BTM5TSD Tourism Impacts and Sustainable Development Assignment Sample

CHAPTER ONE: Introduction, Definitions And Overview Of Case Study

Tourism refers to a process of spending time far from home to get relaxation, recreation as well as pleasure. In addition sustainable development in tourism refers to considering current and future social, economic and environmental impact of the tourism and taking appropriate action to minimize negative impacts and enhance positive ones. In present time, the role of tourism increase as it provides great opportunities to different economies and countries. It aids in creation of jobs, making stronger local economy, positive contribution to local infrastructure development. Tourism also assists in conserving natural environment, preserving culture, tradition and decline poverty and inequality among society. The present study will state about package holiday tourism at destination India. The aim and objective of the report is to identify tourism impact such as negative and positive in terms of economic, cultural and other. Its aim include increasing awareness about sustainable development, eco-tourism and ethical tourism. The objective of the report is significantly evaluated sustainable issues in package holiday at tourist destination India as well as to identify the best strategy to mitigate it by implementing CSR principles.

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Definition of Tourism Impact: It is defined as a positive as well as negative changes in destination which results of the development of tourism industry. It can be various type such as economic, environmental, social, political or cultural (Duan, Xie, and Morrison, 2022). For example, the development of the tourism leads to positively impact the local communities by increasing their job opportunities. Positive impact involves preservation of culture, tradition, appreciation and greater cultural understanding. On the other hand, the examples of negative tourism impacts are loss and deterioration of culture, heritage places, problem of overcrowding, natural habitat loss, increase in pollution, soil erosion, cultural homogenization and so more.

Definition of sustainable development: It is defined as an implementation of development to meets the requirements of the present generation without compromising the capacity of the future generation to meet their own requirements. Tourism can significantly contribute in sustainable development in number of ways by doing cultural preservation, environmental regeneration and rural development and via diversity and inclusion (Ruggerio, 2021). Sustainable development leads to generate various socioeconomic advantages. For instance, building of sustainable employment opportunities.

Definition of Ecotourism: Ecotourism is defined as a responsible or sustainable travel towards natural areas that aids in conserve the environment, sustains and enhances the well-being of the local community as well as involves factor of interpretation and education. Its main objective is to decline the impact that is brought by tourism on the environment (Dinç, Bahar and Topsakal, 2023). It is also known as “nature tourism”. For instance travelling to a rainforest with the tour group while dedicated to conservation efforts with objective of sustainability and environment preservation.

Definition of Ethical tourism: It refers to a tourism that is advantageous for the local, environment, wildlife as well as people who inhabit it. It is a kind of responsible tourism, developed due to the criticism of mass tourism. These kind of tourism aids in increasing positive impacts and decline negative impacts on the main three pillars of the sustainable tourism that is environment, economy and society (Nicolaides, 2020). The example of ethical tourism includes protecting the environment by the tourism business by using eco-friendly practices such as avoiding plastic use, using water conservation strategies, opting green accommodation decline wastage via reduce, reuse and recycle policy to protect environment. In addition maximizing positive impact on society includes cultural preservation, conservation of heritage by avoiding activities of pollution and throwing garbage. Ethical tourism helps in attracts wide range of eco-conscious people towards tourism industry as currently people become more conscious and respectful towards the environment.

The chosen destination in India, it is a beautiful tourist place including various attractions such as Taj mahal, Amer Fort, Hawa Mahal, Golden Temple, Qutub Minar, Maysore palace and so more. In India, various type of tourism are Eco tourism, medical tourism, wildlife tourism and so more.

The present study will outline about the package holiday tourism at the destination India. Package holiday means a holiday organized by a travel company for which tourists pay a particular price which includes cost of travel, residing at hotel and sometime food. The report will discuss about the sustainable issue of traffic congestion which is caused due to package holiday tourism. It will state about the origins of the sustainable tourism, relationship between the ecotourism, sustainability and ethical tourism. It will discuss about the wicked problem, over-tourism and consumption as well as various positive and negative tourism impacts. It will also explain difference between mass tourism and sustainable tourism.

