Introduction to Tourism: Concepts, Types and the Tourism System
This domain tests precise definitions, traveller categories, and the systems view that links tourism demand to supply.
Definitions that earn marks
- Tourism: travel outside the usual environment for under 12 consecutive months, for leisure, business or other purposes, not remunerated from within the place visited.
- Visitor = tourist (overnight) + excursionist (same-day). An excursionist is a visitor but never a tourist.
- Flows: domestic, inbound, outbound; internal = domestic + inbound.
Leiper's system
Five elements: the tourist (demand), generating region, transit route, destination region and the tourism industry (supply). Push factors arise in the generating region; pull factors come from the destination's attraction mix. Impacts are usually classified as economic, socio-cultural and environmental, each with positive and negative sides.
Types and lifecycle
Mass versus alternative tourism; special-interest forms such as ecotourism, medical, MICE, film, dark and voluntourism. Butler's TALC runs exploration, involvement, development, consolidation, stagnation, then decline or rejuvenation; pressure on carrying capacity peaks around consolidation.
Worked example
A Guwahati teacher visits Pobitora on Saturday and returns the same night. Outside the usual environment? Yes. Under 12 months? Yes. Paid at the destination? No. Overnight stay? No - so he is a domestic same-day visitor (excursionist): a visitor, but not a tourist. By contrast, a Dibrugarh tea manager posted to Jorhat for 18 months is not a tourist, because the stay exceeds a year, is remunerated, and becomes his usual environment.
Traps
- Calling every traveller a 'tourist'.
- Ignoring the 'not remunerated' clause.
- Assuming stagnation always becomes decline.
- Excluding business travel from tourism.