Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
The point is that, in the context of tourism as a favoured development
option, the basic resources already exist and therefore tourism may be con-
sidered to have low 'start-up' costs.
Backward linkages
Owing to the fact that tourists require a variety of goods and services in
the destination, including accommodation, food and beverages, entertain-
ment, local transport services, souvenirs, and so on, tourism offers, in prin-
ciple, more opportunities for backward linkages throughout the local
economy than other industries. Such opportunities include both direct links,
such as the expansion of the local farming industry to provide food for local
hotels and restaurants (Telfer, 1996b), and indirect links with, for example,
the construction industry. Again, however, the optimism for this develop-
mental contribution of tourism must be tempered by the fact not all destina-
tions may be able to take advantage of these linkage opportunities. That is,
a variety of factors, such as the diversity and maturity of the local economy,
the availability of investment funds or the type/scale of tourism develop-
ment, may restrict the extent of backward linkages. For example, referring
back to the case of The Gambia above, the economic benefits derived from
tourism are very much limited by the fact that, as a result of poor quality
and a lack of supplies, the majority of tourist hotels import virtually all their
food and drink requirements, as well as all fixtures and fittings in the hotels.
A variety of other, secondary, reasons may also be suggested for the pop-
ularity of tourism as a development option. These include the facts that the
development of tourism may lead to infrastructural improvements and the
provision of facilities that are of benefit to local communities as well as tour-
ists; that tourism often provides the justification for environmental protec-
tion through, for example, the designation of national parks; and, that
tourism may encourage the revitalisation of traditional cultural crafts and
practices. Together, along with the primary reasons outlined above, they
explain why virtually every country in the world has, to a lesser or greater
extent, developed a tourism industry.
The Contribution of Tourism to Development
The extent to which tourism contributes to the national or local econ-
omy or, more generally, to development varies according to a variety of fac-
tors. However, as a general rule, it is likely that a greater dependence will be
placed on tourism in less developed countries than in industrialised coun-
tries. Certainly, in many smaller, less developed nations with highly limited
resource bases, in particular island micro-states, tourism has become the
dominant economic sector (McElroy, 2003; Scheyvens & Momsen, 2008a).
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