Not all attractions are created equal; some have greater pull forces than others. There are a few prominent international sites that people all over the world would like to have the opportunity to see or experience at least once in their lifetime, whether it is the Eifel Tower or the Great Wall of China. These are the attractions that have the greatest pull force. Essentially, they are one of the most important reasons people choose to visit that destination. These sites are often featured on lists like the “new wonders of the world,” compiled in 2007. This type of designation only increases the desirability of such sites as tourism attractions.
A secondary tier of tourism attractions also exerts some pull. These attractions may factor into tourists’ decisions to visit a particular destination and will certainly be experienced when tourists visit that place, but they are not the primary reason. In the example given above, few people are likely to visit Ireland solely because of Blarney Castle, but clearly many tourists make a point to have this experience when they are there.
There are also other attractions that may exert little pull or have little influence on tourists’ decision to visit that destination. These may be attractions that people only learn about once they arrive at the destination and may be experienced only by tourists who spend more time at the destination. These tourists have the opportunity to explore the destination in greater depth and visit sites beyond those that are well known. While the Matterhorn and Jungfrau are some of the well-known, frequently visited mountain sites in Switzerland, the lesser-known Mount Rigi could also be considered an attraction with equal opportunities for tourism activities (figure 2.5).
Figure 2.5. As this view from Mount Rigi, Switzerland, indicates, the destination is clearly a high-quality natural attraction. Yet, Rigi does not possess the renown, and therefore does not exert the same pull force on international tourists, as other Alpine destinations. (Source: Tom Nelson)
Tourism Industry
Attractions play an important role in creating the demand for travel, but they cannot exist alone. The services provided by the tourism industry facilitate travel to and experience of these attractions. For example, Stonehenge is a well-known United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) World Heritage Site attraction that draws tourists from all over the world to the English county of Wiltshire. Yet, English Heritage, the organization that owns and manages the site, is not in the business of organizing trips to Stonehenge. The site itself offers only minimal options for food and drink and does not offer visitors a place to stay. Thus, the needs of tourists visiting Stonehenge must be met by other service providers in the surrounding area.
Box 2.4. Experience: A Hidden World in Thailand
I have been fortunate enough to visit Thailand several times, and in recent years, I began leading student study trips there. Bangkok is, of course, always part of our trips. It is an amazing and overwhelming place. There are so many contrasts and contradictions, with everything from elephants to Mercedes, ancient temples to modern skyscrapers, great wealth to terrible poverty. As with any trip, there are always certain “must-see’s” for a place. In Bangkok, I always take students to visit the city’s well-known tourist attractions, such as the Grand (King’s) Palace, Wat Phrakaew (the Temple of the Emerald Buddha, which is considered one of the most sacred Buddhist temples in Thailand, although the statue of the Buddha is only about a foot tall and is actually made of jade), and Wat Pho (the Temple of the Reclining Buddha). These are incredible places to see, and I can’t imagine that a visit to Thailand would be complete without them. But the experiences we have at these places are usually not the ones I remember most. Instead, it is often the unexpected—the chance encounters with people and the glimpses into places I never knew existed—that have the greatest impact on me.
On the last study trip I led, we traveled from Bangkok to Phang Nga (about five hundred miles). This is one of the southern provinces in the Malay Peninsula, which runs along the Andaman Sea. Much of the area around Phang Nga Bay, including some forty islands, is protected as a national marine park. This area has a distinctive and scenic environment with mangroves, caves, and massive rain forest–covered limestone cliffs. Over the years, it has become increasingly popular for tourism. The most well-known of its attractions is the Ko Khao Phing Kan islands and the iconic Ko Tapu tower islet just offshore, which is now popularly referred to as “James Bond Island” because it was featured in the 1974 film The Man with the Golden Gun. I had previously spent some time in this area and was happy to have the opportunity to go back. This time, to do some more in-depth exploring of the islands, I arranged a sea kayaking excursion for our group through a local tour company.
We took a boat into the bay and the kayaks from there. Our guide directed us to an island where there was a narrow opening at sea level. Given the water level at that time, we had to lie back, flat against the kayak, in order to pass through into the sea cave without running into the stalactites hanging down. From there, we crossed into a magical hidden world. The interior of the island was a collapsed cave system (hong), creating a sort of inner lagoon. It was an area the size of a small lake open to the sky but protected on all sides by limestone cliffs covered with tropical vegetation. It was quiet and beautiful and truly unique. I could have spent hours paddling around the calm waters, exploring the mangroves and listening for the sound of birds.
Although I think this experience is increasingly becoming part of the tourist offering in Phang Nga Bay, it’s not why I chose to include that destination on our itinerary. As a geographer, I had always been fascinated by the sight of the towering karst islands I had seen in the bay, but I had no idea these incredible interior spaces existed. In a way, that made “discovering” them all the more special and more memorable than visiting something that I had seen pictures of and read about beforehand. It was an amazing experience and one that I won’t soon forget.
