Tourism's Economic Impact - Tourism: Principles, Practices, Philosophies - page 304

E GLOBAL INSIGHT E

Travel Advisories
S ince an important role of every country's government is to

4. Countries the FCO advises against all but essential travel to

parts of

help protect their citizens, many countries issue ''travel
advisories,'' ''travel warnings, ''travel advice,'' or ''consular
information sheets.'' Whatever the specific name, this
information is intended to provide information on the safety and
security conditions, entry requirements, and more for countries
worldwide.

In the United States, travel warnings are issued when the State
Department decides, based on all relevant information, to
recommend that Americans avoid travel to a certain country.
Countries where avoidance of travel is recommended will have
travel warnings as well as consular information sheets.

Although travel advisories are generally regarded as positive,
they frequently raise objections on the part of travel destinations
that believe they have been unnecessarily identified—thus,
unfairly restricting visitation by both leisure and business
travelers and creating a negative economic impact.

Canadian ''Travel Reports & Warnings'' can be found on the Web
site ( www.voyage.gc.ca ). Essentially, Canada identifies nine
levels of concern, with appropriate warnings to travelers. The
United Kingdom Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO,
www.fco.gov.uk/en/travel-and-living-abroad/ ) issues travel
advice notices in four categories:

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

1. Countries the FCO advises against all travel to

1. What is the economic impact of travel advisories?

2. Countries the FCO advises against all travel to parts of

2. Are travel advisories or warnings fair?

3. Countries the FCO advises against all but essential travel to

Visitors from these two countries had a combined average spending of about $790 on their U.S.
trips (not including international passenger fares). The overseas travel segment represented less than
half of all international arrivals (43%) to the United States in 2009, yet accounted for 80 percent of
total international traveler receipts in the United States. Overseas travel is also referred to as long-
haul, meaning it is international travel outside of a respective origin region. Overseas visitors stay
longer and spend more when they visit the United States than other travelers, on average more than
16 nights with spending in excess of $4,000. 7
The complexity of accurately measuring the vast economic impacts of the tourism industry has
created a movement to link tourism expenditure accounting with that used for the national system
of accounting in most countries. Earlier attempts to include tourism in the standard industry
classi cation (SIC) codes proved unsuccessful because of the diversity and overlapping nature of
many tourism expenditures. In order to overcome these dif culties, a system of tourism satellite
accounting has been proposed and implemented. The Tourism Satellite Account (TSA) is discussed
later in the chapter.

OPTIMIZATION

Economics is concerned with the attainment of an optimum return from the use of scarce resources.
Whether it is a person seeking psychological bene it from travel, or a business interested in providing
tourists goods and services at a pro t, or a host community government viewing tourism in terms of
the economic bene ts resulting from tourist expenditures, the principle is the same. In economic
terms, occurs when agents seek to allocate the limited supply of tourism resources (both

physical and financial) in the best possible way to meet the demands of tourists. The demands are the
result of their physical/functional needs (which, as a rule, are limited) and their psychological wants
(which can be virtually unlimited).

optimization