Travel And Tourism: Like Never Before And Never After
By [KengIsm]
With the latest mount in communication and transportation, traveling, both internationally and domestically has become absolutely trouble free. Whether the reason for your traveling is vacation, business or just an adventure, the large numbers of people involved in travel and tourism industry makes the experience absolutely trouble free.
The travel and tourism industry is one of the biggest foreign exchange earners as every year large number of tourists travel all around the world for some reason or another. While traveling, one can discover variety of people, tradition, culture, climate, landscapes, cuisines, lifestyle, language, costumes, religion and many other unknown facts. This world’s diversity magnetizes people from every genre to visit favorite tourist destinations from all over the world.
There are umpteen numbers of places where one can easily discover a range of tourism options, with various mesmerizing travel and tourism options which varies from adventure, beaches, lush green landscapes, hills, monuments, deserts, mountain peaks, and to diverse flora and fauna. No matter, what are you interested in, travel and tourism opportunity offer you something extra at every step and certainly visiting different places will fulfill your desire.
However, the travel and tourism industry makes it simple to travel all around the world as it provides various traveling agents, travel agencies, tour operators, holiday consultants, airlines, road transport, as well as various hotels to make your stay comfortable. Travel agents or traveling agencies: The travel agent plays a very significant role in the world of travel, as they offer travel and various other services for the individuals who want to travel for business or vacation purposes. Moreover, the travel agencies provides detail information regarding the destination, hotel accommodations, the fastest and the cheapest mode of transport, visas and many more.
The travel agencies are further divided into four main departments i.e. the accounts, travel, tours and cargo. Umpteen numbers of travel agencies are available all over the world to make your travel convenient and easy.
Tour operators: the tour operators manage and organize stay and travel of the travelers, also they conduct various tours to unknown tourist destinations and moreover some tour operators assist them to partake in adventure sports such as rock climbing and river rafting. Holiday consultants: the holiday consultants books the tickets, makes the travel plan, and plan the itinerary and also provide all other details regarding traveling which is required.
Hotels: there are umpteen numbers of hotels that are available all over the world catering the basic requirement of food and accommodation while traveling. These hotels can be booked before going on the trip as well as on the spot. These hotels are available at all range which varies from the most expensive hotels and from least costly hotels according to your affordability.
Banks: there are various banks which are specially affiliated for the travel and tourism industry, the banks provides loans and financial help to the travelers to afford your travel expenditure. Apart there are various guides available which can be hired before going to the destination or can take along with you, which can make your travel easier and can make you familiar about the places and the tourist spots of that place and make your travel easier.
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Iowa Tourism
By John Francis
Iowa is not always the first place people think of when they are deciding where to spend their tourist dollars. But the truth is, Iowa has a lot to offer tourists, and Iowa tourism is on the rise. Perhaps it has to do with the fact that Iowa has tourist activities for each season, and there is always something to do no matter what time of year you are investigating Iowa tourism options.
Facts About Iowa
The many sites available for Iowa tourism have lots to offer. These tourism sites are also happy to give some facts about Iowa for tourists to note. For instance, the capitol of Iowa is Des Moines, which is located in the middle of the state and has a population of over 198,000. The state flower is the wild rose, the state tree is an oak, and chances are pretty good that in the spring and summer you may catch a glimpse of the state bird, the eastern goldfinch. Iowa is named for the Ioway Indians that used to live in that region.
What Can You Do In Iowa?
The question should not be what can you do, but what can’t you do. Iowa tourism is the quintessential travel destination in that it has something for every one. If you like to gamble, you can do it in Iowa. Iowa has some of the best cultural opportunities for tourists. Museums, art galleries, and musical and theater productions are common events in the bigger cities.
If you prefer the great outdoors, Iowa tourism is for you. You can hike, camp, fish, boat and golf on one of the state’s many excellent golf courses. There are plenty of state parks to explore to your heart’s content.
Iowa also offers tourists a rich heritage of history. There are historic sites to visit and learn about in every corner of state, especially along the mighty Mississippi.
And if you are just in the market for a good time, check out Adventureland, one of the best amusement parks around. Thrills and excitement are yours for the taking.
What Else Does Iowa Have To Offer?
