Environmental Issues In Tourism Industry

Over the last 50 years have witnessed tremendous growth in tourism industry. Apparently, enormous profits are gained and gradually becoming a fundamental revenue to many countries. This all-time business, however, is forming many drawbacks to tourists in particular and society in general in terms of environment, health and security. As the number of tourist rapidly increase, environmental problems can be anticipated. Indeed, over-development can be a negative factor as there are more and more constructions are built without any environmental awareness. For instance, the higher quantities of visitors, the bigger needs for accommodation. Thus, it is tourism business’s responsibility to offer more hotels with larger areas, more shopping malls,

Truly said, traveling is considered as major factor to widely increase risk of infectious disease and travelers became primary vectors of the disease. For many years, health related issues, especially pandemics are becoming a fear to tourism. The travel companies should have received a major wake-up call on the threats of SARS. The impact of SARS epidemic heavily strike down majority of tourism industry at that time. “The impact of SARS on countries has been four or five times the impact of September 11th in the United States”, says Rick Miller, vice-president of research and economics at the World Travel & Tourism Council (WTTC). Thanks to the development of tourism, air transport is growing at faster pace in latest years. Although this has made travels between regions becoming easier than ever, it also became an opportunity to carry infections among people to any part of the world. Take an example of latest dangerous disease, Ebola, this has threaten not only travelers but also people all over the world as it increasingly transmitted from places to places without any

Unfortunately many industry leaders simply provided lip service to security issues rather than confronting the problem. This phenomenon proves to be more serious in the developing countries such as Thailand, Indonesia, Vietnam, etc. The constant temptation from rich tourists have attracted drop-out youngsters and lead them to crimes like robbery, murder, harassment. Worse, popular attraction can be a destination for many political conflict and terrorism can become a nightmare to the tourist attraction in particular and government in general. Apparently, terrorism can not only affect directly to the tourism industry but also can hit other sectors of economy and health that somehow directly and indirectly related to tourism. Unless the visitor’s security are paid more attention, many tourism and travel destinations may confront severe revenue loss in the future as more visitors are getting alert of these incidents and they are avoiding these vulnerable places for the next visits. Unfortunately, travelers can easily choose an alternative attraction, which is safer but the negative impact on the local tourism industry and that country can be profound and hard to