Factors Before Introducing Ethno Tourist Holidays Tourism Essay

Published Date: 23 Mar 2015

Tourism develops faster than ever before, not only because it increases the local economics but also gives more chances for tourists to understand the differences culture exists around us.

Basing on all the benefits, governments in many tourist cities were dedicated the strategies of developing tourist industries.

To improve competitions in areas of tourism, travel companies should expand their business into novel and diversified modes. Developing ethno-tourism is a kind of them which should be considered.

Ethno-tourism was defined by Wood (1980) as "tours of living culture", that means tourists should entered themselves into the spirit of the places or they may performance as the local people during the traveling that could understand deeply of the culture. Ethno-tourism is focus on the people who didn't know the culture of the tourist district and also living out of this kind of culture.

MacCannell (1984:375) claimed the ethno-tourism "occupies the conceptual space between bio-genetic ideas of race and socio-genetic ideas of culture." Exploring the unknown world is human's instinctive behavior, during 19th and 20th the costs increased by tourists can improve it. For example Word Bank (1983) reported in Hong Kong (south Asian), the tourism receipts up from 30.8 millions dollars to 1449.0 millions dollars from the year 1960 to 1981. Tourism industries developed very quickly, and ethno-tourism as a kind of new modes are concerned by so many tourist companies. Whereas, considering from the benefits the companies could get from ethno-tourism people also should consider the negativity tourism would occurred in tourist places, will it disturb the lives of local people, or overdevelopment of natural resources? Choosing expand ethno-tourism as a new business in company is a good opinion, however responsibilities is also need to consider when people get benefits from it.

The following essay will consider from the positive and negative of ethno-tourism. The fist part contains the financial benefits ethno-tourism brings to local government and tourist industry. Also ethno-tourism becomes a trend of tourism. The second part will consider from the negative side of ethno-tourism, like damaging natural environment and some kind of changing to local culture. At the end of this essay, I would like to give some suggestions base on some research and literatures.

Ethno-tourism as a unique way of tourism could raise much more income for tourist places. Some of the tourist places were real poor before tourism entering into their location, it goes without developing, and surviving was a hard work. Through communicating with tourists, indigenous population becomes self-confidence to their tradition and culture. Ethno-tourism gives the local people many chances to increase their personal income. Obviously ethno-tourism is very popular in tourists. No longer content to poke about understanding the surface of a place, tourists desire to find out the deep meaning of a place, like the traditional behavior and culture. That is a main reason why ethno-tourism becomes more and more popular around the world.

There are many places had got a lot of benefit from ethno-tourism, for example a popular tourist city: Mexico.

Since its finance crisis in 1982 (the main reason is debt problems) the government of Mexico launched preferential policies on tourism especially on ethno-tourism to develop their economic. And now, the tourism is one of the largest export industries with oil and manufactories goods in revenue of Mexico (Turismo 2001:25-37). And now Mexico is one of the most popular destinations tourists like to choose in their plans because of its ethno-tourism. In 1999, there are 19 million tourists travel in Mexico, and in 2000, the tourists' figure raised to 20.6 million. The big increase numbers of tourists bring a high benefits for Mexico, revenues had got $ 7.2 millions in 1999 and in 2000 it arrived $8.3 million. Ethno-tourism created at least 1.9 million jobs to local people and gave them a very great opportunity to improve their personal income. In addition, it contributed 8.9% to the GDP of Mexico. It is not a small number.

With the fast speed of developing in tourism, especially in ethno-tourism, Mexico government made a lot of strategies to improve their competition in tourist industries all over the world. There is a celebration called "Day of Dead" in Mexico. During the days, many tourists came from their countries to participate this celebration. With the regular costs to take care of tourists, government has the responsibility to reconstruct the roads and streets of the city. They suggested households rebuilt their house for accepting more tourists. Now most of the household could provide rooms, meals, drink for their guests. It seems everything becomes much better. It is a good situation to attract more tourists to travel there.

For tourists, they loved to put their in roles when they have ethno-tourism in some places; they have a celebration with local people, respect the religions which exist in different places. Scott (2004) interviewed some of people in Bratislava (east of Poland) when there have a tradition which called Kupaly. One of the interviewed was a woman came from the east, she had her own restaurant and she was thirty-eight at that time. She expressed that she and her husband loved conglomerate the cultures, because through that, she could get a lot of different experiences of the world and also could feel the different sensitivity in her when she immersed herself into ethno-tourism. And also she found there was no exclude outsider in her mind. Most of tourists thought the traditional culture is the best gift which ethno-tourism could give them and it always impressed them deeply. Every year in the same time the traditional celebration will held, the only thing will be changed is the girls ages who performance in the celebrations.

