1993 on the commercial and entertainment aspects of tourism have also been introduced and these have been considered in relation to tourism impacts. With the summary, now we finish the first part which we give a introduction to the whole perspective of tourism impacts.