Special Interest Tourism
Introduction
Tourism industry has been one of the most important industries in the world during the past few decades that have helped many countries and nations to improve their economies by increasing sales, employment and the foreign currency earnings (1991). Tourism has been part of the normal daily life of many people in the world (2006).
That is why most of the countries and places in the world are doing their best in focusing on their tourism industry because of the fact that the said industry has obtained the leading position of becoming the most important source of income and foreign investments (2006). (2006) believes that the growth of the tourism industry will continue to expand in the near future and will maintain its growth to become the most important industry in the world ().
Special Interest Tourism
Special interest tourism is a controversial and a hot label that often used incorrectly or interchangeably to define a form of tourism that refers to the mass tourism (2000). According to the World Tourism Industry or WTO, special interest tourism can be defined as the specialized tourism that involved individual or group tours by those people who wishes to develop their given interests or visit sites and places that has a relation or connection with their specific interest or subject (2003). According to , people are traveling because of their particular interest for a particular subject that are available or can be seen in a given country or place (2003).
On the other hand those people who are into the special interest tourism are called special interest tourist. They are motivated by their desire and urge to pursue their particular interest, hobby or activity than can be a sport like, scuba diving, golf or mountain climbing or bird watching; another thing that can motivated them is their love for heritage interest like folk music, educational pursuit and periodical architecture. They are choosing their destination based on the can offer them a better and unique way of enjoying their hobbies and interest (2000).
There are many kinds of special tourism interest; it can be educational tourism, sports tourism, sex tourism, health and beauty tourism, arts and entertainment tourism and a lot more. This study will mainly focus on three special interest tourisms which are the: educational tourism, sex tourism and heritage cultural tourism.
Kinds of Special Interest Tourism
Definition
1. Educational Tourism
1. This type of tourism is define as the urge or desire to travel to learn ( ).
2. Educational tourism includes travel in order to undertake different university courses, short courses or even recreational courses ()
3. Rodger define educational Tourism is a program that enables participants to travel to a certain location as a group with the main purpose of engaging or involving in a learning experience ( )
2. Sex Tourism
1. National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (2007) define sex tourism as the activity of traveling to another country in order to engage in a sexual activity with other.
2. Sex Tourism often refer to child prostitution or a trip done by males to different parts of Asia where there are available women who are exploited for the benefits of the tourists (2003).
3. Cultural Tourism
1. Cultural tourism is the result of the people’s urge to experience the cultures of other countries ( 1999)
2. According to cultural tourism is a genre of special interest tourism that is based on the search of a person for a certain participating for a new and deep cultural experience that can range from aesthetic, intellectual, psychological and emotional ( 2007).
1. Educational Tourism
During the past decades, the educational tourism have evolved and developed number of ways such as the student exchanges or the urge of the young people to travel to another country in order to study and learn as well as analyze the language and culture of other people; special holidays on the other hand, is the urge to travel to learn something new (1999). There is no doubt that educational industry has already become one of the most popular types of special interest tourism. According to and (1997), the world market for international education travel was estimated to increase from 4.8 million trips up to more or less 8 million trips in 1996, showing that it had increase 66% of its total trips ().
Table 1 Worldwide Education Travel Trips and Spending (1980 – 1996) ()
2. Sex Tourism
The term sex tourism is mostly associated to the prostitutes more particularly women in Asia. Although prostitution is illegal in most countries more particularly, for those minors, still, the said type of tourism is still in full bloom in many of the poor countries in the world. In fact according to the survey conducted in Germany and Switzerland, there are about 8% of the respondents who have answered that they had sex with someone whom they had only met during their holiday that could be a fellow traveler, a local and more particularly a prostitute ( 2003).
In fact according to statistics, in Costa Rica, the capital city of San Jose, there are about 2, 000 child prostitute alone, that are regularly sold to the foreigners as a part of their sex-tour packages (2007). One thing that have affect the fast growth of the said industry is when HIV/AIDS have arrived to Southeast Asia, the industries started to implement different health check up. Nowadays, the said type of tourism has also involved in the use of the Internet for their marketing strategy.
3. Cultural Tourism
The World Tourism Organization has stated that cultural tourism is the fastest growing market in the industry of tourism ( 2007). During 1993, World Tourism Organization estimated that the cultural travel has its share of 37% to the overall international trips and it had increases by 15% annually. The said improvement and growth of the said tourism will continue until the end of the century.
Conclusion
There is no doubt that tourism had been the most important industry of any country that is why most of them are doing their best in order to maintain and preserve all of their resources that can attract the attention of their target tourist. With accordance to the three chosen tourism, I must say that all of them are in great performance in the international tourism industry. Perhaps of all the special tourism that I had chosen, the education tourism is the most fast growing and the most in demand in the world. On the other hand, the sex tourism is the most controversial and most judged.
Credit:ivythesis.typepad.com
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