Icon College of Technology and Management

BTEC Edexcel Level 5 HND in Travel and Tourism

The Travel and Tourism Sector

The Travel and Tourism Sector

TASK 1
a) One of the most consented meaning of tourism is that endowed by the World Tourism
Organisation:
Tourism comprises the activities of persons travelling to and staying in places outside their
usual environment for not more than one consecutive year for leisure, business and other
purposes(WTO,1991).
A variety of important factors contributed to the development of tourism

during the

nineteenth and twentieth century.

According to Manson (2009, p.16) there are five main reasons for the development of
tourism:
A rise in industrial output associated with the Industrial Revolution that led to an increase
in the standard of living; improvements in transport technology which led to cheaper and
accessible travel; the introduction of annual holidays- in the end of nineteenth century;
changing perception of the environment- in this way people started to travel in locations that
were once viewed as hostile; an increasing desire to travel due to improvements in educations
and to greater overseas travel.
Tourism in UK started with the medieval pilgrimage which were undertaken for religious
reasons. For the pilgrims those experiences were like a holiday away from their places of
birth. They held back reminders and relics of their trips and in this way was born the idea of
souvenirs. In the sixteenth century in England it become a fashion to go in a Grand Tour.
Many wealthy families used to send their children to visit the major cities of Europe.
During eighteenth century health tourism for become very popular in Britain. There were a
lot of spas where tourists went for health treatments due to their wealth- giving mineral
waters. As time went on Spas became more fashionable resorts and started to offer cultural
and social events. For example Bath , Buxton, Harrogate Tunbridge Wells boomed during
the eighteenth century and were visited more for the balls and less for the healing waters.
By the nineteenth century competition from continental spas resorts started to affect British
spas and gradually spas were soon replaced with holidays beside the sea. Doctors inspired the
benefits of soaking in marine water. Concerning this period excursion came to be easier and
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extra affordable , as Britain come to be more industrialised. People left their home places and
moved to industrial areas to work in factories. They discovered themselves alongside
disposable income and leisure period in that to expend it. The development of steam trains
and steam ships provided a great opportunity to travel. The extend of the railway web
influenced the expand of seaside resorts. For example Wales was a popular Victorian
destination having seaside hotels in Llandudno and in Llondrindod spa town . Blackpool
extended rapidly by the construction of Fleetwood line and became one of the top British
tourist destination. In 1854 on 5 July Thomas cook sold the first package tour by including
in its package entrance to an entertainment grasped in confidential fields, rail permits and
food for the train excursion all of 1 shilling price.
In 1871 was introduced The Bank Holiday Act which gave rights for workers to take
holidays. By the end of the nineteenth century , holiday was a tradition very firm established
in Britain by the working class . In 1930 the people began to go in holiday camp and
particularly in period after war. In 1982, more than 50 percent of British people had taken a
holiday abroad ( Manson, 2009, p.22). Growth of airline industry, introduction of the car
create more possibilities for people to travel faster .Package tours and all inclusive holidays
became more attractive as in 1983, 6.8 million inclusive, or package tours, were taken by
British tourists( Manson, 2009, p.22).Use of web technology as the Internet started to be
used as a selling tool, are important modern changes which led to a rapidly growth of the
tourism industry.
Over the last two hundred years tourism and travel industry in UK faced a rapidly and
spectacular changes. If at the beginning only wealthy people

could afford to travel,

nowadays travel is open to almost all of us.

Tourism is one of Scotland's largest business sectors, providing direct employment for
over 200,000 people and generating visitor spending of more than 4 billion a year
(www.scotland.gov.uk , 13 February 2013).
In the late eighteen and early nineteenth century, Scotland was the most important new
European destination for bourgeois class.
According to MacLellan (1998, p.1) tourism is as much about ideas and ideologies as
physical features, and can take place anywhere as ideas and ideologies changes. From this

