So let’s start by revisiting the WTS model.

Remember that the tourism system is an open one and it interacts with a number of other systems or, as we are going to refer to them here, environments. So because tourism systems are open systems, they interact with environments – social, cultural, economic, political, legal, technological, physical (natural and built). These environments shape tourism systems, and tourism in turn has effects on them (Leiper, 2004). The multitude of interactions and relationships – and the impacts that stem from these – are very important to understand. While tourism has many positive impacts on environments it can also have many negative impacts which we must manage in order to control and minimise them.

It is also important to recognise that economic impacts of tourism – which might be regarded as positive – might also produce some negative social and/or natural environmental problems. So it’s not always straightforward to divide impacts up into ‘positive’ and ‘negative’. So for example, increasing numbers of tourists travelling to Australia is clearly a benefit to the Australian economy but it also creates a negative environmental impact by increasing the amount of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, thus exacerbating climate change.

In this (big) topic, we will be focusing on the economic, socio-cultural and physical environments (physical environment is the natural and the built environments).

Let’s start with the economic environment and the ways by which tourism interacts with it, and creates positive and negative impacts for destination communities.

Economic impacts

Let’s begin by first reading this media release from the Australian Federal Minister for Tourism, the Hon. Simon Birmingham, released on 9 January 2019, titled: Tourism spending soaring as travellers head to the regions.

When you read a document like this, you need to do so critically. And by critically, what we mean is to examine the document for the claims that it is making and test those claims by seeing what, if any, evidence is being provided to support them. And, are there any assumptions that have been built into the argument being made?

You also have to keep in mind the author of the media release, in this case the Minister for Tourism. Obviously, it is in the interests of the Minister and his department, to put a very positive ‘spin’ on the data obtained from the International Visitor and National Visitor Surveys.

And, of course, it does look like it’s good news. Tourism does inject significant amounts of money into the Australian economy and that’s a good thing. But you might ask, just how is that figure of $113.4 billion dollars spent by tourists calculated? Of course, it is fairly straightforward to determine the number of tourists who come to Australia because they each have to be processed on arrival at an airport or cruise ship terminal, so that would be a reasonably accurate figure. But how does the Government know how many of those international tourists travelled into the regional areas of Australia? And how is the figure of 1 in 13 people employed in the tourism industry calculated? Are these people who are directly employed in hotels, motels, tourist attractions? Or does this include people who are employed in other businesses that provide some services to tourists, but not specifically to tourists? And are these jobs full-time jobs or do they include people maybe only working 8 hours a week?

Clearly, governments really like getting strong economic data from tourism like that which is contained in the Minister’s media release. And, if that figure is correct relating to spending in the regions, then that is an excellent outcome for regional economies. Because one of the challenges that governments face is in distributing the economic benefits of tourism beyond the major cities and into regional areas.

The chapter structures economic impacts according to:

1. Economic Benefits – Direct Revenue and Indirect Revenue, and
2. Economic Costs – Direct Costs and Indirect Costs.

So make sure that you understand what is meant by ‘direct’ and ‘indirect’ in this context.

Direct revenue for example, refers to the money (sometimes referred to as receipts) that is obtained directly from tourists through advance of immediate expenditures in the destination, as well as associated taxes.

So, in other words, direct revenue is money that comes directly from tourists – it is what they spend by handing over their credit card or opening their purse or wallet.

On the other hand, indirect revenue occurs through the circulation of direct tourist expenditures within a destination. This occurs through what is called the multiplier effect.

So, imagine that a motel owner takes in $1000.00 a week from guests paying for their rooms. The motel owner then uses some of that income to purchase goods and services such as food and wine for the motel’s restaurant, cleaning products and a lawn mower service. The motel owner also pays her staff their wages for that week as well. These are called first-round indirect impacts. Then the staff use a portion of what they have been paid to buy their own goods and services for that week, such as food, clothes, hairdresser etc. These are second-round indirect impacts.

Work your way through the chapter.

Socio-cultural impacts

Again, the chapter is structured in a way that deals first with the sociocultural benefits and then the costs and then does the same for the environmental costs and benefits. As I have said, while taking this ‘cost-benefit’ approach is useful, we have to keep in mind that in reality there can often be a blurriness between costs and benefits – they are not always clear cut.