Iowa has a tourist bureau that is ready and willing to help you plan your business or personal trip to their state. They can help you with family travel, pet-friendly travel, cheap and discount travel options and lots of information for the business traveler, too. They can give you information on everything from lodging to dining to area airports.
So if you have never thought of Iowa as a great travel destination, think again. Check out Iowa, and you will be pleasantly surprised. It’s no wonder that Iowa tourism continues to grow.
About the Author: Facts about Iowa from tourism to buying and selling real estate.
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travel and tourism industry
Tourists
The origin of the word “tourist” date back to 1292 AD. It has come from the word ?€?tour?€™. A number of experts have defined the term:
“Tourists are the voluntary temporary travelers, traveling in the expectations of pleasure from the novelty and change experienced on a relatively and non-current round-trip”.
“Tourist is a person who makes a journey for the sake of curiosity for the fun of traveling”.
Tourists are:
-Persons traveling for pleasure, health and domestic reason.
-Persons arriving in the sea of sea cruise.
-Persons traveling for convention.
Tourism ?€“ the first commercial venture.
A religious Englishman called Thomas Cook in 1841 arranged, for a fee, a one ?€“day rail excursion from Leicester to Loughborough for 540 members of a temperance league. Thus the first bona fide travel agent was Thomas Cook.
While Cook himself did not make a profit on this first venture, he was a man of vision and was convinced that there was a need for a skilled “travel arranger”. So by 1845 he had become the first full-time travel agent, operating train excursions from Leicester. The next year he chartered a train and steamer for an excursion to Scotland for 330 people. In 1851 Cook arranged ocean steamship travel and accommodations for more than 1,50,000 visitors to the World Exposition in London and in 1856 he operated the first escorted “grand tour” of Europe. Tours to Europe and Middle East were also conducted and, in 1872, the first around the world tour was conducted.
Tourism as a Service Industry
Tourism as a service industry comprises of several allied activities which together produce the tourism product. Involved in the tourism product are three major sub-industries. They are: -
1. Tour operators and travel agents.
2. Accommodation sector (hoteling and catering) and
3. Passenger accommodation.
According to international estimates, a tourist spends 35% of his total expenditure on transportation, about 40% on lodging and food and the balance 25% on entertainment, shopping and incidentals.
The product in this case is not confirmed to travel and accommodation but includes a large array of auxiliary services ranging from insurance and entertainment and shopping, demand generation, in addition to the consumer motivation, is also heavily dependent upon powerful persuasive communication both at the macro (country) level and the micro (enterprise) level. The participants in the process of this service business can be illustrated by the figure below.
Some of the pointers to nature of tourism as a Service Industry
1. Tourism accounts for nearly 6% of world trade.
2. Bulk of tourism business is located in Europe and North America., with 1/8 of the market being shared between the other regions.
3. The highest growth rate in tourism in recent years has been in the third world.
4. Tourism, like most pure services, because of the character of inseparability, exemplifies a product, which cannot be sampled before purchase; the prospective consumers have to travel to a foreign destination in order to consume the product.
5. The major players in the tourism market include a number of intermediary companies. Some of them transnational in character, some of them exhibit
vertical integration, both backward and forward, acquiring interests in all major sectors of this service industry.
The Tourism Product- Factors Governing Demand.
Because of the unique nature of the nature of tourism product- it being an amalgam of the characteristics of a destination and the infrastructural as well as managerial efforts of the promoter, the determinants of tourists demand emanate from both individual tourist motivations and the economic, social, technological factors. Some of these are:
?€? Income Levels
In the last 30 years, disposable incomes around the world have shown upward trends, thus allowing more money for activities like leisure travel. Smaller families have meant higher allocations per person in the family. More and more women are entering the workforce and in real terms the cost of travel has fallen. The dramatic rise of tourism in the last 50 years can be attributed in a large measure to the combined effect of more leisure time and rise in both real and disposable incomes.
?€? More Leisure time:
Increasing unionization of labour right from 1930 onwards has reduced the number of working hours per week. Changing managerial orientations towards human resources have increased the levels of pay and paid vacation time in most developed countries. Now people have longer periods of leisure, which could be allocated to travel.