point of view , Scotland came from a forbidding wilderness with a climate that was regarded
as brutish into a very loved destination for leisure activities.
An important factor in tourism development of Scotland is the interplay between accident
and design in the development of destination. In Scotland the roads were originally built for
military and not for civilian purpose and the fact that English people were interested in
visiting Scotland due to Napoleonic wars in Europe.
Books stimulated the rise of Scotland as a destination by encouraging leisure reading habits
of English middle class between 1770 and 1830.
b) Components of travel and tourism refer to different parts of the industry that provide
travel and tourism products and services.
According to Gillian (2007 p.4) there are seven components of travel and tourism industry
like visitor attractions, ancillary services, tour operations, tourism development and
promotion, accommodation, transport and travel agents. All of these components interrelates
one with each other to be able to operate.
In 1979 Leiper suggested a model in which tourism is seen as a form of system with an
operational structure built-up of interacting components. In the model are three interactive
components: the tourism generating region, the destination region and transit routes which
link the two regions. (Cooper (2005, p.10). Tourist is the actor in this system. Each of the
elements interacts to deliver the tourism product .This model is general applicable and
simple providing a useful way of thinking.
According to Cooper (2005, p.504) the greater the importance of tourism to a countrys
economy the greater is the involvement of the public sector, to the point of having a
government ministry with sole responsibility for tourism.
Some of the arguments for government involvement in tourism are according to Cooper
(2005): foreign exchange earnings and their importance for the balance of payments;
employment creation and the need to provide education and training; building the image of
the country as a tourist destination; market regulation to protect consumers and prevent unfair
competition; the need to protect resources and the environment; the fact that tourism is a
large and fragmented industry which requires careful coordination of development and
marketing.
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TASK 3
a) Within the public sector in UK , the DCMS is in charge to support the tourism industry
. Here are four UK national tourist boards: VisitBritain, the Northern Ireland Tourist Board,
VisitScotland and Visit Wales. The role of VisitBritain is to promote the UK to its citizens
and to the rest of the world. It has a main role in advising the government on issues that
might affect the tourism in UK.
At a lower level are Regional Development Agencies and Regional Tourist Boards . The
RDAs determined the goals and targets the RTBs should achieve in return for the finance
received from DCMS. Sometimes the tourist boards adopt a different name to explain clearly
what they actually do. An example is the tourist board for Great Manchester with its role to
attract the visitor, support the industry and provide destination leadership.
Local authorities play an important role and are represented by the Tourist Information
Centre which are subsidised by the local council and provides an information service for
visitors.
VisitScotland is the nationwide tourism association for Scotland that works closely
alongside individual companies, local authorities and public associations and supplementary
tourism stakeholders to maximise the commercial benefits of tourism to Scotland. Its main
objectives are to marketplace Scotland and its outstanding assets to visitors from all parts of
the globe, furnish data and motivation to visitors both innately and globally, provide support
and advice to companies, attend to and work alongside the industry, partners and
stakeholders, apply the nationwide events strategy, and uphold, develop and advance
Scotlands global profile as one of the worlds managing events destinations.
(www.visitscotland.org, 23 June 2013).
b)

The government use a sequence of instruments that can be utilized to grasp tourism

flows to accomplish its strategy goals. Major objectives of government economic policy are
to control unemployment, inflation, economic growth, aid to developed countries, safety and
security. For example, creating for investors favourable tax advantage will encourage foreign
investments for many destinations .

TASK 3
a) Tourism demand is defined as the total number of persons who travel or wish to travel to
use tourist facilities away from their places of work and residence (Mathieson , 1982).
According to WTO (1995) there are two big categories factors influence the demand .The
first category are the factors with direct influence like supply of human resources, marketing,
tour operation development, knowledge and destination product developments and consumer
awareness. Second category consist of exogenous factors like political, technological
innovations, economic, demographic, safety and security, environment, infrastructure,
legislative and regulatory.
A social determinant is a main factor with influences on demand. For example, the age of a
traveler will frequently exert an impact on the kind of product or destination they select,
chiefly as especially

on youth tourism and the backpacker marketplace indicates how

important age is on the selection on this kind of experience. Other social determinants are
holiday entitlements .The growth of leisure time over the last two centuries has greatly
increased the amount of time for tourism, especially in the developed world but since the
1980s, there has been some reversal (Page, 2006, p 47).
The suppliers of tourism , like in accommodation and transport sectors often price their
goods and services by themselves. Between price and demand is an inverse relationship.
When there are higher prices will result less demand and vice versa. For example in 1960s
and 1970s was a rising in demand from UK tourists caused by the lower prices in Spain and
the Balearic Islands. The demand for tourism is influenced by other forms of expenditure
associated with the holiday. For example if the price of a holiday will decrease tourists will
think about that holiday as a lower quality product. A political determinants are the
government tax policies and control on tourist spending which often use tourism as a source
of tax revenue. According to Bull(1995) there are there specific types of taxation in tourism :
taxes on commercial tourism products, taxes imposed on consumers in the act of being
tourists and user-pays charges (Page, 2006, p 48).
Apart from the image concern , tourism supply

