Tourism: what can be done?

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Tourism: what can be done?

Tourism is generally understood as a temporary, voluntary movement of people, travelling to a chosen destination outside of their normal places of work and residence for pleasure, business or education. Another more concise definition is "Leisure time activity generally defined as involving an overnight stay or more, away from home."

According to the World Tourism Organization, in 1998 there were 635 million tourist arrivals around the world. Tourism while allowing some the opportunity to meet people, visit exotic environments and understand cultures, provides millions of pounds for the corporations that are raping, polluting and destroying the earth. In the same way, the vast majority of tourists make noise, disturb the environment and need services such as accommodation, food, transport, fuel and waste disposal. All this can result in the destruction of the qualities of an area that attracted tourists in the first place. We can see that the seeds of misfortune were sown in 1996, when visitor volumes rose more than 40 per cent and Hong Kong became the leading outbound destination. The tourists have caused a huge mess in Hong Kong, such as in the parks, trails and other tourism infrastructures. As Pera and McLaren said, "Tourism introduces a consumer culture into communities whose societies and values may not be based on the economic power of the individual. Tourists' quest for 'authenticity' often leads to a prostitution of the local culture for the demand and enjoyment of the tourists."
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There are many disadvantages of tourism, which affect all areas of life for the people involved and the surrounding area. Therefore, water pollution is a serious problem at beach resorts in the developing world. This often occurs where a proper sewage system has not been installed for tourists, such as at hotels. If untreated water is thrown out into a river or sea then the effluent pollutes the water and even the ground water may be polluted. Some hotels have constructed their outfalls into the swimming areas by the beach, for example, at Pattaya Beach Resort in Thailand, ...

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