?€? Mobility
Better transportation and communication services have made the world a smaller place, and have brought both exposure and awareness of distant lands to larger sections of potential tourists across the world. Faster modes of transport have cut down on travel time, making it easier for people to economically plan and execute trips abroad.
?€? Growth in Government Security Programmes and Employment Benefits:
The growth in government security programmes and well entrenched policies of employee benefits mean that quite a large number of families may have long term financial security and may be more willing to spend money for vacations.
Tourist Classification:-
Tourists can be classified into the following seven demand categories:-
1. Explorer: – Very limited in number, these tourists are looking for discovery and involvement with local people.
2. Elite: – People who favour special, individually trips to exotic places.
3. Offbeat: – These are filled with a desire to get away from the usual humdrum life.
4. Unusual: – Visitors who are looking forward to trips with peculiar objectives such as physical danger or isolation.
5. Incipient mass: – A steady flow, traveling alone or in small-organized groups using some shared services.
6. Mass: – The general packaged tour market, leading to tourist enclaves abroad.
7. Charter: – Mass travel to relaxation destinations, which incorporate as many as standardized, developed world facilities as possible.
The Travel Decision:-
The average tourist is faced with considerable uncertainty regarding the decision and may have only scanty ideas about distant destinations. His evaluation of alternatives is also limited to the extent of this awareness about possible destinations. The stages of travel decision can be described as: -
1. Travel Desire:-
The first step where the need to travel is felt and the pros and cons are thought about.
2. Information Collection and Evaluation:-
This stage involves the process of finding out the trip from travel agents, books and acquaintances .information so collected is evaluated against criteria of cost and time constraints, alternative possibilities, relative attractiveness of destinations, perceived ?€?safety?€™ o the alternative destinations etc.
3. Travel Decision:-
This is the decision phase involving selection of destination, travel, mode of accommodation and activities to be undertaken.
4. Travel Preparation and Experience:-
This involves tickets, bookings, travel, money and documents arrangement, clothing and undertaking of the travel.
5. Travel Satisfaction Evaluation:-
The whole tourism expenditure is constantly evaluated before, during and after the experience is used to influence future decisions.
The marketing concept for the travel and tourism industry is profit driven and customer centric (unlike sales which are volume driven and target centric).
Service Marketing Triangle
Service marketing is unique in many ways in the travel and tourism industry. There are 3 players in the transaction process:-
- Company: A travel and tourism company listens to the customers and evolves/develops the travel/tour package and it communicates the attractiveness and the utility of that very tour package directly to the customers. Here it (the company) performs external marketing. The company makes promises to the customers.
- Providers: They are a travel company?€™s internal customers constituting employees and agents. The company does internal marketing with the providers educating and motivating them about the idea of the particular tour package which they can offer to their customers. This is done to enable the providers to effectively carry out the service transaction process. The providers make provisions for office space, accessibility and connectivity. The company enables promises to be kept by this infrastructural association.
- Customers (Travelers): The customers are the reasons that the travel company exists and for whom the company has designed the traveling and touring package as well as set up the infrastructural facilities and spent money on employee development programmes. Here the providers are the only ones who interact with the customers, like the travel agents interact with the customers and not the company. The agents perform interactive marketing which is on-time, all-time, every-time. This is the most crucial aspect of service marketing in the travel and tourism sector. Those agents have the responsibility of ?€?keeping promises?€™ made and enabled by the company. The providers (agents) are responsible for the perceived quality level of the service transaction. This underlines the uniqueness of service marketing.
Tourism Products:
1. Accommodation
?€? Hotels
?€? Motels
?€? Boatels
?€? Flotels
2. Destination
?€? Natural Scenes
?€? Historic Excellence
?€? Artificial Beauties
?€? Social Cultural Excellence
3. Transportation
?€? Infrastructural
i. Airways
ii. Railways
iii. Roadways
iv. Waterways
?€? Local
i. Local transport
4. Tour operators
?€? Travel companies
?€? Travel agents
?€? Guides
5. Shopping
?€? Handicrafts
?€? Handloom
?€? Books
Marketing mix for tourism product:
The designing of the marketing mix variables in case of tourism is significant as it helps the marketer in conceiving the right ideas, particularly to raise the acceptability of the tourist product by stimulating and penetrating the demand. Framing of a proper marketing mix is significant because it helps the tourist organization in accomplishing the objective and projecting a fair image.