In addition, the report will covered the time and cost taken from various routes to going destination India to UK. It will summarise package holiday tourism in India and positive/ negative impacts. It will analyse leading tourism stakeholder and their corporate social responsibility as well as future aim, objective to sustain the tourism sector. Further, it will identify challenges while implementing sustainability in tourism.

CHAPTER TWO: Sustainable Tourism Origins

Origin of sustainable tourism

Sustainable Tourism means a tourism that consider impacts such as social, economic and environmental, address the requirements of the tourists, industry, host community and environment. From late 1980`s the concept of sustainable tourism started to be used, when the practitioners start to consider impacts of the Brundland Report. The report published in 1987 by the World Commission on Environment and Development, to evaluate the concern of ozone depletion, global warming as well as other environmental problems. To address the problems effectively the concept of sustainable tourism came in existence. At that time concept of green tourism and eco tourism are common in the industry.

Relation within sustainability, eco tourism and ethical tourism

Sustainability, eco tourism as well as ethical tourism are interrelated. Eco tourism refers to visiting natural areas with the great responsibility of protecting the environment by reducing the activities which impact the natural environment in the negative manner. On the other hand, sustainability means addressing the tourist’s requirement without adversely impact the needs of the future generation (Streimikiene et al, 2021). The consideration of sustainability in tourism as well as eco tourism leads to helps in focusing of ethical tourism. When the tourism industry focus on ethical tourism such as using eco-friendly practices like water conservation, avoidance of plastic use, using efficient energy management system leads to help in protecting environment and aids in declining global warming, depletion of natural resources, preservation of heritage and so more (Baloch rt al, 2023). In addition when the tourist and tourism industry behave in the ethical manner such as respecting tourism places, natural surroundings, heritage sites by keeping in mind ethical practices such as avoiding throwing garbage, writing on walls, destroying articles etc. The ethical practices by tourism business include decline wastage of water, food, aware them about local place, culture and their importance. Thus, ethical tourism aids in bring sustainability.

Discussion of over tourism, consumption and wicked problems

Over tourism refers to a situation when various people visit the place on holiday as a result the place becomes spoiled and life of the resident of place become adverse. Over tourism cause high pollution, damage of historical sites, distortion of local culture and custom. Because of this the beauty of the tourist place destroy and local people suffer from problem of lack of resources to used, traffic, road congestion and so more (Mihalic, 2020). For example, the package holiday is one of the reason of mass tourism where organizers take groups of 200 to 500 people at tourism destination as a result place become overcrowded.

Consumption in tourism refers to the acquisition of different product and services in a tourism destination. Over tourism as well as mass tourism leads to increase pressure on the local resources in terms of water, energy and wildlife (Filimonau, Ashton and Stankov, 2024). For instance, when number of people increase in tourism destination it leads to increase consumption of natural resources as a result pollution increases, soil deplete, heritage site destroyed, scarcity of water and energy occurs. Thus important to have sustainable consumption.

Wicked Problem means an issue that is impossible and difficult to get solve because of difficulty to understand cause of problem, the number of different opinion. The wicked problem is a cause of other problem (Lönngren and Van Poeck, 2021). For example global warming is the wicked problem as there is no definite solution of it. It is cause of negative tourism practices, over tourism, climate change and so more.

Range of tourism impact

Traffic congestion is one of the sustainable issue occurred due to package holiday tourism which leads to negatively impact the environment. The traffic congestion leads to increase pressure on the tourism area because of high noise pollution as the vehicles leads to emit dangerous gases. These become the reason of declining quality of the environment, beauty of the destination. Traffic congestion reduces or worsen the quality of the air, soil as a result declines the productivity or beauty of the place (Zhang and Nie, 2022). Also, due to traffic congestion, the tourist less likely to prefers going on places that usually remain congested.

Further, the traffic jams due to holiday packages results in spending of much time on the road that leads to emission of greenhouse gases correspondingly increase more global warming. Due to this health conscious customer less likely to roam at places that usually suffers from traffic congestion problem leads to decline income of tourism sector (Sala, 2020). According to the triple bottom line theory of the sustainability, the package holiday company should focus on sustainable practices of using eco-friendly vehicles so that able to maximize benefits on the people, planet and profit positively while enhancing financial performance.