But to summarise:

You may notice that the textbook sometimes refers to ‘hosts’ and guests’: the destination community being the host and the guests being tourists. This conceptual understanding of tourist-destination community relations was first developed by anthropologist Professor Valene Smith in a seminal book she edited and published in 1978 called Hosts and Guests.

Apart from being a professor at California State University for 50 years, Professor Smith also worked as a tour guide in 1955 and established her own tour company in 1959.

Can I also make the point, which some of you may have picked up, that there were very few women academics contributing to tourism scholarship and research in the first few decades of tourism research. Why do you think there were so few female academics active in tourism research between the 1960s and early 1980s?

This situation has changed now with many women contributing significantly to tourism scholarship, including SCU academics Professor Betty Weiler (whose research has focused on aspects of tour guiding) and Associate Professor Erica Wilson, who has made contributions to women and travel.

This book was important because for the first time it brought together a range of studies that had been carried out that examined the interactions between tourists (guests) and destination communities and people (the hosts) adopting an anthropological disciplinary perspective. Her book was one of the first to lead the Cautionary Platform’s body of scholarship, actually.

But what do you think about the use of the ‘host and guest’ metaphor? Is it correct to think of tourists as ‘guests’ and destination residents as ‘hosts’?

Work your way through the material and ensure that you understand the ways in which tourism can bring about sociocultural benefits and costs to destination communities.

An issue that relates to tourism practice and Indigenous culture and society concerns the impending closure of Uluru to tourists which is planned to occur 26 October, 2019. Take a read of this short Conversation article.

The particular theories and models that you need to understand in this part of the chapter are:

• Cultural Commodification
• MacCannell’s Front stage-back stage theory
• Demonstration Effect
• Authenticity
• Social Exchange Theory and Social Representations Theory

There’s another model or theory that I’d like you to Google Search as well: Doxey’s Irridex. The textbook doesn’t include it but I think it is worth knowing a little about it.

Doxey’s Irridex is a model that describes/predicts the ways by which destination communities respond to tourism, from ‘euphoria’ through to ‘antagonism’. Search for it and gain a deeper understanding.

Environmental impacts

Before you start reading about Environmental Benefits and Costs in the textbook, take a look at this short article on The Conversation website, relating to the carbon footprint of tourism.

Environmental benefits

The textbook doesn’t deal especially well with the environmental benefits of tourism. Let me list them for you:

Tourism can act as an incentive to improve the quality of the natural environment, the amenity, or of a destination by keeping it clean so that visitors will be attracted; e.g. temporarily improving air quality in the case of the Beijing Olympics.

Tourism can act as an incentive to protect ecosystems in national parks and other protected natural areas as the income derived from park visits can be a significant money earner for a destination.

Tourism can help to protect certain species as well for the same reason as above. For instance, a study was done in 1980 that showed that an individual lion in a national park in Kenya was worth, across a lifespan of about 15 years, just over US$500,000.00. In contrast, its economic value as a hunted ‘trophy’ was US$8500.00, or as a skin it was worth $US1000.00. This study clearly showed the economic value of live lions for tourism. Other destinations now gain considerable income from whale and dolphin watching, shark encounters, turtle tourism and mountain gorilla, orangutan experiences.

However, in recent times there has been quite a lot of debate about whether or not shooting trophy animals (and the fees that are now charged to hunt animals like lions, leopards, elephants, and giraffes are very high) actually does represent a significant source of income for desperately poor local people. Take a look at this article.

Tourism can also create a positive environmental impact through the provision of high quality experiences in nature that help tourists to create or strengthen an already existing commitment to nature conservation. The sustainability features of some hotels now act as a kind of model for guests to emulate, as well. The educational value of tourism – especially trips to zoos, aquaria, wildlife parks, and museums, has been the focus of a lot of research.

Environmental costs

The chapter deals quite well with the environmental costs that can occur. Unfortunately, in many cases and at many destinations, the extent and significance of the environmental costs of tourism often outweigh the benefits.

Make sure that you understand the Environmental Impact Sequence on pp. 269–271. This model is quite a useful tool in understanding the ways in which tourism can act as an environmental ‘stressor’ leading to environmental change.

As we will find when we look at sustainability and tourism in a few weeks, two of the most significant environmental impacts implicating tourism today are global climate change (I would regard this as THE most significant environmental problem to which tourism contributes) and plastic pollution.