can be affected by the economic

environment in which companies operate. Tourism in most states work inside a free
marketplace economy and have individual companies that work in open competition. In little
states tourism industry benefits of government support across groundwork ability, marketing
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and promotional service. For example the national trust board in Scotland VisitScotland
had a budget of 60 million to assist in promoting destination Scotland domestically and
internationally. British Airways also spend in excess of 60 million a year with advertising to
communicate its customers (Page, 2012).
For example , in the UK there has been a momentous development in low-cost budget
airlines , that have been authorised to work from local and London centres. Within the larger
travel companies, increased numbers of acquisitions an pressures on cost reduction have
caused changes in operating environment that reinforces the demand for leadership and
countless of the skills noted by Mintzberg (1973).
b) For tourism supply is important to focus more on customer needs and to be able to
develop alongside with the market changes by using informational technology , innovate
advertising and building brands . In this way customers will buy what is in offer. In the
supply of tourism products and services, attractions, accommodation , transport , associated
services demand to co-exist so that destinations continue to appeal visitors. Handling the
supply chain

needs great

managerial skills

because after something goes wrong its

instantly picked up by the mass media . Firms demand a fluid company strategy to
comprehend tourism trends , change in product progress and to seize all the opportunities
that arise.
TASK 4
a) Many millions of tourists visit Italy annually to spend their holidays, see the sights such
as the Rome Colosseum, to enjoy beaches and to experience the way of Italians life.
As the Ministry of Foreign Affairs declared that the tourism industry accounts for more
than half of the gross

domestic product

(GDP) of

Italy and this includes

development/construction and employment(www.esteri.it).

According to the UNEP, Italys tourism destroys seaside resorts, the constructing of
vacation residences , city development and marinas. The association uttered that 43 per cent
of the shoreline links to tourism development. Tourism increases the demand for water
resources and rubbish disposal due to an increased population. Tourism additionally alter
wildlife and their habitats. For example the Mediterranean Monk is nowadays extinct in Italy

as well as France, Corsica, Spain, Balearic Islands, Croatia, Sardinia, and Tunisia, according
to an article from the Monachus Guardian Library.
Tourism in Italy brings benefits to the economy far extra than its affluent agrarian
landscape. The tourism industry generates occupation for locals and increases profit margins
for the country. According to the Department of External Affairs, 69 per cent of Italy's GDP
is the services sector, specifically tourism. The assembly sector makes up 29 per cent, that
tourism considerably affects, and 2 per cent of GDP comes from agriculture resources.
Tourism additionally affects the method of existence of innate Italians. According to a
Uzbekistan study, The Economic and Social Impact of Tourism, by Batir Mirbabayev and
Malika Shagazatova, tourism helps alongside traditional understanding, reduces negative
stereotypes, helps develop respect for supplementary sophistications and brings a demand for
quality resources such as water supply and sanitary housing.
Though the result of tourism in Italy has negative encounters like overdevelopment, lack of
authentic assembly and the displacement of innate residents. Italian innate produce, lifestyles
and traditions are all altered by mass tourism
.
b) Tourism has many positive impacts .Its create jobs for locale people, income for local
economy , increase demand for local and crafts and food and very important tourists come to
see the scenery and wildlife so there is pressure to conserve habitats and wildlife.
The environment is a key resource for tourism so any negative factor influencing the
environment may lead to lower numbers of tourists . Tourists are probable to drop litter and
they can lead to congestion in words of overcrowding of people as well as traffic
congestions.
Sexual exploitation is a negative socio-cultural impact as is purpose of tourism in many
destinations and a major tourism market has grown up around sex tourism like Thailand, the
Gambia and some Central European countries.
Once all the problems generated by tourism are analyzed destinations should find out if
there are some measures to correct and to reach the sustainable tourism.

Some of the ways that can be followed in preventing the negative effects are to promote the
local production and offering ecological foods , use recycled paper and turnaround packages,
save water , use technologies faucets efficient, purify residual waters to reuse them for
irrigation or grass or agriculture. Saving energy by using solar paddles to warm up the
sanitary water and energy, promoting the public transport and use of bicycles for tourists.

