Tourism

Local tourism

Tourism can be defined as travel away from home for recreation or leisure. Tourist activity may last no longer than a day (day-trippers) or may have a longer duration of several weeks. Some types of travel - such as gap years - may last up to one whole year. However, a movement that lasts for more than one year is usually regarded as migration.

Tourism is part of the tertiary or service sector. Its roots are sometimes said to lie with the spa towns of the Victorian age. At this time, low average incomes made tourism the exclusive preserve of a minority of rich people. However, rising incomes over time have allowed more people to become consumers. Rising wages (achieved through a combination of political campaigning and the opening-up of higher education opportunities) have allowed mass tourism to develop.

Changes in working patterns - with more people entitled to longer annual holidays and the abandonment of Saturday working and schooling (for the majority) - have left people with more time for consumption of tourist services.

Tourism is sometimes a vital tool for local economic development. Visitors spend money which can initiate a local multiplier effect. This involves greater amounts of money circulating in a local economy, allowing threshold levels for additional higher-order services to be met. If effective, the process becomes self-sustaining and circular. 

Natural resources, such as physical landscape or coastline, are often vital to the success of tourist ventures. For instance, ski resorts rely on the continued presence of snow to make their economies sustainable. However, historical and cultural resources for tourism are also important (such as the associations a region may have with a particular writer or film e.g. New Zealand has benefited from the filming of Lord of the Rings there).

How will climate change impact on the UK's tourist industries? 

Climate change will bring challenges and opportunities for tourism in different parts of the UK. In the short-term, it could be perceived as "good news" for coastal resorts, especially in northern England (e.g. Blackpool and Southport) where cooler weather deters visitors out of season. For instance, a 2006 report in The Sun newspaper showed ordinary Britons enjoying themselves at the seaside quite late into the autumn: http://www.thesun.co.uk/article/0,,2-2006480078,00.html

Even further north in Scotland, many tourist workers suffer from seasonal unemployment. Visitor numbers are so low out of season that many businesses shut down until summer returns, especially in the Highlands and Islands region. Could warmer temperatures bring better conditions for workers?

Unfortunately, the complexities of climate change do not necessarily guarantee a brighter future for northerly tourist resorts. Warmer temperatures will result in increased evaporation over the North Atlantic which could bring enhanced frontal rainfall to northern and western areas of the UK. In most climate change projections, summer and winter rainfall actually increases over the north of the UK.

Tourism in parts of northern Scotland is also vulnerable to climate change on account of an over-reliance on snow-boarding and skiing. As a result of lower snowfall and greater rates of melting, some climate change experts are predicting that the entire Scottish ski industry will cease to exist by mid-century. Since the late 1980s, the number of ski days enjoyed by Scottish resorts has fallen by a quarter, while the number of lift passes sold has fallen by a half. Both Glencoe and the Glenshee ski resorts are now for sale. (Swiss technicians - facing similar worries - have recently used special insulating PVC foam to protect parts of the Gurschen glacier, which is currently receding by about five metres a year.)

A further threat to tourism in coastal and low-lying regions is the projected sea-level rise that will result from thermal expansion of the oceans as temperatures rise (as well as an increasing volume of melt-water from land-based ice in Greenland and Antarctica entering the oceans). Known as eustatic changes, these could threaten coastal resorts in southern England. Settlements such as Swanage could lose sea-front properties and experience a drop in trade. 

Student Practice Question:

Explain why the popularity of tourist destinations can vary over time.

The answer could start by looking at visitor pressures, trampling and pollution all leading to a decline over time. It might then proceed to discuss the Butler model, market saturation and visitor over-familiarity further impacting upon visitor numbers. However, the threat that climate change brings - especially to ski reports - is definitely also worth investigating.