What is tourism?

Tourism is what people do when they visit a place outside their usual environment.

By some accounts, tourism is the world’s biggest industry. According to The World Tourism Organization, it employs up to 10% of the world's workforce. But what exactly is this phenomenon we call tourism? Simply put:

 

«Tourism is what people do when they visit a place outside their usual environment.»

 

It is a social, cultural and economic phenomenon that is steadily getting more attention in international research communities. As a field of study, it is concerned with the following key questions:

• Who? (travels)
• Where?
• Why?
• When?
• How?

 

As with most topics of interest, there are many ways of defining tourism, however, and various definitions have been put forward to serve various purposes. But one thing everyone agrees to is that tourism has to do with travel - i.e. movement between relatively distant locations. But not all forms of travel are considered tourism, so one of the main challenges of definition has been to distinguish tourism from the concept of travel.

One way of separating tourism from other forms of travel involves looking at the following three criteria:

• Duration
• Distance
• Purpose

 

The first criterion examines the duration of the trip. It has to do with how long the trip lasts. For a trip to be considered tourism, it must be shorter than one year. This qualification is meant to exclude stays of a more permanent nature. There is no absolute minimum requirement with regards to duration, but trips of less than a couple of hours are usually not considered tourism.

This is called the temporal requirement.

 

The second criterion examines the distance traveled. This qualification puts as a minimum requirement that for a trip to be considered tourism, it must extend beyond the traveler’s usual environment. This is done to exclude local routine travel and to be able to distinguish between tourists and locals.

This is called the spatial requirement.

 

The third and final criterion examines the purpose of the trip. Tourism may include travel for many different reasons, but the main purpose should not be to seek employment at the place visited. This is done to distinguish tourism from more permanent forms of migration.

This is called the motivational requirement.

 

Travel, of which tourism may be considered a sub-category, includes all movement of people between geographical locations for any duration, distance or purpose.

So to recap: A simple way to define tourism is to describe it as: “what people do when they visit a place outside their usual environment”. A more formal definition of tourism is:

«The activities of people traveling to and staying in places outside their usual environment for not more than one consecutive year for purposes other than seeking employment.»

 

It should be emphasized, however, that for any topic, and indeed any term or concept, there will always be a variety of definitions. This is because different people will have different perspectives and because different definitions may serve different purposes. Thus, for tourism, as for all other -isms that matter, there is, and should be a continuous discussion about the meaning of the term itself and all its underlying and related concepts. We hope that you will join us in this discussion at WhatIsTourism.com.

See you there!