Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
However, the car is currently not an affordable option for the majority of
people living in developing countries. Nor do they take regular holidays; only
a small percentage of the population have disposable income and the aptitude
to travel. Travel to near-to-home destinations or to visit friends and relatives
is, however, more commonplace now than in previous decades. The rapid
increase in economic migration to cities in the late decades of the last century
has also brought an increase in domestic travel. This is driven by family ties
and commitments, many of which are a consequence of economic and politi-
cal displacement (MacCannell, 1989). There are, of course, traditional
patterns of holidaymaking in localities throughout the world. For example, the
citizens of Buenos Aires in Argentina favour beach holidays in neighbouring
Uruguay across the waters of the River Plata by ferry or by air. These cross-
border trips count for a large proportion of the international arrivals to
Uruguay (Lumsdon and Swift, 2001).
The pilgrimage remains a form of slow travel which has flourished
through the centuries (Murray and Graham, 1997). Visits to holy places such
as Jerusalem, Mecca and Medina in the Middle East, and to the holy rivers
and high grounds of India, remain as examples of the traditional pilgrimage.
Many still undertake these journeys on foot. The pilgrimage is increasingly
being supplemented, however, by core elements of contemporary tourism, and
new secular forms are emerging such as volunteerism or New Age travel
(Collins-Kriener and Kliot, 2000; Dignance, 2006; Mustonen, 2006). The bal-
ance seems to be tipped more towards tourism than pilgrimage, rather than
the equilibrium noted by Turner and Turner (1978) in earlier decades.
In terms of international travel, only a small minority of the wealthier
sections of society in developing countries seek long-haul travel to other con-
tinents. The growth in recent years has been stimulated by tourism markets in
developed economies in the south. The scenario which sees increases in out-
bound tourism is perhaps unduly optimistic. Several researchers predict that
inter-regional tourism will decline in the face of dwindling resources, but in
the realm of total tourism trip-making it accounts for less than 3 per cent of
the world's travel (Becken and Hay, 2007; Bramwell and Lane, 2008).
The morphology
The future of tourism is inextricably bound to the future of transport in the
global economy. Transport is the key issue, and one which governments and
the private sector are currently failing to address, other than in short-term
investment, much of which is associated with predicted long-term negative
environmental effects. Medium- and long-haul tourism, for example, is
clearly unsustainable in its present form, and despite the protestations of the
aviation sector, technological improvements are likely to be marginal at best
and outstripped by current growth predictions in the market (Gössling and
Upham, 2009). Other forms of tourism, given the sheer scale of impacts
modelled to date, will also need to make a contribution to the reduction of
carbon, for example, in relation to travel by car for short- and medium-
distance travel.