Difference between sustainable tourism and mass tourism

Sustainable tourism is a responsible tourism in which activities carried out keeping in mind environmental impacts. On the other hand mass tourism refers to movement of huge amount of tourists to famous holiday destination for purpose of recreational. The main difference among the sustainable tourism and mass tourism is the end goal (Butzmann and Job, 2020). The objective of mass tourism is to grab large groups with modern attractions and infrastructure while sustainable tourism emphasis on furnishing sustainable and meaningful experience for small group of tourists.

Mass tourism mainly emphasis on economic benefits such as boosting local economy, providing job opportunities, affordable travel options. Inversely, sustainable tourism contribute equally to economic and social benefits such as supporting local businesses, promoting employment opportunities and preserving culture and natural environment.

CHAPTER THREE: Nature Of Selected Destination

Range of available routes

India is the tourism destination that includes various tourism places and famous for its culture, tradition, heritage sites, monuments, architecture, rivers and for significant history. Package holiday organizers used various routes to reach from UK city London to tourism destination India. The organizer use air ways such as airplanes to easily reach India, it is the fastest and convenient way. The air route takes average 9 hours and 47 minutes from UK to India. The cost of the air route is approximately £ 271 pound (Flights to India, 2024). The most popular flight in UK is British Airways. In addition, the organizer can opt for the ship route to reach to destination place. It usually take 5 to 6 weeks or can more or less depending on several factors such as weather condition.

Summarise package holiday tourism in India

Package holiday tourism includes facility of transport and accommodation sold by vendor known as tour operator. Also, furnishes services of rental car, outing activities during the holiday to enhance the travel experience of the tourists. In India, there are various package holiday companies provide services including Exodus Travel, Explore. Collette, Contiki and so more. The tour operator takes full responsibility of tourist regarding exploring different locations in India such as Goa, Rajasthan, Himachal, Uttarakand and so more (Menezes and Saha, 2023). In India, various tour packages introduce by the beach holiday packages, adventure tour packages, escorted, wildlife, cruise, family packages for the short as well as long period. It can be for 7 days, 12 days or for a month or year, prices for all packages are different.

Key tourist impact positive and negative

The tourist have positive as well as negative impact on the tourist destination India, it includes:

Exchange of cultural information: The package holiday tourism aids in bringing large amount of people towards India as a result various people aware about the culture, tradition and unique history of the place. Tourism enable to exchange information as a result make a positive impact on preserving culture of the destination and reaching it to different countries. Due to the tourism, the culture of the India widespread in UK and other countries as well.

Boosting Economy: The tourism via help of the package holiday leads to positively impact the destination and local community by increasing more employment opportunities. The tourist purchases articles, monuments and local things from the local communities as a result more people get income (Kumar, Yadav and Raj, 2020).

The negative impacts are as under that leads to adversely impact the tourism destination.

Overcrowding: The package holiday negatively impact the beauty of destination of India. Package holiday brings 500 people to tourism destination leads to increase problem of the overcrowding and congestion. Consequences of this, over tourism spoil and destroy enjoyment of the destination as well as build annoyances for the locals.

Deterioration of culture: It leads to preserve custom and tradition but on the other hand loss cultural identity. The main reason of it cultural homogenization where the local residence adopt the dressing as well as language of the other country as a result people of India loss their cultural identity.

Adverse effect on ecology and environment: Tourist leads to adversely make pressure on the carrying capacity of the ecosystem in each place at destination. Increased transport as well as construction activities is cause of large scale destabilization of natural landforms and deforestation (Baloch et al, 2023) Also, flow of tourists towards ecological sensitive area leads to destruct rare and endangered species.

