Definition of Tourist/Tourism Essay

Throughout the academic and business world there is ongoing debate regarding the insufficient definitions of the terms ‘tourism’ and ‘tourist’. Upon researching this matter I have also come to question the validity of the ‘tourism industry’ and its ability to meet the requirements of industrial and commercial activities due to the lack of uniform and limitations of what it pertains to. The following are definitions I have chosen, in order of preference, to shed light on the ambiguous nature of these terms so that a clearer understanding can be realised for economic and educational use. Of these it can also be seen that they have been sourced from opposing areas of interest – industry, academic and dictionary, as to better illustrate the need for more than one type of definition. Furthermore, each will be deconstructed to communicate their relative strengths and weaknesses in relation to fundamental aspects of their current use. – World Tourism Organisation (cited in Tribe 2009, p.44); Tourism: ‘†¦ comprises the activities of a person’s travelling to and staying in places outside their usual environment for not more than one consecutive year for leisure, business and other purposes not related to the exercise of an activity remunerated from within the place visited.’ – World Tourism Organisation (1993, cited in Cooper, Shepherd & Westlake (1996, p.18); Tourist: ‘†¦A visitor* who in the country visited for at least one night. *Visitor: ‘†¦Any person who travels o a country other than that in which he/she has his/her usual environments, for a period not exceeding 12 months and whose main purpose of visit is other than the exercise of an activity remunerated from within the country visited.’ – Stear (2005, p. 8&11); Tourism: ‘tourism is travel and temporary stay, involving at least one night away from the region of a person’s usual home that is undertaken with the major expectation of satisfying leisure needs that are perceived as being more enjoyably able to be satisfied by being at places outside of, and qualitatively different to, the home region.’ Tourist: ‘a tourist is a person engaging in the activities directly associated with the present or future travel and temporary stay that involves at least one night away from the region of their usual home that is undertaken with the major expectation of satisfying leisure needs that are perceived as being more enjoyably able to be satisfied by places outside of, and qualitatively different to, the home region.’ – Oxford Dictionary (2011); Tourism: ‘the commercial organization and operation of holidays and visits to places of interest.’ Tourist: ‘†¦a person who is travelling or visiting a place for pleasure.’ To begin, one of the key factors in defining tourism is determining where it begins, ends, and the stakeholders impacted along the way. As explained by Theobald (1994, p.26), ‘tourism is more like a ‘sector’ that impacts a wide range of industries’ rather than an industry itself as current statistical measurement of economic effects is unreliable and problematic. Stear’s blanket approach of tourism neglects to set parameters for quantitative study where ‘many of these businesses also serve local residents [and] the impact of spending by visitors can easily be overlooked or underestimated’(Theobald 1994, p.4). This leads to the need for segregation of the term by its main features to establish the objective of the meaning and what it aims to achieve. This is adequately explained by Tribe (2009, p.25) as ‘†¦differentiation is sought between functional definitions of the term tourist used to define and measure activities of people for the purposes of sorting and collecting data about those activities, and that of the concept of tourist, which has a much less well-understood value’. Because of this it is widely accepted that there are ‘†¦two different types of tourism definitions, each with its own rationale and intended usage’ (Theobald 1994, p.7). The suggestion of Burkart & Medlik (1981, cited in Theobald 1994) that there are both conceptual and technical definitions, the former allowing for a theoretical approach such as Stear’s in which it can be used for the teaching of this area of study, and the latter is aligned to the WTO’s approach for ‘statistical or legislative purposes†¦.that can be applied to both international and domestic settings†¦.to help standardise comparative international tourism data collection’. Similarly the World Tourism Organisation has put forward a significant division in the term ‘tourist’ as a method of discerning those who visit a place for more than twenty-four hours from those who don’t. This enables significant advancements in both technical and conceptual approaches to the definition as allowing tourists such as backpackers, cruise ship passengers and tour busses to be incorporated as well as their significant input to the ‘industry’. Stear’s definition, although broad, lacks entirely in the foresight that ‘at least one night away’ is limited to people who reside in the area overnight which is often not the case. In my experience backpacking, there are many scenarios in which time constraints urge you to visit multiple ‘attractions’ in one day and often over large distances, of one account travelling by car I had breakfast in Italy, lunch in Switzerland, followed by dinner in Germany. With no uncertainty was I tourist at all stages of this trip, therefore the following opinion of Theobald (1994) in which ‘visitors include two distinct categories of travellers’ one being tourists and the other excursionists, is fundamental to the concern of accountability of economic effects in tourist destination regions. In this case the WTO definition comprises of a tourist and excursionist approach which adequately incorporates all impacts on the relative industries. However, of the above methods of definition neither encompasses the history and definition of each word and its everyday use regardless of technical and conceptual implications. Because of this, I believe it pertinent to incorporate the dictionary definition of both tourism and tourist in their comprehensive understanding as their etymology is central to the existence of this ‘sector’. It is collectively agreed (Stear 2005, Weaver & Lawton 2010, Tribe 2009 and Theobald 1994) that tourism is a social phenomenon of the nineteenth and twentieth century’s, of a time where cultural and leisure purposes were the most prominent instigating factors. This said, many forms of ‘types of travel’ (Stear 2005, p.5) have emerged clouding the nature of its original meaning making it difficult to transcend this meaning into a contemporary societal view. As Theobald (1994, p.6) explains etymologically the Latin derivative of tour (when combined with the suffixes of –ism and –ist) describes the movement in a round-trip and in essence the journey of leaving and then returning to the original starting point. It is plain to see that this holds great dissimilarity to the aforementioned dictionary definition as it is subsequent to the influences of industry purpose. Overall, this discussion has outlined the continued difficulties in producing a unified definition that encompasses all aspects of tourists and their impacts on tourism so that statistical and theoretical conclusions can be draw for economic and academic purposes. In total, I believe each of the definitions mentioned above hold merit in varying manners when applied for specific use in their appropriate field. This does not dismiss the issue that each has limitations in regards to the standardisation of each type of definition and in conclusion until this standardisation of terms used for conceptual and technical objectives occurs, neither can be solely accepted for all application in a worldwide setting.