—Marcus
Correspondingly, attractions may account for only a small proportion of income at a destination. Some attractions operate on a pay-for-participation basis, but there are just as many attractions that are free or have only a minimal admission fee. As such, it is the tourism industry service providers that generate revenues. This can be so significant that tourism is frequently described as the world’s largest industry. However, this claim is difficult to substantiate, given the lack of data regarding all aspects of the various travel, tourism, and hospitality-related economic activities ranging from transportation to accommodation, food and beverage, tours, entertainment, retail, and more. This is further complicated by the fact that there is considerable overlap between the services provided to tourists and those provided to nontourists. In addition, only part of tourism services takes place in the formal sector of the economy. The remainder is provided in the unregulated informal sector of the economy, as tourists utilize gypsy cabs, hire unlicensed tour guides, and/or buy goods from vendors they encounter on the street or at the beach. Thus, it may be more correct to identify tourism as the world’s largest service sector industry, as American tourism geographer Alan Lew argues in his blog post “Tourism is NOT the World’s Largest Industry—So Stop Saying It Is!”7
Conclusion
Depending on our perspective and priorities, we may focus more on tourism demand than supply, or vice versa. However, the success of tourism depends on the demand-supply match, or the ability of the tourism industry at a particular destination to provide the services and experiences that tourists demand. The demand-supply match is not going to be the same for all places, and it will change over time as conditions change on both sides. This chapter discussed some of the key concepts that will help us understand both demand and supply and how they match up, which will provide the foundation for our examination of tourism throughout the rest of the chapters in this book.
Key Terms
deferred demand
discretionary income
domestic tourism
drifter
&n
bsp; effective demand
experience stage
explorer
inbound tourism
individual mass tourist
international tourism
mass tourism
movement stage
niche tourism
no demand
organized mass tourist
outbound tourism
post-trip stage
potential demand
pre-trip stage
pull factor
push factor
suppressed demand
tourism attractions
tourism stakeholders
tourist inversions
tourist typology
Notes
1. Uncyclopedia, “Tourist—The Stereotype,” accessed October 12, 2010, http://uncyclopedia.wikia.com/wiki/Tourist_-_the_stereotype.
2. Stephen Williams, Tourism Geography (London: Routledge, 1998), 12–14.
3. Nelson Graburn, “The Anthropology of Tourism,” Annals of Tourism Research 10 (1983).
4. Kevin McGill, “Jindal: BP Funding Millions for Oil Spill Recovery,” Associated Press, November 1, 2010, accessed November 4, 2010, http://www.businessweek.com/ap/financialnews/D9J7J43G1.htm.
5. John Swarbrooke, The Development and Management of Visitor Attractions, 2nd ed. (Burlington, MA: Butterworth-Heinemann, 2002).
6. Paul Thompson, “Blarney Stone ‘Most Unhygienic Tourist Attraction in the World.’” Daily Mail, June 16, 2009, accessed November 13, 2010, http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1193477/Blarney-Stone-unhygienic-tourist-attraction-world.html.
7. Alan A. Lew, “Tourism Is NOT the World’s Largest Industry—So Stop Saying It Is!” Tourism Place Blog, May 1, 2008, accessed February 4, 2011, http://tourismplace.blogspot.com/2008/04/tourism-is-not-worlds-largest-industry.html.
Sources
Boniface, Brian, and Chris Cooper. Worldwide Destinations: The Geography of Travel and Tourism, 4th ed. Amsterdam: Elsevier Butterworth Heinemann, 2005.
Gregory, Derek. “Scripting Egypt: Orientalism and the Cultures of Travel.” In Writes of Passage: Reading Travel Writing, edited by James Duncan and Derek Gregory, 114–50. London: Routledge, 1999.
Gunn, Clare A., with Turgut Var. Tourism Planning: Basics, Concepts, Cases. 4th ed. New York: Routledge, 2002.
Williams, Stephen. Tourism Geography. London: Routledge, 1998.
Chapter 3
Overview of Tourism Products
Eating, partying, praying, shopping, swimming, sightseeing, gambling, hiking, helping, and having sex—although it may seem like these things have nothing in common, they are all activities people participate in through tourism. Tourism is not a one-size-fits-all experience. People have different reasons for traveling, and they want different things from their experiences. Consequently, there is a distinct need for different types of tourism products. As a service industry, the primary “products” of tourism are not tangible goods but experiences. With more people traveling than ever before, the tourism industry has developed to provide an array of increasingly diversified and specialized experiences to meet the demands of tourists across the spectrum, from organized mass tourists to drifters.
This chapter provides a brief introduction to some of the types of products that comprise the modern tourism industry. This discussion is by no means comprehensive; it is only a selection of tourism products that crosses different types of tourism and tourists. Many of these products overlap and share characteristics of other products but have a unique emphasis or appeal to a specific market. Each product involves different resources and affects destinations in distinct ways. We will explore these issues further in the context of the thematic chapters throughout the rest of this text.
