The components of the tourism and hospitality network may be independent and

competitive businesses; yet, they are interrelated and interdependent. The

Interdependence among the components is strong especially in those countries which
rely on tourism and hospitality for their economic development. Although the
components of the tourism and hospitality network are constantly changing in
connection with labor, opportunity, and growth, the network will continue to dominate as
a global industry.

The Food and Beverage Component

The public looks for food and beverage services everywhere-in hotels, motels, airlines,
airports, cruise ships, trains, and shopping malls. There must be food service available
to them for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snacks. There are commercial restaurants that
provide food and beverage services such as fast service restaurants, ethnic restaurants,
and specialty restaurants. Aside from restaurants, taverns, bars, kiosks, vending
machines, supermarkets, food stalls, food carts, and food trucks now offer food and
beverage services.

Food service establishments are found in theme parks, in schools and colleges, in
hospitals and homes for senior citizens, in prisons and halfway houses, and in shelters
for the homeless.

The Lodging Component

Lodging involves providing overnight or even long-term services to guests. For many
people, lodging is a place to sleep. For others, lodging facilities not only provide beds
but also entertainment and recreational facilities. Hence, the lodging industry
component has began to accommodate several customer preferences-from budget
motels to luxury hotels and expensive resorts.

Lodging facilities such as inns, motor hotels, lodges, or motor inns are hotels and
motels that use different names. There are lodging establishments that use different
terms such as bed and breakfast, resort hotel, resort condominium, conference center.
the ski lodges in Colorado and casino hotels in Las Vegas and Atlantic City. and time-
sharing. There are lodging establishments that offer special facilities such as tamps, and
health spas also attend to the lodging needs of those who are away from Campgrounds,
transient trailer parks, school and college dormitories, summer home.

Spanish monastery or castle that was converted to a hotel; pension or pensione-a In

other countries, there are lodging establishments such as the parador-an old French or
Italian home in which guests are provided with a room and board; chateau-a French
castle or elegant country home used as a hotel; ryokan-a Japanese inn in which
Traditional customs are observed, and hostel-a lodging facility in which inexpensive
Accommodations are provided to students and guests on a nonprofit basis.

Recreation and Entertainment Component

Entertainment originated from the traditional duties of a host to entertain his or her
guests, whether they are neighbors or travelers from other places. The host has always
felt an obligation to attend to the needs of his or her guests not only for food and
beverages and lodging, but also for entertainment.

Many centuries ago, innkeepers, tavern-keepers, and their descendants have attended
to their guests' needs for entertainment by talking to their guests. Others told stories.
Some provided games such as darts, draughts, backgammon, or chess. Others
employed jugglers and traveling minstrels.

Nowadays, the concept of entertaining guests is broader. Guests are offered different
kinds of entertainment and recreational activities such as golf, tennis, hiking, boating,
swimming, handball, casino gambling, and concerts.

Travel and Tourism Component

Travel and tourism are used together as an umbrella term to refer to those businesses
that provide primary services to travelers. These include not only food and beverage
services, lodging services, recreation and entertainment services, but also
transportation services, and the services of travel agencies and tour operators.

Transportation

The main purpose of transportation is to make it possible for people to go from one
place to another. There are many ways to do this, from the primitive and simple to the
modern and complex. The common means of transportation are automobiles,
recreational vehicles (RVS), buses, trains, ships, and airplanes.
Travel Agencies and Tour Operators

Travel agencies and tour operators are modern additions to the travel and tourism
world. Both have become important in the survival of many businesses in the tourism
and hospitality industry.

A travel agent is one who sells travel services in a travel agency. He or she sells travel
services that are assembled by others into "packages." In the travel business, a
package is a bundle of related travel services offered to a buyer at a single price.

Tour operators are wholesalers who make the necessary contacts with hotels, airlines,
and other providers of travel services and devise packages which will appeal to retail
buyers. They are volume purchasers who are able to negotiate lower prices because of
their high-volume purchases. They are able to sell tour packages at a cheaper price
than the individual consumer.

Definition of Tourism

The task of defining tourism is not as easy as it may appear. Since tourism is a
multidimensional phenomenon, it is difficult to describe. Attempts have been made in
the past to formulate a standard definition of tourism and tourist among countries
throughout the world.

One of the first attempts to define tourism was that of Professors Hunziker and Krapf of
Berne University, Switzerland. They defined tourism as the "sum of the phenomena and
relationships arising from the travel and stay of nonresidents, insofar as they do not lead
to permanent residence and are not connected to any earning activity." This definition
distinguishes tourism from migration, which involves taking up permanent residence.
Since it necessarily includes both travel and stay, it excludes day tours. The definition of
the Tourism Society in Britain was: "Tourism is the temporary short-term movement of
people to destinations outside the places where they normally live and work and their
activities during their stay at these destinations."

This definition was reformulated by the Tourism Society in Cardiff: "Tourism may be
defined in terms of particular activities selected by choice and undertaken outside the
home environment."

