The tourism industry is growing rapidly

The tourist industry is one of the largest growing industries in the world. It is
a dynamic, evolving and consumer-driven force. It appeared in the 19 th century as the
result of the industrial revolution when people started to earn enough money and have
enough time to travel.
At the end of the 19th century tourism acquired new forms and new words
such as “comfort”, “express”, “liner”. Industrialization produced better conditions for
tourism. Among them is the appearance of a large number of people with an amount of
disposable income – income above and beyond what is needed for basic expenses such as
food, shelter, clothing and taxes.
With the growth of large cities many people had to go somewhere to have a
rest in a clean sunny place. Thousands of factory workers in Northern Europe left the
polluted cities and took their paid vacations in Southern European countries. In many
cases the cost of the holiday was subsidized partly or wholly by government, trade unions
or employers. The subsidized recreational travel was called social tourism.
The gross output of the tourist industry in recent years has been
approximately $3.5 trillion. Tourism grows much faster than other sectors of economy.
Growing so rapidly, tourism presents tremendous opportunities and challenges for the
young people who study to work in tourism and hospitality.
There are some major factors that provide the growth of tourism. Among
them we can mention tourism benefits, the multiplier effect of the tourist dollar, the
labour-intensive character.
Let´s consider these factors.
Tourism benefits all the commercial establishments of the destination. But
first of all it benefits airlines, hotels, restaurants, local shops, taxi-drivers. Besides it
benefits the manufacturers of such varied items as cameras, films, souvenirs, sunglasses,
sport clothing, jewels.
So, the tourism industry is very closely connected with the local economy. It
is said to produce secondary impacts on it, because when a tourist spends money on
travel, hotels, restaurants the money is recycled by these businesses to purchase more
goods. This phenomenon is called “the multiplier effect of the tourist dollar”, which can
be explained as the number of times that money from tourism is spent within the
economy of a tourist destination area. Usually the multiplier effect is between 1.7-2.0.
This means that the tourist dollar is used in the same community about two times.
The third factor concerns the number of people involved in tourism. The
tourism industry is one of the most labour-intensive ones. It has the highest proportion of
workers to the number of people served. This is a common feature of service industries.
Tourism employs about 183 million people that represent 10.2 percent of the global
workforce. That means that it employs one of every ten workers. It´s the largest employer
in the world.