What Is The Importance Of Tourism And The Environment

Tourism is the world’s largest industry with nature-based ecotourism seeing rapid growth since its initial arrival in the 1980s. It is estimated by the World Tourism Organisation that nature tourism generates 7% of all international travel expenditure (Lindberg, 1997) and this figure will have increased rapidly over recent years. It’s increase in popularity is due to a number of factors; tourists becoming increasingly bored of the typical sun, sea and sand holiday’s, the increase in global awareness or environmental issues such as global

Making tourism more sustainable is not just about controlling and managing the negative impacts of the industry. Tourism is in a very special position to benefit local communities, economically and socially, and to raise awareness and support for conservation of the environment.

Tourism plays a significant role in sustainable development and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the World Tourism Organization (WTO) wish to encourage all countries to make sure that their policies and actions for its development and management fully embrace the principles of sustainability. Likewise, policies to promote sustainable development should take full account of the opportunities offered by tourism. Various international conventions and declarations have put forward principles and guidelines for sustainable tourism and the importance of tourism and its sustainability was underlined at the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development. Many countries declare that they are pursuing, or wish to pursue, policies for ‘sustainable tourism’. Despite this interest, there remains a degree of uncertainty over the scope and priorities for making tourism more sustainable and only partial appreciation of how to put this into practice (Making Tourism More Sustainable, 2005).

Eco-tourism is when you travel to a natural space and appreciate nature and protect the environment. You also learn the past and present of the destination.

Indigenous communities, which have otherwise been left untouched by traditional tourism activities, have now been targeted for a new tourism venture, ecotourism. A relatively new variant, ecotourism is described as environment-friendly, sustainable and nature-based. It came about as a response to the world’s growing environmental awareness. This activity involves “visiting relatively undisturbed natural areas with the aim

Ecotourism began in Costa Rica in the 1970’s. It was very small and began to grow exponentially in the late 1980’s. In 1970 Costa Rica had a GNP, gross national product of 1000 million in 1995 that number nonuple to 9000 million. Many consider 1978 the first year ecotourism began in Costa Rica. At that time, Costa Rica had a GNP/capita of 1500. After the ecotourism boom, the number ballooned to 2000 in 1992. It is evident by the 33% increase in GNP/capita that ecotourism was a positive influence economically on Costa Rica.

When it comes to the topic of ecotourism, most of us will readily agree that it is a less harmful alternative to mass-tourism and that it promotes responsible and low-impact travel to areas where flora, fauna and cultural heritage are the primary drawing power. Where this agreement usually ends, however, is on the question of what the impact of ecotourism actually is and what its long-term consequences are. Whereas some are convinced that ecotourism provides the basis for sustainable development, particularly in places that suffer from exploitation and excessive resources’ usage, and that could only improve the general conditions of the local people, others maintain that we are still far from true ecotourism, for many are those in the

Most people hear the word ecotourism and immediately tune out because they assume it does not apply to them. Well you know what happens when someone assumes. The facts are that at a point in someone's life their parents dragged them to go on a tour of a some sort of nature. The parents probably told them not to hurt it and in doing so they have been an ecotourist! Ecotourism is responsible travel to natural areas or nature-based areas that conserves the environment and preserves the well-being of local people. Some ecotourists mess up sometimes and others do not. Although many people think Ecotourism is butchering the environment, it actually can be beneficial for the environment and the people involved.

Among a hundred of developed industries, tourism is regarded as one of the most promptly growing fields in the world, and eco tourism is one of its ahead rising categories. There are more and more countries has been placing eco tourism sector priority over others for their market growth, because they acknowledge not only its ecological, cultural, but also economic values. More to the point, this sector has a sharp affiliation to the term of mindful or socially conscious tourism; However, it has not been fully understanding by many travellers and tourism associations? Mindful or also called socially conscious tourism is travel without taking advantage of local workers and cultures, but with minimal environmental influences. There is a fact that this industry has brought a huge beneficial to all the world countries’ economic, but people as tourism organization and tourists are exploiting

At last, the ecological element is also important when investigating the business environment and the CSR has gradually ended up coordinated in numerous associations' business goals. For a hotel industry to be socially, dependable it must finish numerous approaches, for example, submitting to the energy consumption laws, lessening carbon footprint, and connecting with the local community. Then again, the natural disaster has turned out to be incessant. Subsequently, numerous destination spots are intensely influenced and sustainable tourism must be practiced to save natural resources (Levonsky & Conley, 2004).

Some of the definitions of ecotourism have proved popular in recent years. Although any number of principles of ecotourism can be devised, an analysis of definitions such as these indicates that three dimensions can represent the main essence of the concept. According to this interpretation, ecotourism is:

The Travel and Tourism industry is still one of the largest single businesses in world commerce and its importance is widely recognized. The tourism industry is now one of the largest sectors earning foreign exchange. In the face of many benefits, many countries have started assigning due weight age to the tourism industry in their national development agenda. Tourism is an industry that operates on a massively broad scale: it embraces activities ranging from the smallest sea-side hotel; to air-lines, multi-national hotel chains and major international tour operators. Originally, non-traditional industries such as tourism emerged as a solution to strike a balance between ecology and industry

However, the hostile factors of the Europe also discourage sometimes many tourists to travel some region of the Europe. The European concerned authorities of the tourism industry are also aware about the sustainable preservation of the environment. All the tourism policies, plans and programs of the Europe are the environmentally friendly. However, for the excessive snowfall, cold and adverse impact of the environment the tourism industry of the Europe and the tour and travel operators industry face some challenges for the business operation (Allen, 1985).

Table 1 presents the socio-demographic characteristics of respondents. The sampled visitors comprised 70.9% males and 29.1% females. This is inconsistent with the previous studies such as Hu and Lu (2014) that observed that 60.5% of the tourists to ecotourism sites in Zhejang in China were female. The dominant age group of the tourists was 25-54 years, which is the second highest national age group in Nigeria (CIA Factbook, 2016). The majority of the visitors had professional / management occupation. The visitors represented a well-educated segment of the population, with 50.6% having completed Bachelor Degree/ Higher National Diploma. Earlier studies by Coghlan (2011) in Australia’s Great Barrier Reef reported that there were more students and professionals as tourists and were educated. Majority (58.3%) of those included in the study earned less than N18,000 (USD112.5) (USD1= N160 at the time of this study) in a month with 32.0% an indication that their income was lower than the approved minimum wage in the country which is N18,000 (USD112.5). In addition, only 32.0% were members of environment related NGOs; this might be due to low level of the activities and outreach of environment related NGOs in most part of the country. Findings on trip characteristics (Table 2) showed that 80.0% visit the parks occasionally which were an indication that the ecotourists were not frequent in the parks. Furthermore, 76.6% were night visitors, 45.7% were in the

Planning and development are both extremely important factors within the tourism industry and can have both positive and negative effects on the environment, local communities and tourist destinations. “Destination planning aims to limit the negative impacts of cultural tourism upon the history and lifestyles of the local community. An understanding of sustainable tourist development allows for the development of culture without loss of its authentic identity” (Maidment. T. 2012). This statement discusses the importance of planning to avoid having any negative impacts on environments and communities. Because the effects of tourism are so severe to destinations, many natural and cultural resources have been destroyed, therefore tourism planning is vital to preserve and maintain these places for future generations.