Burkart and Medlik (1997) cited five main characteristics of tourism:

1. Because of its complexity, tourism is a combination of phenomena and relationships;

2. It has two essential elements: the dynamic element or the journey and the static
element or the stay;
3. The journey and stay are to-and-fro destinations outside the place of residence and
work;

4. The movement to destinations is temporary and short-term, with the intention to

return within a few days, weeks, or months; and

5. Destinations are visited for purposes not connected with paid work, that is, not to be
employed and not for business or vocational reasons.

Tourism in the pure sense is essentially a pleasure activity in which money earned in
one's abode is spent in places visited. In this sense, tourism represents a particular form
of leisure and a particular form of recreation, but does not include all uses of leisure and
all forms of recreation. It includes much travel, but not all forms of travel. Tourism
therefore, is distinguished from the concepts of leisure and recreation on one hand, and
from travel and migration on the other hand.

Definition of Hospitality

The word "hospitality" is derived from the Latin word hospitare, which means "to receive
as a guest." This phrase implies that a host is prepared to meet a guest's basic
requirements while the guest is away from home. The requirements of a guest in these
circumstances are food, beverages, lodging, or shelter.

Several related words come from the same Latin root, including hospital, hospice, and
hostel. In each of these words, the principal meaning is a host who receives, welcomes,
and caters to the needs of people who are temporarily away from their. homes.

Meaning of Tourist

In 1937, the League of Nations defined "tourist" as follows: "A tourist is a person who
visits a country other than that in which he or she usually resides for a period of at least
24 hours." This was held to include persons traveling for pleasure, domestic reasons or
health, persons traveling to meetings or on business, and persons visiting a country on
a cruise vessel even if for less than 24 hours. In 1963, a United Nations Conference on
International Travel and Tourism recommended a new definition of a "visitor" as "any
person visiting a country other than that of earning money." This definition covers two
classes of visitors:

1. Tourists. Temporary visitors staying at least 24 hours, whose purpose could be

classified as: a, leisure, such as recreation, holiday, health, study, religion, or sport;
b. business;

C. family;

d. mission; and

e. meeting;

2. Excursionists. Temporary visitors staying less than 24 hours in the destination visited
and not making an overnight stay, including cruise travelers, but excluding travelers in
transit.

At present, most countries of the world accept the definitions of visitor. tourist, and
excursionist that evolved out of the UN Conference on International Travel and Tourism
held in Rome in 1963,

Elements of Travel

Four basic elements have been used as criteria for defining travelers and/or tourists.
These are: distance, length of stay at the destination, residence of the traveler, and
purpose of travel.

A. Distance

What must be considered under distance is the difference between local travel or
traveling within a person's home community and nonlocal travel or traveling away from
home. It excludes commuting to and from work and change in residence.

A measure that has been used to distinguish travel away from home is the distance
traveled on a trip. A trip is defined as "each time a person goes to a place at least 100
miles away from home and returns." Travelers, on this basis, are individuals who travel
at least 100 miles in one direction from home. This definition may be applied in
measuring travel by the residents of a country. B. Length of Stay at the Destination

The second basic element of travel used as a criterion for defining travelers is the length
of stay at a destination. The definition of tourists and excursionists as proposed by the
WTO is largely based on length of stay. Tourists are temporary visitors who make at
least one overnight stay, while excursionists are temporary visitors who do not stay
overnight in the country that they visit.

C. Residence of the Traveler

The residence or origin of the traveler is the third basic element of travel. For business
and research purposes, it is important to know where people live.
D. Purpose of Travel

The fourth basic element is the purpose of travel. It can be divided into Seven:

1. visiting friends and relatives;

2. conventions, seminars, and meetings;

3. business;

4. outdoor recreation-hunting, fishing, boating, and camping:

5. entertainment-sightseeing, theater, and sports:

6. personal-family, medical, funeral, wedding; and

The Nature of a Tour

To analyze the nature of a tour systematically, it will be helpful to understand the

difference between domestic and international tourism, as well as independent and
package tour. Domestic tourism refers to travel taken exclusively within the national
boundaries of the traveler's country. People find it easy to do so because there are no
language, currency, nor documentation barriers. International tourism involves the
movement of people across international boundaries. It is more difficult to travel outside
one's country because the country visited has a different language, currency, and
documentation requirements, such as passports, visas, and other conditions of entry to
be met by tourists.

A package tour, sometimes called inclusive tour, is an arrangement in which transport

and accommodation is bought by the tourist at an all-inclusive price and the price of the
individual elements cannot be determined by the tourist. The tour operator who
organizes the package tour purchases transport and hotel accommodation in advance,
usually obtaining these at a lower price because he or she is buying them in bulk. He or
she then sells the tours individually to tourists direct or through travel agents. On the
other hand, an independent tour is an arrangement in which the tourist buys these
facilities separately, either making reservations in advance through a travel agent or
enroute during his or her tour.

Tourists purchasing package tours may do so on the basis of either individual or group
travel. An independent inclusive tour is one in which the tourist travels to his or her
destination individually, while in the group inclusive tour, he or she travels in the
company of other tourists. The abbreviations IIT and GIT are used for individual
inclusive tour and group inclusive tour respectively.

