Tourism

Tourism is travel for pleasure or business; also the theory and practice of touring, the business of attracting, accommodating, and entertaining tourists, and the business of operating tours. The World Tourism Organization defines tourism more generally, in terms which go "beyond the common perception of tourism as being limited to holiday activity only", as people "traveling to and staying in places outside their usual environment for not more than one consecutive year for leisure and not less than 24 hours, business and other purposes".

Etymology

The word tourist was used in 1772 and tourism in 1811. It is formed from the word tour, which is derived from Old English turian, from Old French torner, from Latin tornare; 'to turn on a lathe,' which is itself from Ancient Greek tornos (τόρνος); 'lathe'.

Definitions

In 1936, the League of Nations defined a foreign tourist as "someone traveling abroad for at least twenty-four hours". Its successor, the United Nations, amended this definition in 1945, by including a maximum stay of six months.

In 1941, Hunziker and Kraft defined tourism as "the sum of the phenomena and relationships arising from the travel and stay of non-residents, insofar as they do not lead to permanent residence and are not connected with any earning activity." In 1976, the Tourism Society of England's definition was: "Tourism is the temporary, short-term movement of people to destinations outside the places where they normally live and work and their activities during the stay at each destination. It includes movements for all purposes." In 1981, the International Association of Scientific Experts in Tourism defined tourism in terms of particular activities chosen and undertaken outside the home.

In 1994, the United Nations identified three forms of tourism in its Recommendations on Tourism Statistics:

• Domestic tourism, involving residents of the given country traveling only within this country

• Inbound tourism, involving non-residents traveling in the given country

• Outbound tourism, involving residents traveling in another country

The terms tourism and travel are sometimes used interchangeably. In this context, travel has a similar definition to tourism but implies a more purposeful journey. The terms tourism and tourist are sometimes used pejoratively, to imply a shallow interest in the cultures or locations visited. By contrast, traveler is often used as a sign of distinction. The sociology of tourism has studied the cultural values underpinning these distinctions and their implications for class relations.

History

Antiquity

Travel outside a person's local area for leisure was largely confined to wealthy classes, who at times traveled to distant parts of the world, to see great buildings and works of art, learn new languages, experience new cultures, enjoy pristine scenery and to taste different cuisines. As early as Shulgi, however, kings praised themselves for protecting roads and building way stations for travelers. Travelling for pleasure can be seen in Egypt as early on as 1500 BC. During the Roman Republic, spas and coastal resorts such as Baiae were popular among the rich. The Roman upper class used to spend their free time on land or at sea and traveled to their Villa urbana or Villa maritima. Numerous villas were located in Campania, around Rome and in the northern part of the Adriatic as in Barcola near Trieste. Pausanias wrote his Description of Greece in the second century AD. In ancient China, nobles sometimes made a point of visiting Mount Tai and, on occasion, all five Sacred Mountains.

Middle Ages

By the Middle Ages, Christianity and Buddhism and Islam had traditions of pilgrimage. Chaucer's Canterbury Tales and Wu Cheng'en's Journey to the West remain classics of English and Chinese literature.

The 10th- to 13th-century Song dynasty also saw secular travel writers such as Su Shi (11th century) and Fan Chengda (12th century) become popular in China. Under the Ming, Xu Xiake continued the practice. In medieval Italy, Francesco Petrarch also wrote an allegorical account of his 1336 ascent of Mount Ventoux that praised the act of traveling and criticized frigida incuriositas ("cold lack of curiosity"). The Burgundian poet Michault Taillevent [fr] later composed his own horrified recollections of a 1430 trip through the Jura Mountains.

Grand Tour

Modern tourism can be traced to what was known as the Grand Tour, which was a traditional trip around Europe (especially Germany and Italy), undertaken by mainly upper-class European young men of means, mainly from Western and Northern European countries. In 1624, young Prince of Poland, Ladislaus Sigismund Vasa, the eldest son of Sigismund III, embarked for a journey across Europe, as was in custom among Polish nobility. He travelled through territories of today's Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, where he admired the Siege of Breda by Spanish forces, France, Switzerland to Italy, Austria, and the Czech Republic. It was an educational journey and one of the outcomes was introduction of Italian opera in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth.