Product Mix:
Tourism is a composite product with components like attraction facilities and transportation. Attraction deserves an intensive care. It includes natural site, places of historic interest, events and cultural attraction.
The facilities compliment attraction. The facilities include accommodation, food, transportation and recreational facilities. The transportation component includes the vehicles and infrastructure. Innovation in the tourism product helps raising the sensitivity. The users of the service are looking forward to better and improved product.
The provider of the tourist is a travel agent or the package tour. A well conceived and designed package tour, covering a wide range of tourist attraction at an economic price, helps in attracting the potential tourist.
The travel agent performs numerous activities such as hotel arrangement and accommodation, site seeing arrangement, domestic transport arrangement, air travel arrangement etc.
In a true sense the tour agents and the travel agents are the vehicles who can give a fillip to the tourism industry, provided they are well trained.
Pricing:
Pricing of the tourist product is complex. Geographical location of the destination, seasonality and varying demand affects the pricing decision.
In India the pricing strategies become important for promoting or contracting the tourism industry, since more than 40% of the total population are below the poverty line. In order to develop the tourism industry more and more potential users are to be transformed into actual users.
When a tourist proposes to visit a particular place, the total cost of his traveling also include the expenses incurred on transportation, accommodation and communication.
Liberal pricing strategy is found to be a productive pricing decision, particularly in case of tourism industry. The pricing strategy which includes low income group people, student and retired persons can be more effective. This is possible if the government concessional and subsidized infrastructural facilities to the potential tourist below the average income.
The different pricing methods generally used are cost based pricing, demand based pricing and competition based pricing.
Promotions:
The promotion mix includes advertising, publicity, sales support and public relations.
The purpose of promotion is to make available the information to the user. Advertising the sales promotion can be effective when supplemented by publicity and personal selling.
Radio, TV, newspapers, cinema and printings are some of the important vehicles for traveling of messages. Effective slogans raises the effectiveness of advertisement.
Another important component of the promotion mix is public relation. It helps in projecting the image of an organization. Public relation and publicity include regular articles and photographs of tour attraction, use of TV and travel journalists to promote editorial comment.
Public relation officer plays an important role. He should be efficient, active, impressive, intelligent and well-behaved.
Good image projection can be made if the PRO manages the affair like a professional. It is said that word of mouth is the best form of publicity. The word of mouth promotion is an important tool in tourism marketing.
Place:
The tourist centers should be located at suitable points if the tourists spots are natural there is no question of selection. In a vast country like India with a divergent socioeconomic and cultural patterns, the promotion of domestic tourism encourages unity in diversity.
Infrastructural facilities, transport and communication are important for development of tourist centres. The site selected should have natural surroundings, increased accessibility and improved amenities. At the same time it is also important that the ecological balance is not disturbed. Since growing ecological imbalances leads to pollution, some important steps like promoting afforestation, promotion and beautification may be undertaken in countering the side effects of atmospheric pollution and maintaining ecological balance.
Continued here: travel and tourism industry
Tourism – a Fight Against Poverty
TOURISM ?€“ A FIGHT AGAINST POVERTY
Creating Jobs and Wealth
Poverty alleviation has become an essential condition for peace, environmental conservation and sustainable development, besides being an ethical obligation in an affluent world, where the divide between poor and rich nations seems to have increased in recent years. There is a stronger evidence that tourism if developed and managed in a sustainable manner, can make a significant contribution to alleviate poverty, especially in rural areas, where most of the poor live and where there are very few other development options.
Travel & Tourism is the world?€™s largest industry and creator of jobs across national and regional economies. World Travel and Tourism Council research shows that in 2000, Travel & Tourism will generate, directly and indirectly, 11.7% of Gross Domestic Product and nearly 200 million jobs in the world-wide economy. International tourism arrivals in 2002 exceeded 700 million, generating $US 474.2 billion in worldwide receipts. These figures are forecasted to have an upward trend in 2010.
Jobs generated by Travel & Tourism are spread across the economy – in retail, construction, manufacturing and telecommunications, as well as directly in Travel & Tourism companies. These jobs employ a large proportion of women, minorities and young people; are predominantly in small and medium sized companies; and offer good training and transferability. Tourism can also be one of the most effective drivers for the development of regional economies. These patterns apply to both developed and emerging economies.
