Tourism

Tourism is travel for predominantly recreational or leisure purposes, and also refers to the provision of services in support of this act. According to the World Tourism Organization, tourists are people who "travel to and stay in places outside their usual environment for not more than one consecutive year for leisure, business and other purposes not related to the exercise of an activity remunerated from within the place visited".Tourism has become an extremely popular, global activity. In 2004, there were over 763 million international tourist arrivals.

History
Beaches make popular tourist resorts. 90 Mile Beach, Lakes Entrance, Australia.
Wealthy people have always traveled to distant parts of the world to see great buildings or other works of art, to learn new languages, to experience new cultures, or to taste new cuisine. As long ago as the time of the Roman Republic places such as Baiae were popular coastal resorts for the rich.
The terms tourist and tourism were first used as official terms in 1937 by the League of Nations. Tourism was defined as people travelling abroad for periods of over 24 hours.




Special forms of tourism
For the past few decades other forms of tourism, also known as niche tourism, have been becoming more popular, particularly:
*Adventure tourism: tourism involving travel in rugged regions, or adventurous sports such as mountaineering and hiking (tramping).
*Agritourism: farm based tourism, helping to support the local agricultural economy.
*Ancestry tourism: (also known as genealogy tourism) is the travel with the aim of tracing one's ancestry, visiting the birth places of these ancestors and sometimes getting to know distant family.
*Armchair tourism and virtual tourism: not traveling physically, but exploring the world through internet, books, TV, etc.
*Audio tourism: includes audio walking tours and other audio guided forms of tourism including museum audio guides and audio travel books.
*Backpacker Tourism is a term used to denote a form of low-cost independent international travel, differentiating it from other forms of tourism notably by the following typical attributes: minimal budget use, longer duration traveling, use of public transport and multiple destinations/countries. The origin of the name comes from the backpacks that budget travelers generally carry in the interests of mobility and flexibility.
*Creative Tourism is a new form of tourism that allows visitors to develop their creative potential, and get closer to local people, through informal participation in hands-on workshops that draw on the culture of their holiday destinations.
*Cultural tourism: includes urban tourism, visiting historical or interesting cities, and experiencing their cultural heritages. This type of tourism may also include specialized cultural experiences, such as art museum tourism where the tourist visits many art museums during the tour, or opera tourism where the tourist sees many operas or concerts during the tour.
*Coastal Tourism involves tourist products located along Coastal Environments - due to the limited extent of coastal environments they often are amongst the first places to experience tourist congestion for a region.
*Ecotourism: sustainable tourism which has minimal impact on the environment, such as safaris (Kenya), Rainforests (Belize) and hiking (Lapland), or national parks.
*Educational tourism: may involve traveling to an education institution, a wooded retreat or some other destination in order to take personal-interest classes, such as cooking classes with a famous chef or crafts classes.
*Free Independent Traveler: a sector of the market and philosophy of constructing a vacation by sourcing one's own components eg accommodation, transport.
Gambling tourism, e.g. to Atlantic City, Las Vegas, Palm Springs, California, Macau or Monte Carlo for the purpose of gambling at the casinos there.
Garden tourism visiting botanical gardens famous places in the history of gardening, such as Versailles and the Taj Mahal.
*Heritage tourism: visiting historical (Rome,St. Petersburg, Athens, Cracow) or industrial sites, such as old canals, railways, battlegrounds, etc.
*Hobby tourism: tourism alone or with groups to participate in hobby interests, to meet others with similar interests, or to experience something pertinent to the hobby. Examples might be garden tours, amateur radio DX-peditions, or square dance cruises.
*Inclusive tourism: tourism marketed to those with functional limits or disabilities. Referred to as "Tourism for All" in some regions. Destinations often employ Universal Design and Universal Destination Development principles.
*Mass Tourism is an ecotourism policy to minimise the footprint of tourists by concentrating them into a small area. Mass tourism also maximises the ultisation of tourist infrastructure.
*Medical tourism, e.g.:
for what is illegal in one's own country, such as abortion or euthanasia
for advanced care that is not available in one's own country
in the case that there are long waiting lists in one's own country
for use of free or cheap health care organisations
*Pilgrimage Tourism: pilgrimages to ancient holy places (Rome and Santiago de Compostela for Catholics, temples and stupas of Nepal for the Hindus and Buddhist, Mount Athos or Painted churches of northern Moldavia for the Orthodox), religious sites such as mosques, shrines, etc.
*Shopping tourism promoting shopping festivals as tourist drawcards such as the Dubai, Singapore, Hong Kong and the Gold Coast.
*Sport travel: skiing, golf and scuba diving are popular ways to spend a vacation. This could also include traveling to a major international sporting event such as the FIFA World Cup or following a tour such as the Ashes or British and Irish Lions.
Space tourism: traveling in outer space or on spaceships.

Trends
The World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) forecasts that international tourism will continue growing at the average annual rate of 4 %.[3] By 2020 Europe will remain the most popular destination, but its share will drop from 60 % in 1995 to 46 %. Long-haul will grow slightly faster than intraregional travel and by 2020 its share will increase from 18 % in 1995 to 24 %.
With the advent of e-commerce, tourism products have become one of the most traded items on the internet. Tourism products and services have been made available through intermediaries, although tourism providers (hotels, airlines, etc.) can sell their services directly. This has put pressure on intermediaries from both on-line and traditional shops.
Space tourism is expected to "take off" in the first quarter of the 21st century, although compared with traditional destinations the number of tourists in orbit will remain low until technologies such as a space elevator make space travel cheap.
Technological improvement is likely to make possible air-ship hotels, based either on solar-powered airplanes or large dirigibles. Underwater hotels, such as Hydropolis, expected to open in Dubai in 2006, will be built. On the ocean tourists will be welcomed by ever larger cruise ships and perhaps floating cities.
Some futurists expect that movable hotel "pods" will be created that could be temporarily erected anywhere on the planet, where building a permanent resort would be unacceptable politically, economically or environmentally.