Page 36 - sustainable tourism-- Dr.Aya

Militating against progress is that the tourism

industry is still seen as a new industrial sector,

constantly striving to assert its importance and

to be recognized as a serious industry. The

industry gives greater weight to evidence of

jobs and income generated, and exhibits

nervousness about admitting to some of the

increasingly recognized social and

environmental impacts.

A simple example is the indicators used by

the United Nations World Tourism

Organization (UNWTO) and WTTC to

describe the industry, which is almost

exclusively in terms of economic metrics such

as number of tourists (over one billion

international tourist arrivals in 2014), direct

contribution of tourism to GDP ($2.4 trillion

in 2014), money invested in to the sector

($814billion in 2014) and size of direct

employment (105million in 2014) (World

Travel & Tourism Council, 2015).

Yet, the academic subject of tourism lends

itself very well to engagement with industry,

and while the language and means of

communication need to be different, there is a

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