The Secretary-General of the World Tourism Organization, Francesco Frangialli, rightly observed that ?€?tourism is a major factor in the war on poverty. For most Developing Countries, LDC?€™s and Small Island Developing States it is their largest single export and major driver of jobs, investment and economic transformation. It is growing in these countries at significantly higher rates than in OECD states. Also in general these poor countries are most vulnerable to climate change and at the same time are the ones who create the least green house gas emissions. Tourism must be allowed to grow responsibly to these states and actions to curb emissions must take this into account?€?.
The geographical expansion and labour intensive nature of the Tourism sector provide ?a spread of employment which is particularly relevant in remote and rural areas where ?many of the poor live.
?UNWTO statistics show the growing strength of the tourism industry for developing ?countries:?
International tourism receipts for developing countries (low income, lower and ?upper middle income countries) will soon pass more than US$ 250 billion.?
Tourism is one of the major export sectors of poor countries and a leading ?source of foreign exchange in 46 of the 49 Least Developed Countries.?
Through its ST-EP programme (Sustainable Tourism ?€“ Eliminating Poverty), UNWTO ?has put in place a framework for poverty alleviation, linking its longstanding pursuit of ?sustainable tourism with the United Nations Millennium Development Goals and its own ?Global Code of Ethics.
Funding has been approved for 13 ST-EP projects so far, amounting to around US$1 ?million, benefiting 18 countries (Ethiopia, Gambia, Guinea, Honduras, Kenya, Lao, ?Madagascar, Mali, Mozambique, Tanzania, Vietnam and Zambia, and a regional ?project in West Africa). In parallel, 25 ST-EP projects are being implemented by ?UNWTO with funding from the Netherlands Development Organization (SNV) for a total ?of around ?sbquo;? 1.2 million (Albania, Cambodia, Cameroon, Ethiopia, Montenegro, Nepal, ?Niger, Rwanda, SADC countries, Uganda). Italy, is funding 8 ST-EP projects ??(Colombia, Ghana, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Mali), and funding has been approved for ?additional projects during 2007.
International tourist arrivals, 1990-2002
International tourist arrivals
(millions)
Share
(percentage)
in 2002
1990
1995
2000
2001
2002
WORLD
455.9
550.4
687.3
684.1
702.6
100
Africa
15.0
20.0
27.4
28.3
29.1
4.1
Americas
93.0
108.8
128.0
120.2
114.9
16.3
Asia and the Pacific
57.7
85.6
115.3
121.1
131.3
18.7
North-East Asia
28.0
44.1
62.5
65.6
73.6
10.5
South-East Asia
21.5
29.2
37.0
40.2
42.2
6.0
Oceania
5.2
8.1
9.6
9.5
9.6
1.4
South Asia
3.2
4.2
6.1
5.8
5.9
0.8
Europe
280.6
322.3
392.7
390.8
399.8
56.9
Middle East
9.7
13.6
24.0
23.6
27.6
3.9
Source: World Tourism Organization.
Tourism in Asia and the Pacific region
During the period 1990-2002, growth in tourism in Asia and the Pacific outperformed the rest of the world, with arrivals growing by 7.1 per cent annually (compared with 3.7 per cent for the world), increasing the global share from 12.7 per cent in 1990 to 18.7 per cent in 2002. Over the same period, tourism revenue in the region more than doubled, from $US 40.8 billion in 1990 to $US 94.7 billion in 2002. Travel and tourism in the region has created 115 million jobs and made a significant contribution to GDP (North-East Asia, 9 per cent of GDP; South-East Asia, 7.56 per cent; South Asia, 4.87 per cent; Oceania, 13.55 per cent).
Given the broad income and employment figures as well as the impacts outlined above, tourism has considerable potential to contribute to poverty reduction in countries of the region. However, in most countries, tourism initiatives are still only at the pilot stage and the measurement of their impact on the poor is inconsistent. It is also well recognized that there can be leakages of foreign exchange from the tourism sectors and that the distribution of the benefits of tourism varies according t according to the market segment on which the country is focusing. Consequently, two of the challenges in the sector are to design tourism interventions that maximize net foreign exchange gains and focus on the potential of improving the living standards of the poor.
