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“Tourism is often seen as the savior for developing countries. Discuss whether costs outweigh the benefits with specific reference to developing countries.”

Tourism can be defined as "travel away from your normal place of work and residence, including travel undertaken for business and pleasure". There are two main types of tourism: domestic and international. Domestic tourism being within the tourists own country and international tourists travel to another country. Tourism is now the largest and fastest growing industry in the world. In 1950, 25 million people traveled internationally, in 1966 594 million people traveled internationally (see figure 1.). Reasons for mass tourism are: people can afford to take more holidays, introduction of holiday pay, it is now considered as a status thing (people travel so that they can boast to friends), flexible working hours, more holiday allowance, budget airlines (cheap flights) and access to the internet (booking flights, car hire and accommodations online). Developing countries often depend heavily on tourism. There are advantages and disadvantages of tourism on less economically developed countries (LEDCs): economically, environmentally and socially/culturally.


A lot of LEDCs depend heavily on tourism as their income. For Example Washington Times stated:
“Malta has only 380,000 residents, but received 1.2 million tourists in 1999. As 25% of GDP (and indirectly 40% ), tourism generated more than $650 million in foreign exchange earnings. Malta's high dependence on tourism and a limited number of export products makes its trade performance vulnerable to shifts in international demand.”
Money that is spent by tourists would otherwise not be in the economy. Money is spent by tourists on transport, food, accommodation, airfares and retail. This money will go to the shopkeepers, cleaners etc. which will then get spend on other things such as houses and food. This is...