Identification of leading tourism stakeholders, their corporate social responsibility

The key stakeholders at the tourism destination India are government, businesses, local residence as well as tourist developers. In the context of tourism sector, government is responsible for setting regulations for tourism business, tourist as well as conducting business in sustainable as well as ethical manner. Also, provide funding for sustainable practices and manages resources efficiently. The corporate social responsibility of government includes creating policies regarding operating business in the ethical manner by creating awareness in tourism business regarding responsible use of natural resources, minimizing pollution and responsibly using local products. The future aim of the government is enhancing the tourism sector more while keeping in mind better sustainable and ethical practices to minimize negative impacts. The vision is to sustain tourism which includes optimal use of environmental resources, maintaining required ecological process and conserving natural heritage as well as biodiversity.

Further, tourism business are stakeholders as they directly involved in tourism sector activities. It includes restaurants, hotels, tour operator business and so more. It is important for the concerned stakeholders to operate business keeping in mind environmental impacts of their tourism business. Corporate social responsibility of business includes responsibly use natural resources with the help of optimizing eco-friendly practices of energy saving, water conservation, wastage minimization (Madanaguli et al, 2022). Also, CSR consists preserving heritage and fair use of local products. The main aim of Indian tourism business is developing sustainable tourism while maintaining competitiveness of place as effective tourist destination and providing eco-friendly services to grab more tourists to ensure economic growth and employment generation. The vision of businesses is to increase tourism sector more by providing sustainable services to tourists.

Local communities are also essential stakeholder in tourism sector as they plays crucial role in planning, developing as well as managing the tourism activities. Corporate social responsibility of the local communities include creating awareness about local culture in tourists, helping government and local businesses in managing natural resources and culture effectively. The future goal and objective of the local communities in tourism is to creating more awareness about local culture, tradition and custom among locals and tourists to uphold culture of destination.

CHAPTER FOUR: Challenges To Executing Sustainability In Tourism

Identification of common challenges within sustainable tourism

There are multiple challenges associated with the implementation of sustainable tourism, especially within package holidays in India. These challenges are identified as follows:

Poor Understanding of Sustainability Concept: The foremost and biggest challenge in sustainable tourism is poor understanding about the sustainable concept within package holidays (Sharpley, 2020). The sustainable tourism idea is termed as complex within Indian Tourism industry. It was reported that Indian market size of sustainable tourism was measured at USD 37.1 million in year 2024, which is comparatively low as compare to other countries such as UK and US (FMI, 2024). Most tourism organization has lack of understanding about the importance and benefits of sustainable practices, leads to minimize their profitability and revenue turnover. For example: lack of sustainable efforts, includes replacement of energy intensive lighting seems expensive for numerous tourism organisations, leads to enhance carbon footprints and enhances their electricity expenses.

Greenwashing: In current era of eco-friendly and sustainable tourisms, visitors and guests are looking for sustainable package holiday for unique and positive experience. They mostly prefer green or sustainable hotels which are engages in facilities sustainable practices to their guests. However, various tourism organizations represent themselves as sustainable whereas they are not engaged in sustainable practices. This is termed as Greenwashing as considered as a potential challenge within sustainable tourism as it discourages other tourism organisation who follows the sustainable practices within Holiday package services. It has an adverse impact on the tourism operations as it enhances travel carbon footprints and has adverse impact on the environment.

Inappropriate waste management: Another challenge within implementation of sustainable tourism is related to inappropriate waste management within sector. Tourism organizations release large quantity of waste into environment. This leads to rapidly damages the multiple components of natural environment such as chocks ecological systems and pollutes water and land resources. Approximate 8 million tonnes of waste and plastic was dumped in ocean per year, comprises of gloves, water bottles and disposals, plastic containers and packaging materials. The main concern is regarding to the management of the wastage in terms of plastic and food.

Increase consumption of resources: The tourism activities lead to creates pressure on the natural resources as a result it is one of the huge challenges in implementing sustainable practices. More consumption of resources by different business in the industry make difficult from some of business to use this resources for the purpose of sustainable tourism.

Lack of awareness of sustainable tourism activities: The tourism business has lack of understanding of the sustainable activities as a result it is one of the challenge to implement it within the business. For instance, business aware that eco-friendly practices are effective to attract the tourist and for sustainable goal. But due to lack knowledge they not able to implement activities such as waste management, energy management, waste management as well as other sustainable practices.

