Travis – Benefits and Costs of Tourism Development

Tourism development can bring about the benefits to a destination, but at the same time the host society may be adversely affected by it. Travis came up with a detailed and comprehensive table showing the benefits and costs of tourism development for the socio-cultural aspect of the host society. (1982) (see Table 18).

While the impact of tourism on a host country is unavoidable, the nature of such impact depends on the type of tourist concerned. In Unit 6, Cohen has classified tourists into 4 main categories: explorers, drifters, organized mass tourists and individual mass tourists. These four types of tourists could further be categorized according to their travel motives:

Primarily, these two types of tourists are very interested in the culture of the local host. While their open and friendly attitude helps break down part of the communication barriers between local residents and tourists, their eagerness to know more helps to create more opportunities for host-tourist interaction and even in-depth contact, resulting in an ultimate better understanding of each other.

Mass tourism is characterized by superficial pleasure. When the tourist-resident relations are maintained at a superficial level, communication barriers between tourists and residents, caused mainly by cultural shock, cannot be broken down easily.

• 
  If you find yourself repeatedly puzzled by other peoples’ behaviour
  
• 
  If you find yourself stereotyping or making generalizations about a culture
  
• 
  If you find yourself getting angry at other cultures
  

Table 19: Tourists who seek for local culture vs tourists who look for superficial pleasure

Based on Cohen’s classification on tourists, a typology of tourists is developed which focuses on the types of tourist, number of tourists, and adaptation to local norms.

To simplify, tourists may be identified and grouped under two categories, namely independent tourist and package tourist. The categorization of these two types of tourists has implications on the development of the tourism product and for the influence they exert on the host society.

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  They are usually fit in better with the environment and social structure of local society.
  
• 
  They are associated with relatively slow growth rates and often lead to local ownership of tourism products.
  
• 
  According to Cohen’s classification, drifters and explorers are the types of visitors that could be categorized under this heading.
  

Package Tourists

• 
  They usually demand Western amenities, e.g. hotel accommodation with good facilities.
  
• 
  They are associated with rapid growth rates and often lead to the restructuring of the local economy, e.g. influx of foreign investors because of the upward development of tourism industry.
  
• 
  According to Cohen’s classification, individual mass tourists and organized mass tourists are the types of visitors that could be categorized under this heading.
  

Source: Cooper, Fletcher, Gilbert, Shepherd & Wanhill, 1998:170

Tourism Effects on Community – Social Effects

In spite of certain social impact of tourism upon the host culture, it should be recognized that tourism is usually not the main cause of degradation or loss of the host’s culture. Very often, the latter are inevitable and will occur whether tourism development exists or not. Tourism may speed up the process of change, but it is not necessary the cause of it.

Possible friction between visitors and local residents over shared usage of local recreational facilities

Antagonism: Employees relate this to the difference between their own lifestyles and that enjoyed by the tourists

Increase in crime rates: robbery, prostitution, etc.

Figure 7: Community problems associated with the development of tourism

Community problems associated with the socio-cultural impact of tourism are usually concerned with the following aspects (see Figure 9) :

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  Lifestyles: Living condition, personal mobility (shopping, entertainment and dining away from home), changes in labour structure
  
• 
  Culture and value: Preservation and/or degradation of culture; changes in moral standard
  
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  Social facilities: Infrastructures, social services and transportation
  

Many possible and actual social impacts can be summed up, but unfortunately not many frameworks are available to assess them in a coherent way. Mathieson and Wall (1982) mention 2 such frameworks. In a sense these frameworks offer a possibility to assess perceptions by locals of tourism development.

The first one is the irritation index of Doxey (1976), which describes a transitory development of host attitudes through 5 stages:
‧
T

I

M

E
level of euphoria: locals err enthusiastic and thrilled by tourist development

‧ level of apathy: tourists become targets for profit-taking

‧ level of irritation: locals cannot handle the large number of tourists

‧ level of antagonism: tourism is a scapegoat for all that is bad

‧ final level: locals must learn to live in an altered environment
In this framework, change can only be in one direction, from euphoria to the final level. No movement in the other direction is possible. Another underlying assumption of this framework is that the host population can be viewed as a homogeneous group.
A probably more realistic approach is taken by Bjorklund and Philbrick (1972). Here, the host population is not seen as a homogeneous group, but as made up of individuals with varying interests and other characteristics.

