focus mainly on three areas: politics, economics and, very importantly, the environment.
Just to review something you’ve probably talked about in previous lectures. It’s good to be aware that the best way to talk about tourism is to discuss it as a system. That way you can get a clearer picture of how the elements interact with each other and the surrounding environment. Do you remember the components? The five elements which form the tourism system are, one, tourists; two, TGRs (that’s tourism generating regions); three, transit routes; four, TDRs (tourism destination regions); and, five, tourism industries.
Unit 11, Lesson 2, Exercise C 2.9
Part 2 To start with, then: the political influences on tourism and hospitality. Whether it’s taxation policies, election results or pressure groups, politics has a crucial role to play. Governments often try to protect their country’s businesses by signing up to a regional trading group which imposes tariffs or quotas. In the case of tourism, though, most countries will try to open up as much as they can; although I’m sure that some countries would rather have their own hotel chains establish themselves than have foreign multinationals dominate the market. Governments often encourage foreign companies and visitors to come into the country and visit sites and attractions or set up new operations and tourist venues such as hotels, theme parks and food chains. These things demonstrate the political dimension of business.
But let’s take as an example the influence of election results. Historically, the UK is a good example of how a new government can bring about a major change affecting the business world in general. Let me take you back a few years, probably to before you were born. When Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative government came to power in 1979, it started to address some of the difficulties of state-owned industries in both manufacturing and service sectors.
By the mid-1980s the process of privatization of state industries had begun to change the business landscape for ever. Many new business opportunities were created, particularly in the service sector, of which tourism is a major part. While manufacturing declined overall, it is clear that the business world in general, and tourism in particular, benefited greatly. These politically driven policies have since been copied all over the world.
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Another area which we can include in the political domain is the effect of pressure groups. Governments and businesses have to deal with the political influence and public protests of these groups. No doubt you all know Greenpeace, who campaign on environmental issues: in 1995 their protests made Royal Dutch Shell seem so morally wrong that the company lost about 50% of their sales. Greenpeace are also well known for their protests and campaigns in the area of tourism. Do you remember their protests against Iceland’s whaling industry (getting people to declare they wouldn’t visit the country if Iceland didn’t stop whaling), or against tourism in the Antarctic? Greenpeace is also part of a coalition campaigning to stop the expansion of London’s Heathrow Airport. Greenpeace also works with scientists, public activists and authorities to develop parks and nature reserves with the aim of creating responsible, environmental tourism opportunities that don’t do too much damage. We call this sustainable tourism. There are many other pressure groups which have been able to bring about major changes in public awareness of issues with either positive or negative consequences for business.
The funny thing is – well, I wouldn’t want to call it funny, it’s much more of a challenge – that at the centre of the whole debate about sustainable tourism are issues which the tourism industry finds hard or impossible to control. Why? Well, simply because they need to maximize profit. The hotel industry, for instance, is trying hard to encourage the responsible use of water and introduce waste and energy management through recycling, conservation and alternative energy. InterContinental Hotels was the first to start an environmental audit of its hotels, and in the end they produced an environmental manual for their hotels. Such guidelines have since been adopted into a broader programme which is supported by major hotel chains such as Forte, Hilton International, Holiday Inn Worldwide and Sheraton. There is a growing number of smaller and large tourism and hospitality businesses trying to do the right thing for the environment.
You need to wonder, though, whether these attitudes can have an effect on the mainstream. Mass tour operators are a case in point. Can we really convince these operators, who take the majority of tourists around the world, to prioritize environmental issues? The UN-led Tour Operators’ Initiative for Sustainable Tourism Development is a positive step. However, critics of tour operators argue that they are always going to put their own interests first. The evidence shows that this is especially true with respect to airline carriers. In
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