Understanding Tourism Concept And Phenomenon

Understanding Tourism Concept And Phenomenon....

Author : Dr. Chiranjib kumar (PhD)

TOURISM 

Tour + Ism = way of travelling with purpose ; way of visiting or pattern of travelling to reach to an expected destination to solve the motives. In other words - A tour(Journey) based on a distinctive practice, system, or philosophy to achieve the predetermined motives in a way to satisfy psychic gratification.

The word “tourism” itself has hidden many possibility to explore the world if touring and reaching out to the final destination.

Tourism starts with travel and travel starts with reason or purposes. Those purposes or motives could be differentiated into many types but the fundamental reason behind any  purpose or motives is to feel or experience “Change” particularly in context of tourism.

Tourism and travelling is not a new thing or concept for us, as it has been happening since the inception of human beings on the earth. It is said,  “Motion is life,  Static is death”. People have to move from one position to other position to fuel the train of life. 

The only difference between normal travelling and travelling for tourism is to feel change in environment, culture, natural and social life. That travelling should be concerned with leisure, pleasure, entertainment, health, adventure or any other form of recreational activities. 

Mode of transportation in the process of tourism may vary from surface to water to air but ultimately reason should be experiencing difference (change) through pleasure. In other words  “ psychic gratification”.  But in reality, tourism is beyond the concept of psychic gratification and not just participating in events like sports only.  

Anyway to be logical tourism started in different corners of the world in different forms to fulfilled different purposes or motives, knowingly or unknowingly. But most of the story from the historical records says that tourism initially started through trade, pilgrimage and spiritual Odyssey.  Research and explorations were also added later on to the reason behind phenomenon of tourism.

Purposes or motives of tourism leads to various forms of tourism such VFR(visiting friends and relatives), leisure, rest, health, medical, adventure, pilgrimage, ecotourism etc.

Let us not go into the detail to elaborate the various theory like grand tour, silk route or Thomas cook or any other, rather would like to tell you that “ discretionary income(extra income) and discretionary time(extra time)” have played an important role in the growth and development of tourism. And rapid advancement in transportation technology has boosted it in rapid way. In addition to this change in ‘Barter system” and introduction of currency and plastic cards accelerated the growth of tourism through leaps and bounds. And in these days ICT(Information Communication Technology) has added dissemination of information to it.

In ancient time, rarely people had motorised vehicle to travel even though some countries like India or Europe claims that they had advance technology in transport system, like India claim about possession of Pushpak Viman(Supersonic Aircraft), Rocket, and missile technology thousands years ago as per Indian epics/scrptures. Greek also claim for such thing and similarly other countries too. Traveling on foot takes longer than traveling by horse and similarly travelling by car takes longer than traveling by aeroplane. And we know that travel is foundation of tourism. So more fast travelling would lead to more tourism.

But again fast mode of travel may result in shorter stay at destination, like journey by plane. And shorter stay at destination may not result in economic, social and physical impact on host country. Although the traveler would have been enjoyed more to that trip. 

That’s why UNWTO which is a nodal organisation of tourism promotion and development, decided to give proper technical definition of tourism to suit the need of main concept and impact of tourism. 

According to UNWTO(United Nations World Tourism Organization), escape from place of residence and stay at destination should not be less than 24hrs and more than 365 days. 

If person stay less the 24hrs then it would be called “excursion” rather than tourism.

So next time when you all are traveling for “ tourism” then do remember it should be always more the 24hrs. So there would more entertainment, fun, leisure, adventure, rest and pleasure.

Your travel will have impact on you as well as local communities and destination you visited. Therefore avoid negativity and keep on giving positive impact only. And take nothing but mesmerising moments and  leave nothing, but your eco-friendly footprints.

Reference

Kumar, C. 2021, Tourism Versus Sports Department : An Introspection Preprint,

DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.33299.60969

For Orginal Article, click the link below,

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/356776231,