Page 29 - Tourism The International Business

1. Tourism: its historical development

How that employee or resident interacts with the tourist can either enhance the vacation or undo all the advertising
that has gone into getting the visitor to travel to the destination.

Economic importance
The economic importance of tourism can be seen from the following figures:

• Global travel volume is over four billion arrivals; domestic tourism is about 90 per cent of total travel
worldwide. About 90 per cent of domestic tourism occurs in Europe and the Americas.
• There are over 340 million international arrivals annually; excluding transportation, international tourism
receipts were over USD 120 billion. Europe receives about two-thirds of all international arrivals although
East Asia, the Pacific, the Middle East and Africa are recording the highest proportional gains.
International tourism receipts are over USD 120 billion annually.
• US citizens make close to 30 million international trips a year, spending about USD 25 billion in the
process. Over 22 million international tourists visit the United States and spend over USD 15 billion

(including payments to US flag carriers). Receipts from domestic tourism in the United States exceed USD
240 billion.
Influences on travel patterns

For tourism to happen, people need the time, the money, the means and the motivation to travel.
Leisure

People spend their time in one of three ways: at work; engaged in necessary tasks (eating, sleeping, visiting sick
aunts); or at leisure. Prior to the Industrial Revolution most people worked the land. The way they spent their time
was influenced by the calendar and the weather.
The story is told of a farmer out with his plow on the Sabbath. He was working furiously to gather in his crops
before an impending storm. His minister happened by and chided the farmer for working on the Sabbath.
"Now, Jock," said the minister, "even the Lord rested on the seventh day."
"Aye, minister," said the farmer with an eye on the approaching storm. "But he got finished and I didn't."

As people moved from the farms to the factories, time was controlled by the factory owners. Perhaps to have
output on a continuous basis year-round, or perhaps to control the working classes, laborers were forced to work up
to 70 hours a week. Their only day off was the Sabbath. Yet people were so tired and were paid so little that they had
neither the energy nor the money to do anything or go anywhere. Moreover, the sanctity of the Sabbath was strictly
enforced.
The first "holy days" were unpaid vacations. Even when an annual holiday was given, workers were not paid
during the time they were off. Nevertheless, they at least had the time to spend. It took the rise in power of the trade
unions in the 1920s and 1930s to fight for paid vacations. Today, the average workweek is less than 40 hours.
Workers in the United States, West Germany, and Sweden have up to 40 days of paid leisure time a year. This is

approximately twice that in Great Britain.
These days the demand is for blocks of time rather than reductions in the workday. The Uniform Monday
Holidays Act established four three-day weekend holidays in the United States. This has an obvious impact on the
opportunity for people to take a trip.
Over the years, there has been much talk of a four-day and eventually a three-day workweek. In reality,
companies have not moved to the concept of a four-day workweek as quickly as forecasters thought. Studies that

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