Travel Boffins - Please I need help with an essay for Travel and Tourism course

black-saturn

I'm doing a correspondence course of HND in Travel and Tourism. My tutor is away on holiday and I have got to get this essay done by friday. I've just rung the college and no one there can help me. So I'm hoping one of you travel boffins can help me or point me in the right direction as to what they want from me

The question is: 'Identify two areas of growth within the tourist industry'.

I wrote a lengthy essay about Internet booking and using the internet to research destinations rather than going to the travel agent or going to the library and I wrote about the growth in Eco Tourism.

The essay has come back ungraded and the tutor has asked me to do it again and included the following comments:

"For this assessment you need to consider areas of growth within the tourist industry. You have chosen the internet and ecotourism. I agree that there has been significant growth in the use of the internet to research and book travel in recent years and that ecotourism has also grown. However, I would not really class these as being in the tourism industry and you should use destinations as examples.'

Could anyone please tell me what he is on about?

Anyone with a helpful answer will be thanked :beer:

Midas

This seems like an academic question rather than a travel/tourism question, in that what we're looking for is an interpretation of your tutor's comments.

My first thought is that he is wrong... how can eco-tourism and internet booking not be part of the 'tourist industry'? However, there's little point in dwelling on this, as the tutor clearly has in his/her mind a clear idea of what constitutes the tourist industry (for the purposes of this essay at least) and this is what you have to target.

My guess would be that he is talking about a rather narrow definition - perhaps based around conventional holidays?? Perhaps you could talk about the growth of short-breaks abroad as people take foreign holidays much more frequently these days?

If you do stick with eco-tourism (which seems like a good case of a growth area to me), you do need to back it up with lots of examples (if you haven't already), to demonstrate your knowledge of this area and the empirical evidence to support your argument.

It's a shame the tutor isn't available so that you can't go and challenge them on their comments, which don't appear to be that well thought through.

NB I am not in anyway qualified in this area so all of the above should be treated with the utmost caution!

black-saturn

Thanks, you've been much more helpful than my tutor has.

Murtle

He mentions destination, identify two destinations that have increased recently. You can then go on to explain why you believe this is, backed up of course with stats and research.In your original essay you mentioned eco-tourism. Can you identify an area that this has had an impact on? This should show you a place that has increased, ie back to nature safaris could increase tourism to Kenya - or somewhere. The older generation going back-packing may have increased tourism in specific areas, identify one of these places.Hope that helps and good luckM
This site may be of helphttp://www.world-tourism.org

black-saturn

Thankyou so much :beer:

TRAVELMAN_2

Hi-2 areas of HUGE growth.....all-inclusive Hotels & Boutique/designer Hotels. A prime example of how rhe Spaniards, for example market a/i to the Brits is at https://www.htophotels.com , hope this is of help!

black-saturn

Thanks for your help. Lots of good ideas here. I'll get stuck into an essay tomorrow.

monkeyspanner

I agree with Midas your tutor is wrong to get so hung up on destinations. But as he/she is stuck in that rut. Here are a few ideas:

1. The revival of the British seaside resort. In particular Cornwall which for years was in the doldrums is now seen as trendy and there has also been a large growth in what would have been considered specialist sports e.g Surfing. There was a piece in last weeks Sunday Times about the income this gives to the Cornish economy. This effect has started to spread outwards to Devon.

2. The effect on specific areas of Europe of the cheap airlines e.g. Ryanair, Easyjet, Bmibaby etc. One area that springs to mind here is the old USSR satellites e.g. Baltic states and Czech republic. In a wider sense package holidays to Bulgaria Romania the old Yugoslavian states e.g. Croatia are no longer the domain of specialiist operators but are now offered by the mainstream operators.

3. The reaction of mainstream operators to internet Many of the mainstream operators are opening up access to the constituent parts of their packages e.g. flights and hotels as more people put their own packages together.

4. If you definitely want destinations you could look at Mexico, Cuba, Dominican Republic, South Africa.

In many ways I think the structural changes happening in the tourist industry are more interesting than the growth of any particular destinations.

black-saturn

Thanks for that.

Sorry to sound thick but would Vietnam be a growth destination? I spent ages there in 2004 and could write all day about it.

poppy_f1

check out eastern europe as well, with companies like easyjet and ryanair offering flights cheaply that way more and more people are going even if tis for a stag weekend in prague

budgetflyer

BRAZIL is a long haul destination now being punted by the big tour opps.The NE region around Natal especially.

The other one MIDDLE EAST ,obviously DUBAI is spearheading the attack on our wallets.
A great source of info on what Dubai has to offer in terms of attracting tourists is Singing Pig forum, although its real estate biased, some fantastic pics in the Dubai thread