Sustainable Development and Tourism

Background

The tourism sector has been a source of jobs and a generator of wealth since the industry began. The different nations offer everything from beach tourism, religious tourism, cultural activities tourism and adventure tourism, where people camp outdoors, climb mountains, visit exotic animals to name a few. There are different options for leisure such as travel packages with everything paid or you can hire a tour guide. Tourism activity is as old as human society.

Tourism has been motivated by migratory movements, war, trade, religion, and fashion to name a few. World tourism can be divided into stages: 1-Ancient Age (from 3000 BC to 476 AD); 2-Middle Ages (from 477 AD to 1453); 3-Modern Age (from 1454 to 1789) being this stage where the first lodgings appear and are named hotel; and 4-Contemporary Age (from 1790 to 3000) in the 16th century establishes the bases for modern tourism performance. In addition, the Contemporary Age is divided into a. Industrial Revolution (from 1790 to 1949) where industrialization increased the free time of workers causing a demand for holidays tourism activities, b. Second half of the 20th Century (from 1950 to 1999); and c. 21st Century (from 2000 to 3000). As can be seen we are in the last stage of the Contemporary Age. (Warrior, 2014).

Based on the activities conducted and tourist needs, tourism is classified as: exploratory travel, mandatory travel, pilgrimage travel, elite travel, and mass tourism. Exploratory tourism is the most archaic, with its first exponent being study trips, investigative exploration, and territorial trips conducted during the period from the fifteenth to the nineteenth century. Mandatory tourism arose from the need for merchants to sell their products in places other than their origin. Similarly, people who have been forced to migrate due to war are also considered mandatory tourists, and lastly, people who travel to obtain knowledge for their jobs are considered mandatory travelers.

Pilgrimage trips are made for religious issues of being in sacred places. Participating in important religious ceremonies or visiting places, where notable events or graves of transcendental figures in history were held. Elite tourism is the pleasure travel made by wealthy people. Who, at the time, were the pioneers of mass tourism in today’s pleasure journeys. Mass tourism refers to pleasure trips made by people who have enough time to do it. They rise after the end of World War II and, showed a high diversification during the 1980s (Faraldo, 2014).