Lack of funding: Implementation of sustainable practice requires efforts of various people as well as proper funding and it is very difficult for the small businesses to make huge investment. For instance, waste management, reduce, reuse and recycle policy as well as other sustainable practices requires installation of machineries, employees and proper documents, all needs funding. As a result, lack of funding is main barrier in implementing and taking sustainability initiative and conduct business in sustainable manner (Farmaki, 2020).

Jet 2 holiday is the largest tour operator business of UK provides package holiday for various different destination. Company is facing challenges regarding sustainable tourism is regarding high cost of using sustainable practices. The Jet 2 holidays for its package holiday tourism activities use airlines and it is one of the main factor that is responsible for global warming and carbon emission in the environment. The main sustainable issue faced by the company is related to lack of use of fuel-efficient aircrafts (Amicarelli et al, 2021). Currently the company is not using sustainable fuel for its business operation as a result it is a big threat for sustainable tourism also. The main challenge in implementing sustainable activities of sustainable fuel in the business is lack of financial resources or funding. The sustainable fuel are very expensive as a result required better source of finance. Also, availability of sustainable fuel is limited correspondingly creates a challenge for the Jet 2 holiday business to implement sustainable tourism.

The issue of lack of funding in relation to sustainable tourism can be addressed with the help of different ways. The company by making partnership with the sustainable fuel company can make a deal for purchasing the fuel on comparative price that is beneficial for both airline as well as supplier of the fuels. The use of sustainable fuel for the business aids in attract more customers towards the business as a result helps in increase company revenue and profitability and also enable the company to operate in sustainable manner.

CONCLUSION

To sum up all, it is articulated that tourism pause various positive as well as negative impact on the tourism places in terms of boosting economy, increase pollution and so more. The present study outlined about package holiday tourism activity. The study stated about the origins of the sustainable tourism as it developed via the help of Brundland report. It highlighted the relationship between sustainability, ecotourism and ethical tourism as three focus on responsible tourism while keeping in mind sustainable activities. It explains the difference in sustainable tourism and mass tourism as sustainable tourism positively impact environment and mass tourism negatively. The report stated negative impact of sustainable issue traffic congestion on the environment such as decline quality of environment, soil erosion, more pressure on tourism area, increase in wicked problem global warming, it can be overcome by using the triple bottom line model.

Another part of the report outlined various routes from UK to India such as airways, sea ways via aeroplane and ship and also explained about the time and cost incurred. In India package holiday tourism are various kind such as adventure, beach, family package holiday and so more. It also covered positive and negative impacts of tourist at India such as boosting economy, cultural exchange as positive one as well as overcrowding, adverse impact on ecology as a negative one. It discussed various tourism stakeholders such as government, tourism businesses, local communities as well as their corporate social responsibilities such as efficient use of natural resources, using green practices in tourism business and so more. The aim of government is enhancing sustainable practice in tourism sector, goal of business is creating sector more competitive in terms of sustainability as well as building awareness is the goal of local communities.

It also highlighted some common challenges while implementing sustainable tourism such as lack of awareness of sustainability concept, greenwashing, inappropriate waste management, lack of funding and awareness of sustainable tourism activities. It also outlined sustainable issue of Jet 2 holiday as due to lack of funding, company not able to use sustainable fuels in its airline. Lack of funding is one of the major challenges in sustainable tourism. The report highlighted a solution for the company to overcome this issue such as by making effective collaboration or partnership with a supplier able to get fuel at competitive price to operate business in sustainable manner.

Some of the recommendations for sustainable issues are as under:

• To address the issue the company can take loan for the purpose of sustainable operation from bank at no or less interest rate. It leads to assist the business to get funds for operating business in the sustainable manner (Barua, 2020). It aids the company to grab more eco-conscious customers and get competitive advantage in the industry.
• Traffic congestion leads to increase pollution due to emission of greenhouse gases correspondingly it is important for the package holiday company to use eco-friendly transportation to visit different places at the tourism destination. Theses leads to help in mitigate negative environmental impact effectively and efficiently.

REFERENCES

Books and Journals

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