26.2 Tourism, the Physical Landscape and Transport
Tourism is a tertiary economic activity. Tourism is travel
for pleasure. It is also the business of of attracting, accommodating and entertaining tourists. Tourists are people who travel for leisure outside their local area (town, city or country).
The physical landscape stimulates tourism. We will examine how the landscape (notably mountains and beaches) and climate influence tourism. We will also look at how tourism relies on and affects transport .
Western Europe is one of the world’s most developed tourist areas. Let’s examine two popular tourist destinations, the Alps and the Mediterranean.
Case Study: The Alps
As we learned in Chapter 4, the Alps are a mountain system located in south-central Europe. They extend for almost 1,200 km, across seven European countries.
2. The Alpine region GERMANY LIECHTENSTEIN SWITZERLAND FRANCE ITALY The Alps AUSTRIA SLOVENIA
Managing information and thinking
Looking at figure 2, identify and name the Alpine countries that are landlocked (surrounded entirely by land). Which of the seven countries has the largest Alpine region?
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FUN FACT! The tourism business
is at least 2,000 years old. It began when the wealthy citizens of
Ancient Rome decided they would rather spend their summers away from the city, and took trips to the countryside and coast.