List of reference:

Bull, A. (1995) The Economics of Travel and Tourism, New York: Guilford Publications,
Incorporated;
Cooper, C. et al (2005) Tourism: Principles and Practice, Third Edition, Harlow: Person
Education Limited;
Dale, G.(2007) Travel & Tourism - Book 1, BTEC National, Second Edition. Harlow:
Pearson Education Limited;
Ioannides, D. And Debbage, K.(1998) The Economic Geography of the Tourist Industry: a
Supply side Analysis, London: Routledge;
MacLellan, R. and Smith, R(1998) Tourism & Hospitality Management series, Tourism in
Scotland. London :International Thomson Business Press;
Manson, P.(2009) Tourism Impacts, Planning and Management. Second edition. Oxford:
Elsevier Ltd;
Mathieson, A. and G. Wall (1982). Tourism, Economic, Physical and Social Impacts.
Harlow: Longman
Mintzberg, H.(1973) The nature of managerial work, New York : Harper and Row;
Page, S. (2012) Tourism Management, Third Edition, Oxford: Routledge;
Page, S.J. and Connel J. (2006) Tourism: A modern synthesis, Second Edition, Andover:
Cengage Learning EMEA.
Witt, S. et al (1991) The Management of International Tourism, London: Routledge.
http://www.pearsonschoolsandfecolleges.co.uk/FEAndVocational/TravelAndTourism/ALeve
l/ASGCETravelAndTourism/Samples/Sampleunit/ASTTDoubleEdexcelUnit1.pdf
http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Topics/Business-Industry/Tourism
http://visitbath.co.uk/spa-and-wellbeing/history-of-baths-spa
http://www.grand-tour.org/history.htm
http://www.history.uk.com/history/history-british-tourism-british-tou/
http://www.visitscotland.org/about_us/our_focus/corporate_plan.aspx
http://www.ehow.co.uk/list_7452173_effects-tourism-italy.html

The impacts of tourism. 2013. The impacts of tourism. [ONLINE] Available at:
http://www.nationalparks.gov.uk/learningabout/ourchallenges/tourism/impactsoftourism.htm.
[Accessed 12 July 2013].

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Bull, A. (1995) The Economics of Travel and Tourism, New York: Guilford Publications,
Incorporated;
Cooper, C. et al (2005) Tourism: Principles and Practice, Third Edition, Harlow: Person
Education Limited;
Dale, G.(2007) Travel & Tourism - Book 1, BTEC National, Second Edition. Harlow:
Pearson Education Limited;
Manson, P.(2009) Tourism Impacts, Planning and Management. Second edition. Oxford:
Elsevier Ltd;
Mathieson, A. and G. Wall (1982). Tourism, Economic, Physical and Social Impacts.
Harlow: Longman
MacLellan, R. and Smith, R(1998) Tourism & Hospitality Management series, Tourism in
Scotland. London :International Thomson Business Press;
Page, S.J. and Connel J. (2006) Tourism: A modern synthesis, Second Edition, Andover:
Cengage Learning EMEA.
Page, S. (2012) Tourism Management, Third Edition, Oxford: Routledge;
Mintzberg, H.(1973) The nature of managerial work, New York : Harper and Row;
Ioannides, D. And Debbage, K.(1998) The Economic Geography of the Tourist Industry: a
Supply side Analysis, London: Routledge;
Witt, S. et al (1991) The Management of International Tourism, London: Routledge.
ASGCE Travel And Tourism. (2013). The travel and tourism industry. Available:
http://www.pearsonschoolsandfecolleges.co.uk/FEAndVocational/TravelAndTourism/ALeve
l/ASGCETravelAndTourism/Samples/Sampleunit/ASTTDoubleEdexcelUnit1.pdf. Last
accessed 11th July 2013;
2013.[ONLINE] Available at: http://www.grand-tour.org/history.htm. [Accessed 11 July
2013].
Tourism . 2013. Tourism . [ONLINE] Available at:
http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Topics/Business-Industry/Tourism. [Accessed 11 July 2013]
.http://visitbath.co.uk/spa-and-wellbeing/history-of-baths-spa
http://www.history.uk.com/history/history-british-tourism-british-tou/
http://www.visitscotland.org/about_us/our_focus/corporate_plan.aspx
http://www.ehow.co.uk/list_7452173_effects-tourism-italy.html

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