With the increased interest in using tourism as a tool for poverty alleviation, there is clearly a need to develop methodologies and indicators that will enable Governments and other stakeholders to understand the impact of various initiatives on the poor and shape future interventions more effectively. In this connection, preparations are under way to organize a meeting on measuring and assessing the impact of pro-poor tourism initiatives and policies at Bangkok in September 2004. The meeting will bring together a group of practitioners working in poverty and tourism to consider methodologies to measure and assess the impact of pro-poor tourism initiatives.
The rising arrival figures do not necessarily mean that the poorer members of a society will also benefit. Nor are increasing numbers of tourists always welcome at a destination. It is therefore vital that destination managers find ways how the poor can obtain ?€?not crumbs off the table but a share of the cake?€?. In this context, Dr. SantaMaria introduced seven approaches for achieving benefits for the poor from tourism development:
?€? direct employment;
?€? supply of goods and services to enterprises;
?€? direct sales of goods and services to visitors;
?€? running of enterprises (SMEs, community-based);
?€? tax or levy on tourism income;
?€? voluntary giving / support by enterprises or tourists; and
?€? investment in infrastructure.
A study was conducted in order to discover how some of these approaches can be supported. To increase the number of poor people who are directly employed in the tourism industry, for example, three main activities can be suggested: the use of international partnerships and teaching support to ?€?catch up?€? on education and training, the setting up of tourism developments even in isolated rural areas, as well as the support through microfinance initiatives.
The following principles have been adopted by UNWTO and recommended to the governments in connection with Tourism and Poverty Alleviation:
1. Mainstreaming: ensure that sustainable tourism development is included in general poverty elimination programmes. Include poverty elimination measures within overall strategies for the sustainable development of tourism;
2. Partnerships: develop partnerships between international, government, nongovernmental and private sector bodies, with a common aim of poverty alleviation through tourism;
3. Integration: adopt an integrated approach with other sectors and avoid overdependence
on tourism;
4. Equitable distribution: ensure that tourism development strategies focus on more equitable distribution of wealth and services – growth alone is not enough;
5. Acting locally: focus action at a local/destination level, within the context of supportive national policies;
6. Retention: reduce leakages from the local economy and build linkages within it, focusing on the supply chain;
7. Viability: maintain sound financial discipline and assess viability of all actions taken;
8. Empowerment: create conditions which empower and enable the poor to have access to information and to influence and take decisions;
9. Human rights: remove all forms of discrimination against people working or seeking to work in tourism and eliminate any exploitation, particularly against women and children;
10. Commitment: plan action and the application of resources for the long term; and
11. Monitoring: develop simple indicators and systems to measure the impact of tourism on poverty.
Based on these principles, UNWTO?€™s general programme of work includes a number of activities aimed at maximizing the impact of tourism for the benefit of developing countries in general and LDCs in particular.
RECENT DEVELOPMENTS
There has been an up market trend in the tourism over the last few decades, especially in Europe where international travel for short breaks is common. Tourists have higher levels of disposable income and greater leisure time and they are also better-educated and have more sophisticated tastes. There is now a demand for a better quality products, which has resulted in a fragmenting of the mass market for beach vacations; people want more specialized versions, such as ‘Club 18 -30′, quieter resorts, family-oriented holidays, or niche market-targeted destination hotels. As well, people are taking second short break holidays.
The developments in technology and transport infrastructure such as jumbo jets and low-budget airlines have made many types of tourism more affordable. There have also been changes in lifestyle, such as retiree-age people who living as a tourist all the year round. This is facilitated by internet purchasing of tourism products. Some sites have now started to offer dynamic packaging, in which an inclusive price is quoted for a tailor- made package requested by the customer upon impulse.
There have been a few setbacks in tourism, such as the September 11, 2001 attacks and terrorist threats to tourist destinations such as Bali and European cities. Some of the tourist destinations, including the beach resorts of Cancún have lost popularity due to shifting tastes. In this context, the excessive building and environmental destruction often associated with traditional “sun and beach” tourism may contribute to a destination’s saturation and subsequent decline. Spain’s Costa Brava, a popular 1960s and 1970s beach location is now facing a crisis in its tourist industry. On December 26, 2004 a tsunami, caused by the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake hit Asian countries bordering the Indian Ocean, and also the Maldives. Tens of thousands of lives were lost, and many tourists died. This, together with the vast clean-up operation in place, has stopped or severely hampered tourism to the area.