Beach Tourism or Sun, Sea, and Sand (3S) Tourism
Perhaps the most widespread and recognizable tourism product around the world is beach tourism. This is often referred to as “3S tourism” in reference to the three key resources for the product: sun, sea, and sand. Sometimes additional S’s are added to the mix—including sex and spirits—but for our purposes, we will consider sex tourism as a separate (albeit related) tourism product. Obviously the focal point of 3S tourism is the beach, which has served as an attraction since an early era in the modern tourism industry (see chapter 4). Yet, 3S tourism is more than just the beach. Beyond any other, this product has been used to characterize the tourism industry. Every major world region has 3S tourism destinations. Some of the largest, best-known, and most popular destinations are based on this product. Moreover, 3S tourism appeals to some of the most basic tourist motivations, including the pursuit of pleasure and self-indulgence.
Typical 3S tourism is mass tourism, which accounts for the temporary movements of large numbers of tourists from the more developed countries in the northern climates to well-established coastal destinations, often developing countries with warmer, tropical climates. This product is highly dependent on a well-developed tourism infrastructure to facilitate the mass movement of people and create the desired experience at the destination. Resorts are often a fundamental component of these destinations. They offer the comforts of home and the facilities to enjoy the three S’s, including beachfront access, swimming pools, lounge chairs, water-sport equipment, and so on. Because a key goal of this product is relaxation and leisure, related facilities include restaurants, nightclubs, and other venues offering entertainment. Given these amenities, there may be little incentive to leave the resort to experience other aspects of the destination.
Characteristic of mass tourism, these destinations are relatively standardized, so there is a certain degree of interchangeability among similar destinations in different parts of the world. For example, Mexico’s Cancún has come to epitomize mass 3S tourism with enormous resort developments, discounted products attracting large numbers of middle- and lower-income tourists, few place-based connections, and a reputation for a party atmosphere. In fact, the name Cancún has become synonymous with 3S tourism and has been exported to other parts of the world (figure 3.1).
Figure 3.1. This advertisement for “Can Cun Beach” is not in Mexico or anywhere else in the Caribbean basin. In fact, it is halfway around the world in Port El Kantaoui, Tunisia, part of the world’s other principal 3S destination region—the Mediterranean. (Source: Velvet Nelson)
Not all tourism oriented around the beach is synonymous with organized mass tourism, however. Destinations with these resources may not have the capacity to develop this type of large-scale industry, and they may not want to. Correspondingly, individual mass tourists and explorers interested in vacationing at the beach may not want this type of experience. The demand-supply match allows some destinations to maintain the natural quality of their beaches with limited infrastructure to accommodate a smaller number of tourists who appreciate the quieter, more intimate experience. In contrast with major destinations in the Caribbean basin characterized by mass 3S tourism, some of the islands with less developed tourism industries, such as Grenada, offer this brand of beach tourism.
Sex Tourism
Sex tourism is a product that takes place in destinations all over the world in a variety of forms. The most commonly recognized sex tourism product involves travel to a place to engage in commercial sex (i.e., prostitution). This brand of sex tourism is associated more with male tourists than female. For many destinations, sex is considered to be a by-product of travel rather than the primary motivation (e.g., business travelers using prostitutes at the destination during the course of their trip). However, other destinations have become known for the availability of commercial sex or a particular type of commercial sex (e.g., homosexual or child sex) and therefore attract tourists specifically for this purpose. While this may be a one-time encounter with the prostitute, he or she may also be hired for extended periods, perhaps as a travel companion for the duration of the tourist’s vacation. Additionally, these destinations may cater to voyeurs looking for the opportunity to experience things that might not be av
ailable to them in their home environment. Well-known destinations for this brand of sex tourism are in Southeast Asia, predominantly Thailand and the Philippines.
The demand generated by sex tourists has become a driving force in the commercial sex trade and consequently trade in women and children. Recently, international agencies including the UNWTO and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) have recognized that there is a connection between the tourism industry and human trafficking.1 In addition to sexual exploitation, trafficked persons often suffer from extreme violations of their human rights, such as the right to not to be held in slavery or involuntary servitude, the right to be free from violence and cruel or inhumane treatment, and the right to health. Various governmental and nongovernmental organizations as well as private companies have worked to develop codes of conduct for both tourism stakeholders and tourists. These codes are intended to promote responsible patterns of behavior to ensure that no one involved in the tourism industry is sexually exploited (for more on codes of conduct, see chapter 11). In particular, efforts have largely concentrated on preventing the trafficking of children and child sexual exploitation associated with tourism. Many countries like the United States have passed child sex tourism laws under which tourists who engage in sex with minors, even outside of the country, can face up to thirty years in a U.S. prison.
Box 3.1. Case Study: Mass S Tourism in the Mediterranean
“You will either have the holiday of your life or a holiday from hell, all depending on your outlook on life.”1
An Introduction to the Geography of Tourism Page 7