	Behaviour
	Active		Passive
Attitude	Positive	FAVOURABLE: Aggressive promotion	FAVOURABLE: Slight acceptance and support
	Negative	UNFAVOURABLE: Aggressive opposition	UNFAVOURABLE:: Silent acceptance but opposition

Many possible social impacts of tourism have been put forward in the literature, most of which are negative. Not every form of socio-cultural change is necessarily bad, however. In order to reach a higher standard of living, some socio-cultural changes are often needed. But this does not need to damage social or cultural identity. Unfortunately, no generally accepted classification of social impacts seems to exist in the literature. The existing classifications lack a logical structure and their impact categories are overlapping.

2. Impact on population structure

3. Transformation of forms and types of occupation

4. Congestion

5. Transformation of values

6. Modification of consumption patterns

7. Health problems

8. Neo-colonialism

Especially young people tend to imitate the tourists’ behaviour. They are attracted by the tourists’ clothing and eating habits and their spending patterns. This is called the demonstration effect. The problem is that the local population often cannot afford the tourists’ behaviour, which may lead to feelings of frustration. Older people can also become frustrated with tourism development. On the one hand they see the advantages of tourism in terms of employment and income, but on the other hand they see the disadvantages, for example in terms of loss of culture. This ambiguous attitude may produce feelings of resentment.

Population structure can be affected by tourism. First of all, by strengthening the economic basis of the local community, tourism may foster population growth. This population growth often comes about by immigration. People from other areas are lured to the tourist destination by the possibility of finding a better paid job. Movements of people appear to be both age- and sex-selective. For example, according to Pearce (1989), people aged twenty to thirty and females are overrepresented in the tourist destination of Queenstown, New Zealand.

Tourism offers new employment opportunities, which may draw workers from other sectors of the economy - for example, agriculture - with consequent effects on class or social structure. Also, activities may become financially rewarded, which were not paid for in earlier times. Here one can think of cleaning and washing.

By using facilities and resources in the destination, tourists can have a serious impact on daily life. Tourism may for example lead to water shortages as aggregate demand for water is greater than supply. This phenomenon may be worsened by the earlier discussed demographic processes. The described forms of congestion usually occur when a rapid pace of development or marked seasonality is combined with a large number of tourists compared with local population.

According to Figuerola (1976) values in society can be grouped into four categories:

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  political
  
• 
  social
  
• 
  religious
  
• 
  moral
  

The transformation of values is related to the demonstration effect, which occurs when different groups of people are brought together. Lambiri-Dimaki (1976) notes the democratization and modernization of attitudes amongst the young, arising out of contact with youthful Western tourists.

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  Tourism means that people are away from the puritanical bonds of normal living and money is available to spend hedonistically.
  
• 
  Tourism affords employment for women, so it may upgrade their economic status. This, in turn, may lead to their liberalization and, eventually, to their involvement in prostitution to maintain or acquire new economic levels.
  

The latter hypothesis is of course closely related to earlier comments on the transformation of forms and types of employment.

Contact between hosts and tourists may give rise to changed consumption patterns. This may be due to the demonstration effect or to increased income levels. If a tourist is rich and successful in the eyes of the host, the latter may try to emulate the formers behaviour and consumption pattern. In the process the host may forget that the tourist often seems better off than he really is. After all, tourism is a hedonistic experience which most tourists cannot afford on a sustained basis. The significance of the demonstration effect for changing consumption patterns probably increases with increasing cultural and economic distances.

Tourism may give rise to health problems in at least two ways. First of all, by moving around the world tourists may spread diseases such as AIDS, cholera or malaria. Second, the movement of tourists or of people employed in the tourism industry may lead to excessive use of facilities such as sewage treatment which may present health risks.

Tourism is sometimes accused of being a neo-colonialist industry. It is directed from the large metropolitan areas in the Western world, leaving the rest of the world without much control and in a dependent situation. Neo-colonialism can give local people a feeling of frustration and inferiority. In the case of tourism, neo-colonialism is closely related to the magnitude of the profit and wage repatriation flows discussed in earlier chapter. Once large multinational corporations gain control in a destination, a large part of tourist expenditure ends up in the Western home countries of those corporations.