According to the finances benefits tourist places and tourist companies would get from ethno-tourism, it seems people should promote it with no doubt. However, every thing has its two sides, there is positive side and negative side, which means people should not only watch the positive side of the event but also need to think about the negative side.

As the report Scott (2004) wrote, for tourists, ethno-tourism indulging their curiosity. Whereas many local people felt "ambivalent" about developing ethno-tourism. Because of the development of ethno-tourism began disturbing their normal lives. From one hand, more and more tourists come here to participate into the celebration like developing their religion and tradition, from other hand celebration means one of the most important events in tradition, the effects by business involved make it seems no longer simple.

Kearney (1995) and Teo and Li (2003) argued that although there always have debate on social science expression about ethno-business effects local area. However there are two elements existing without doubt, the first one is, the local government always keeps its "key role" in ethno-business (Panitch 1994). Without pass global agreement, local government will make some decisions depend on developing local economic and meet tourists' demands. The second one is stated by Sliver(1993) and Wood(1997) as people always have the power in despite of rules remain in natural global organization in the whole process. Greenwood (1989) gave an example to illustrate these two arguments. Spain's national festival calendar is popular with global tourists, in order to raise the income, local government decided increase the performance on the celebration which means no longer performance as tradition, but meaningless public shows. Many local people are annoyed for the local government's behavior; they refused performance, so the local government had to pay for them to involve the celebration.

Setting aside the financial reason, there are some problems need people to pay their attention too. Verner (2009) cited that in Colombian Amazon the economic benefits from tourism are not as good as government hoped. There is a tourism company in Colombian Amazon named Yewae Visitor Centre (YVC), while YVC paid about 10% net income to the communities, the communities need paid 20 employees income and many costs on environmental protection.

The environmental problem of Tourist places always a biggest problem facing to local people. Overdeveloping natural resources causes a lot of accidental species facing disappeared in the near future. Too much-traveling disturb the natural species' lives, and only considering on financial reasons local factories using huge natural resources to produce food and gifts for sale to tourists.

According to benefits, young generations have to learn new language in order to involve the tourist markets. The need of electric power and clean water become more serious.

Many tourists like choosing pacific fragile areas as their ethno-tourism destinations. For example: mountains, coast and small islands…after damaging the environment then they leaves. Moreover, tourist companies in order to attract tourists to built a luxury hotel and golf clubs or other facilities on previous natural land. Obviously, it breaks the balance between wildlife and nature. Over tourists increase the risks of sickness, the demands of health care in these places increase dramatically. Many of tourist places' infrastructure still fall behind, they could not support pressures in the peak days of tourism. Water pollution, waster disposal are limited. All of them lead seriously environmental pollution.

Basing on these reasons, governments and also include tourist companies who can get the most financial benefits from ethno-tourism have to reconsider these problems.

As a tourist company, there is no doubt that expand the business like ethno-tourism could bring a lot of financial benefits, however there also have some responsibilities should be focus on if company consider entering in ethno-business. Green (1995:152) recorded in 1978 the National Plan of Tourism provide some preferential policy for tourist industry, in order to development their economics, furthermore based on considering protect the environment there were some additional clauses in the preferential policy.

Some recommendations are provided to tourist companies: the first one is Tourist Company should recognize the tourist places as the sole interlocutors and respect the tourist places. Second, Tourist Company should control is activities under the policy which was made by local government and make sure the local people could get much benefits from tourism industry, that is make sure local people have enough financial abilities to protect and improve their places. Third, under local government's managing, Tourism industry should obey the conditions which including the plan of using and developing land of tourist places. Fourth, for local people and local tourism management organizations, they also have responsibilities to track the impact form ethno-tourism and reduce the harm from it, especially environment and culture. Fifth, if any tourist activities need to use any natural recourse or could produce any damage, they should sign a contract with local tourist organizations or government, to guarantee them. Sixth, government should give more support to tourist places, which including financial support, information exchange, improve infrastructure enough clean water and enough electronic power… Seventh, improve the education by government in tourist places, which could make sure the next generation still could aware that the cultural and environment is very important.

Expand a business like ethno-tourism is real benefits both tourist company and tourist places, however, if people only focus on the economic benefits, but ignore their responsibilities, it also could bring a big damage including financial and environmental problems. Although, it seems litter difficult to keep the balance between Development and protection, people should keep doing it. That is the only ways could get real benefits from ethno-tourism for a long time.