Sustainable tourism is becoming more popular as people start to realize the devastating effects of poorly planned tourism on communities. Receptive tourism is now growing at a very rapid rate in many developing countries, where it is often the most important economic activity in local Gross Domestic Product.
In recent years, second holidays or vacations have become more popular as people’s discretionary income increases. Typical combinations are a package to the typical mass tourist resort, with a winter skiing holiday or weekend break to a city or national park.
“The development of tourism means, above all, social progress, job ?creation and poverty alleviation”.
` Travel & Tourism has a number of advantages over other industry sectors:
it creates jobs and wealth whilst;
at the same time, it can contribute to sustainable development;
it tends to have low start-up costs;
is a viable option in a wide range of areas and regions;
is likely to continue to grow for the foreseeable future; and
the industry is, in a large part, aware of the need to protect the resource on which it is based – local culture and built and natural environment – and it is committed to these resources?€™ preservation and enhancement.
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Medical Tourism: Your Easy Way To Shed All Health Worries
Medical tourism gets you all this and more. Long waiting periods to even get to a specialist in your own country leads you to nothing but frustration and further deterioration of your state. But with health travel on the rise, you certainly don’t need to go through this. Take a trip to any specialized hospital in India, Thailand or Singapore and be greeted by state-of-the-art equipment, trained medical staff, doctors with western certification, and all this at a much lesser cost. Being a medical tourist you’ll be amazed to find experts in major fields of medicine including cardiac care, neurology, gynecology, orthopedics, pediatrics, dental care, and ophthalmology. Friendly staff and high quality services don’t make you feel as though you are in a foreign land. International standards are maintained in each and every aspect of health care. So, what’s the verdict? Just go ahead and make that investment.
There’s no greater wealth than your own health, you’d obviously concur. But do you know how we are robbing ourselves of this wealth everyday and every second of our lives? Work pressures, busy lifestyles and erratic behaviors, they all form a deadly cocktail, leading us no where but to the end of our personal resource, health. Thankfully, this is a passing. People, young and old alike, are waking up to another course that’s making foray into the mainstream. We all take trips to foreign countries for business or leisure. Have you ever heard of traveling to a country for health’s sake? Referred by many names like health tourism and medical travel, medical tourism comes to rescue when you can’t find adequate help in your own country. What could be better than combining your vacation with medical treatment, the latter one being imperative? Medical treatments in developed countries like the United States and the United Kingdom may be good for the rich and affluent but what about the average middle class person. How many times did you deny yourself health care for reasons such as exorbitant price tags, or deficient insurance covers? Sometimes the medical procedures offered in one’s own country are just insufficient or lacking in one way or the other that make you seek help elsewhere. World-class treatment, certified doctors, private medical care, quality equipments, first-rate technology, these are just some of the ways to describe medical tourism
An industry in its own right, medical tourism is fast gaining momentum in countries like India, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore and Hong Kong. Backed by extensive research, technological advancements, and well-equipped manpower, private players in many Asian countries have come up in a big way, offering nothing but the best to the medical tourist. We as mortals are bound to fall prey to dreaded illnesses like heart failure, kidney malfunction, liver damage, orthopedics diseases etc, the list could just go on. Be it urgent care or elective medical procedures, you can find specialized hospitals providing low cost and exceptionally good medical treatments. People across the world are now even availing the benefits of medical tourism packages. Customized to suit your health and holiday needs, these packages are medical treatment and sightseeing trip all rolled into one. Medical tour packages get you a step closer to your preferred treatment and medical specialists with recreation and fun as a major sidekick. Be it eye care, dental specialties, heart care, or alternative therapies as ayurveda and naturopathy, you can find it all through the help of highly specialized companies solely dedicated to this pursuit. No matter what your aim is, rejuvenation or putting a stop to the long standing illness, medical tourism caters to all needs. So, pack your bags and head to a specialized hospital in aisa and rid yourself of all worries and cares, you owe this to yourself.
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