The Welsh Tourism Industry - Essay Example

Sustainable Tourism Practice and Planning Wales is one of the emerging tourist destinations in the world. The Welsh tourism industry receives huge numbers of visitors and records large annual turnover. Wales exploited the country’s culture and history to attract tourists. Some of the scenes seen as current part of this country’s landscape include the scars of industrial revolution and to some extend the nation’s industrial heritage. In terms of history, the Museum of Welsh Life has a lot to offer as regards the industrial past of Wales and is currently the most popular and attractive centre of tourism. It attracts over six hundred thousand visitors every year (Dale and Oliver, 2005:42). There are other tourist attraction sites such as national parks, landscapes, and many castles around Wales. All these and many others warrants this paper a closer insight into tourism practices and plans that can bring out sustainability to a wider group of Welsh inhabitants. Wales has three national parks namely Pembroke shire Coast National Park, Snowdonia National Park, and Brecon Beacons National Park. Presence of these national parks contributes to tones of positive effects of tourism into the country’s social, economic, and political as well as cultural related results. This paper will give a critical outlook into the positive and negative impacts of tourism basing the analysis on Pembroke shire Coast National Park as the destination of my choice. To begin with, tourism creates employment opportunities for many local people bordering the Pembroke shire Coast National Park. Documented evidence shows that, in 2002, the country received over eight million tourists who led to the creation of 100,000-service sector jobs an amount, which is more than 8 percent of the country’s total workforce (Pitchford, 2008: 113-115). In addition, Cardiff, which is the capital city of Wales, is another tourist attraction site. It is popular and receives many visitors every year. In 2006, more than 14.6 million tourists visited Cardiff and supported 26,300 people with jobs in the sector. Secondly, tourism promotes cultural awareness among Welsh and assists in its preservation. Since culture is one of the factors attracting tourism into Wales, people find it necessary to protect and maintain it in order to continue enjoying benefits generated by tourism. Every national park in Wales has an authority ensuring operations of the site are in good terms. Each authority has two statutory purposes that resolve to enhancement and conservation of the natural beauty, cultural heritage, and wildlife in the area. Additionally, the authority operates purposefully to promote public’s enjoyment and understanding opportunities of the park’s special qualities. By participating in these duties, national park authorities promote cultural awareness and foster social well being of their communities. Cognitively, the government uses the income generated form tourism to develop local infrastructure (Dwyer and Forsyth, 2006: 326). It spends the money on developing new roads and airports. Due to growth of tourists’ adventurous activities and special interests holidays, the business has led to a wide range of offerings and accommodation services. This business investment structure has not only led to sports and outdoor activities, but also resulted to improved education, health, crafts, and other social benefits to the locals of Pembroke shire. Tourists bring in foreign currency. This foreign currency can help locals by improving their social standards of living. It helps provide clean water and sanitation services. As such, the livelihoods of the local people transform significantly. Tourism industry is an important national economic booster as it plays a key role in shaping the economic factors leading to its improvement. It rolls out both environmental and landscape shapes of the communities around Pembroke shire national park. Tourism is the lifeline for the majority of businesses in most communities around this country. Sources indicate that without money generated by tourism these communities would be otherwise poor. Apart from the long-term positive impacts brought about by tourism in Pembroke Shire National Park surrounding communities, there are a number of negative results of tourism activities in the area as well as in the rest of Welsh nation. For instance, tourism is leading to negative environmental impacts that are at range of scales. The increased number of air travels is contributing to increased emissions of carbon dioxide (Williams, 2009: 118). Documented facts reveal that increased emissions of carbon dioxide are immensely leading global warming. In addition, it leads to expansion arteries and arterioles in a process called vasodilatation. It also reduces the rate of oxygen supply in human bodies (Inskipp, 2008: 26). Obviously, with benefits of tourism come foreseeable threats on a local level whereby features that act as tourism attractions are themselves endangered by human activities. According to Pembroke shire National Park authorities, some of the community members engage in park destruction activities and as a result, human activities such as poaching endanger tourist attraction sites. Tourism industry forms the largest employment sector in Wales and around Pembroke shire National Park. However, the locals often get employment in low skill departments where they receive poor pay and work in unsatisfactory conditions (Peter, 2008: 37). As such, their social and economic lifestyles do not improve that much. During low season, they end up in financial problems that negate their well-being. As surprising as it may sound, when there is tourist boom, travel agents and airline companies as well as hoteliers attain more benefits compared to locals (GBDT, 2009: 23). This shows that, resources supposed to benefit the locals up to a substantial margin end up benefiting just a number of individuals. As a result, there is creation of income generation gap, which in turn may result to wrangles and conflicts due to resource sharing (Casimir, 2009: 339-42). Hotels, travel agents, and airline companies create more competition for locals who run guesthouses. One of the chief consumables of tourism is culture. Experiencing unusual culture is educational for all those visiting Wales and is beneficial for the communities. However, tourism is an invasive procedure that ends up thrusting traditional communities and turning them into modern societies hence threatening their culture products and distinct lifestyles. Socially, tourism provides jobs, which bring new streams of income into a society. Nevertheless, it inhibits individuals from performing traditionally recognized tasks. This makes families dependent on tourism cash income and thereafter they become less likely to participate in time honored social activities and work. Political wise, people regard travel as a tout and means of closing gaps