Impacts of Tourism

It is clearly mentioned in many studies that tourism development affects the local communities in many ways. Thus, it is important to analyze the behavior of inhabitants in tourism development within the limits of respective communities. Tourism perception varies across groups and communities. There can be the situation that the tourists value an authentic environment but the local community is more interested in exploiting the specific attraction to gain economically. The opposite can also happen in that the locals want to keep the place safe from tourist groups as these places are sacred.

However, the local communities, as well as the tourists, are not homogenous groups and they have differences in terms of expectations and interests. It is necessary to determine the behavior of local society towards dark tourism development along with understanding the possible impacts of the same.

Impacts of Tourism

Studying the impacts of tourism is not new but highly relevant because of rapid innovation in the tourism sector. Economic impacts have tangible impacts as a result is in the income generation at the local level. Tourism is the source of income for all those people who are providing any goods or services that can be used by tourists.

It acts as a direct source of income for the owners and employees and as an indirect source of income for many others who are part of the tourism industry. The tourism industry creates a multiplier effect as the money earned in tourism activities is re-invested within the community.

Tourism activities are highly labor intensive and the skills required are mostly of low levels. Also, the industry experiences seasonal effects and thus the jobs are most suitable for the elderly and students.

It is typical in developing countries that the tourism businesses have foreign ownership and this creates high levels of leakage. There are other economic sectors that compete with the tourism industry such as agriculture. While some locals at tourist destinations are completely dependent on this industry, in other destinations it is considered as a way of earning extra and above the regular income.

Development

Development of tourism also causes inflation when the shops and restaurants increase their prices to earn more from the tourists and the housing and land also becomes expensive. This results for the local community as a relative drop in purchasing power in cases except when the overall income of the community has increased accordingly.

Many social and cultural differences remain between the hosts and the guests that lead to many impacts on both parties. In developing countries, these differences matter more as there are already large differences in terms of economic and cultural characteristics.