Introduction to Tourism and Hospitality Industry
What the exam tests
This domain asks you to define tourism using the UNWTO framework and to sort travellers into visitors, tourists and excursionists. Questions usually arrive as one-mark definitions, two-mark differences and a case-study classification.
Core definitions
- Tourism: activities of persons travelling to and staying in places outside their usual environment for less than one year, for leisure, business or other purposes.
- Visitor: a traveller outside the usual environment for less than 12 months whose main purpose is not remuneration from the place visited. Visitors split into tourists (stay at least one night) and same-day visitors, or excursionists.
- Domestic tourist: an Indian visiting Digha. Inbound: a Bangladeshi visiting Kolkata. Outbound: an Indian visiting Bangkok.
- Hospitality is the accommodation-and-food service wing; tourism is the whole travel system.
What the industry contains
Attractions, transport, accommodation, food and beverage, and supporting services such as guides, tour operators, insurance and forex. Characteristics that shape pricing: intangibility, perishability, inseparability, variability, seasonality and a composite product.
Worked example
Rina from Kolkata spends three nights in Puri. Mr Haque from Dhaka attends a Kolkata trade fair and flies home the same night. Sunil goes to Dubai on a two-year work contract. Reasoning: Rina is a domestic tourist - outside her usual environment, under one year, at least one night. Mr Haque is an inbound same-day visitor, so he counts in visitor statistics but not in tourist statistics. Sunil is a migrant, not a tourist: the stay exceeds one year and the purpose is paid work.
Traps that cost marks
Calling every visitor a tourist. Forgetting the less-than-one-year and no-remuneration conditions. Writing inbound for an Indian travelling abroad. Treating hospitality and tourism as identical.