between people, religions, and culture. Nonetheless, the extreme wealth differences between the locals and the tourists can result to resentment in some parts of Wales. This can cause intense conflicts among community members and the visiting nationalities (Ryan, 2003: 267-69). Because most people foresee only the benefits that tourism can bring in, they fail to consider financial burden spent during the process of building and maintaining tourism industry. Therefore, tourism paves way for communities’ encroachment by some offshore corporations funneling the largest amount of profits by providing services to affluent tourists away from the locals (McCool and Moisey, 2008: 89). With planning and policies, tourism can bring realistic social benefits to the wider population of Wales if the government can ensure fair and equal distribution of income generated through tourism. When Welsh citizens interact with foreigners, they form contact. That outside contact between the two draws attention for the host community (Peter, 2008: 51). Many people would like to interact with others and teach each other their culture, traditions, and eventually confront themselves with new perspectives of society and life. Given that perspective, the Wales government has the power to ensure all its citizens receive a fair share of income generated through tourism by using the money to build social amenities. Building public hospitals and schools in different parts of the country can assure all citizens benefit from tourism benefits. The Welsh government can use the dollars brought in by tourists to support community facilities and services that would otherwise not develop. With support from income generated by tourism, Wales can raise the level of facilities and services in different corners of the nation. Through tourism, Wales benefits from civic involvement and pride (Ryan, 2003: 293). However, it happens in only some parts of the country where tourist’s attraction sites exist. In order for a wider group of people to benefit from tourism socially, disbursement of artificial tourists’ attraction sites should be equal. Tourism encourages Welsh citizens to preserve and celebrate local festivals as well as cultural events. In order to ensure a large number of people benefit from tourism activities venue of these festivities should rotational. Profoundly, equal distribution of tourism benefits can lead to wider encouragement of learning of new skills and languages. Through tourism, a wider number of Wales can benefit environmentally through fostered conservation and preservation of natural resources. It can also result to conservation of historical and cultural resources. Through tourism, this country benefit from community development since tourism encourages societal revitalization and beautification (Williams, 2009: 177). Many people consider tourism as a clean industry. With tourism, Wales and the neighboring community of Pembroke shire National Park can resolve to keep the environment clean. The most crucial sector that bears the most of tourism impact is the economic industry of Wales. In order to ensure economic sustainability around Pembroke shire National Park and the rest of the Wales, the government should ensure equal distribution of tourism profits. Tourism helps diversify and stabilize the local economy of a country. Wales should ensure balanced spending of income generated by tourism activities (Pitchford, 2008: 169). Every year the government of Wales receives extra revenue from tourism taxation. The government receives revenues through accommodation taxes, restaurant taxes, park entrance fees, airport taxation, employee income taxation, and many other tourism related taxes. The government should build public facilities such as schools, develop infrastructure, and provide social amenities to all citizens in order to ensure tourism revenue reach a wider margin of individuals. Tourism creates jobs and business opportunities for the locals. The locals can benefit directly from tourism activities through hotel and tour services jobs or indirectly through food production and housing construction. This means that not all Wales citizens benefit directly or indirectly from tourism (Pitchford, 2008: 191). Nevertheless, the government in conjunction with the tourism board should ensure balanced benefit through providing employment opportunities to even those who live far from tourist attraction sites. Tourism earns this country’s citizens valuable foreign exchange, which they return to the local economy through expenditure. Tourism is labor-intensive industry therefore; it helps the country attain economic sustainability. In order to make sure these improvements function the government, local tour agencies, and planners should implement several policies. Believably, Pembroke shire National Park and the rest of the country have a positive future in tourism. To ensure future tourism development, there should be scope of strengthening and expanding tourism and its contribution to both regional and nationwide prosperity (Francis, 2009: 133). Planners and tour agencies should implement policies that relate to tourism since the future of Pembroke shire National Park and the rest of Wales lies in capitalizing on what makes tourism industry special and stand out from the ordinary. The tour agencies should formulate those reforms relating to the development of Wales spectacular natural beauty, its landscapes diversity, as well as its distinctive culture. The concerned bodies should make this country’s tourist attraction sites special destinations with strong enduring appeal where visitors see Wales not as a second best place to visit but as the right place in the top 5 UK destinations, which people aspire to visit (Hall, 2003: 176). In conclusion, tour agencies, the government, and planners may no be willing to comprehend with the implementation of these policies hence resolve to be inhibitors of progress. This may happen because the challenge is a twofold whereby providing tourist infrastructure and products that matches up with the quality and appeal of Pembroke shire National Park and the rest of the country natural assets may not be possible. As such, the proposed policies would appear exorbitant and time costly hence planners and tour agencies as well as the government may inhibit the policy formulation. This paper has put across foreseeable ability of this destination to attain social, economic, and cultural as well as environmental benefits of tourism. Bibliography Casimir, M. 2009. Culture and the Changing Environment: Uncertainty, Cognition, and Risk Management in Cross-Cultural Perspective. New York: Berghahn Books. Dale, G. and Oliver, H. 2005. BTEC national travel & tourism, Book 2. Oxford: Heinemann. Dwyer, L. and Forsyth, P. 2006. International handbook on the economics of tourism. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing. Francis. 2009. 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