The custom flourished from about 1660 until the advent of large-scale rail transit in the 1840s and generally followed a standard itinerary. It was an educational opportunity and rite of passage. Though primarily associated with the British nobility and wealthy landed gentry, similar trips were made by wealthy young men of Protestant Northern European nations on the Continent, and from the second half of the 18th century some South American, US, and other overseas youth joined in. The tradition was extended to include more of the middle class after rail and steamship travel made the journey easier, and Thomas Cook made the "Cook's Tour" a byword.

The Grand Tour became a real status symbol for upper-class students in the 18th and 19th centuries. In this period, Johann Joachim Winckelmann's theories about the supremacy of classic culture became very popular and appreciated in the European academic world. Artists, writers, and travelers (such as Goethe) affirmed the supremacy of classic art of which Italy, France, and Greece provide excellent examples. For these reasons, the Grand Tour's main destinations were to those centers, where upper-class students could find rare examples of classic art and history.

The primary value of the Grand Tour, it was believed, laid in the exposure both to the cultural legacy of classical antiquity and the Renaissance, and to the aristocratic and fashionably polite society of the European continent.

Emergence of leisure travel

Leisure travel was associated with the Industrial Revolution in the United Kingdom – the first European country to promote leisure time to the increasing industrial population. Initially, this applied to the owners of the machinery of production, the economic oligarchy, factory owners and traders. These comprised the new middle class. Cox & Kings was the first official travel company to be formed in 1758.

The British origin of this new industry is reflected in many place names. In Nice, France, one of the first and best-established holiday resorts on the French Riviera, the long esplanade along the seafront is known to this day as the Promenade des Anglais; in many other historic resorts in continental Europe, old, well-established palace hotels have names like the Hotel Bristol, Hotel Carlton, or Hotel Majestic – reflecting the dominance of English customers.

A pioneer of the travel agency business, Thomas Cook's idea to offer excursions came to him while waiting for the stagecoach on the London Road at Kibworth. With the opening of the extended Midland Counties Railway, he arranged to take a group of 540 temperance campaigners from Leicester Campbell Street station to a rally in Loughborough, eleven miles (18 km) away. On 5 July 1841, Thomas Cook arranged for the rail company to charge one shilling per person; this included rail tickets and food for the journey. Cook was paid a share of the fares charged to the passengers, as the railway tickets, being legal contracts between company and passenger, could not have been issued at his own price. This was the first privately chartered excursion train to be advertised to the general public; Cook himself acknowledged that there had been previous, unadvertised, private excursion trains. During the following three summers he planned and conducted outings for temperance societies and Sunday school children. In 1844, the Midland Counties Railway Company agreed to make a permanent arrangement with him, provided he found the passengers. This success led him to start his own business running rail excursions for pleasure, taking a percentage of the railway fares.

In 1855, he planned his first excursion abroad, when he took a group from Leicester to Calais to coincide with the Paris Exhibition. The following year he started his "grand circular tours" of Europe. During the 1860s he took parties to Switzerland, Italy, Egypt, and the United States. Cook established "inclusive independent travel", whereby the traveler went independently but his agency charged for travel, food, and accommodation for a fixed period over any chosen route. Such was his success that the Scottish railway companies withdrew their support between 1862 and 1863 to try the excursion business for themselves.

Trends since 2000

As a result of the late-2000s recession, international arrivals experienced a strong slowdown beginning in June 2008. Growth from 2007 to 2008 was only 3.7% during the first eight months of 2008. This slowdown on international tourism demand was also reflected in the air transport industry, with negative growth in September 2008 and a 3.3% growth in passenger traffic through September. The hotel industry also reported a slowdown, with room occupancy declining. In 2009 worldwide tourism arrivals decreased by 3.8%. By the first quarter of 2009, real travel demand in the United States had fallen 6% over six quarters. While this is considerably milder than what occurred after the 9/11 attacks, the decline was at twice the rate, as real GDP has fallen.

In 2020 the COVID-19 pandemic lock-downs, travel bans and a substantial reduction in passenger travel by air and sea contributed to a sharp decline in tourism activity.

However, evidence suggests that tourism as a global phenomenon shows no signs of substantially abating in the long term. It has been suggested that travel is necessary in order to maintain relationships, as social life is increasingly networked and conducted at a distance. Many people increasingly view vacations and travel as a necessity rather than a luxury, and this is reflected in tourist numbers recovering some 6.6% globally over 2009, with growth up to 8% in emerging economies.