The Tourist Product

In a narrow sense, the tourist product consists of what the tourist buys. In a wider
sense, the tourist product is a combination of what the tourist does at the destination
and the services he or she uses during his or her stay.

The first characteristic of a tourist product is that it is a service. It is an intangible item. It

cannot be inspected by prospective purchasers before they buy as they can with a
washing machine, a stereo, or other consumer goods. The purchase of a package tour
involves a high degree of trust on the part of the buyer.

The second characteristic is that the tourist product is largely psychological in its
attraction. It is more than a collection of services such as an aircraft seat and a hotel
room. It is the temporary use of a strange environment plus the culture and heritage of
the region and other intangible benefits such as atmosphere and hospitality.

Another characteristic is that the product tends to vary in standard and quality over time
unlike the production of a television set. A package tour cannot be consistently of equal
standard. A bumpy flight can change an enjoyable experience into a nightmare;

a good room in a hotel may be spoiled by poor food; and a holiday at the seaside can
be destroyed by a prolonged rainy spell.

Still another characteristic is that the supply of the product is fixed. The number of hotel
rooms available at a particular resort cannot be changed to meet the changing demands
of tourists during a particular season. The unsold hotel room or aircraft seat cannot be
stored for another sale as is the case with tangible products. Thus, great efforts are
made to fill hotel rooms and aircrafts by discounting the prices of these products at the
last minute.
The Tourist Destination

The tourist destination is a geographical unit where the tourist visits and stays. It may be
a village, a town, a city, a district, a region, an island, a country, or a continent. The
success of a tourist destination depends upon the interrelationship of three basic
factors: attractions, amenities or facilities, and accessibility.

Attractions may be site and event attractions. A site attraction is one in which the
destination itself has appeal, while an event attraction is one in which tourists are drawn
to the destination solely because of what is taking place there. A site attraction may be a
country, a geographical region such as the Alps, a city, or a resort such as Boracay.
Event attractions include congresses, exhibitions, festivals such as the Ati- Atihan
Festival, and sports events such as the Olympic Games.

Attractions may also be natural or man-made. Natural attractions include mountains,

beaches, and climatic features such as sunshine and pure air. Man-made attractions
include buildings of historical or architectural interest such as Fort Santiago, holiday
camps, or theme parks such as Disneyland in Los Angeles, USA.

Amenities or facilities include accommodation, food, local transport, communications,

and entertainment at the site. However attractive a destination, its potential for tourism
will be limited unless the basic amenities which a tourist requires are provided.
Amenities will differ according to the attraction of the site. Sometimes, the amenity is
itself the principal attraction as in the case when a resort hotel is built to offer different
kinds of entertainment in a previously undeveloped region.

Accessibility means having regular and convenience of transport in terms of

time/distance to the destination from the originating country at a reasonable price. If
private transport is to be the means of access, tourism flow will depend upon adequate
roads, gasoline stations, and the like. Good railways and coach services, airports, and
seaports are designed to facilitate accessibility.

Tourist Services

The travel and stay of tourists give rise to a wide range of services in the course of a
holiday. The principal tourist services are supplied by passenger transport, which
provides the means to reach the destination, as well as the movement at the
destination. Distinctions in transport are between public and private, domestic and
international, and among the various modes-land, sea, and air.

Accommodation, food and beverage, and entertainment constitute the second group of
tourist services. Hotels are of vital concern to a large proportion of tourists. However,
many stay with friends and relatives, and in other private accommodations; others
provide their own accommodation in the form of caravans and tents. At present, food
and beverage operations cut across all sectors of the travel industry since eating is a
necessity, as well as a pleasure for travelers. Entertainment, combined with amusement
and recreation, is the primary reason why millions of people travel.

The third group of tourist services consists of those provided by the travel agent and by
the tour operator. The travel agent is the distributor of the product, while the tour
operator is the manufacturer of the product. The travel agent provides an intermediary
function between the tourist and the providers of transport and accommodation, while
the tour operator combines the individual components of a holiday into a product, which
is then sold directly to the public through travel agents. Other tourist services include
currency, documentation, information, sightseeing, and shopping.

Characteristics of Tourism and Hospitality

Tourism and hospitality has special characteristics which make it different from other
industries.

1. In tourism and hospitality, the product is not brought to the consumer; rather, the
consumer has to travel and go to the product to purchase it. In other industries, an item
manufactured in a factory is brought to the wholesaler and retailer and ultimately to the
consumer.

2. The products of tourism and hospitality are not used up; thus, they do not exhaust the
country's natural resources. The products of other industries have a limited life and at
the end of it are either junked or replaced with new ones.

3. Tourism and hospitality is a labor-intensive industry. It requires more manpower than

other industries.

4. Tourism and hospitality is people-oriented. It is primarily concerned with people. One

of the most important motivations of tourists is to meet other people and see how other
people live.
5. Tourism and hospitality is a multidimensional phenomenon. It is dependent on many
and varied activities which are separate but interdependent

6. The tourism and hospitality industry is seasonal. During vacation seasons, millions of
tourists travel, which result in increased revenues for several tourism agencies; but
when vacations are over, these companies experience a big decline in dollars earned.

7. The industry is dynamic. It is characterized by the changing ideas and attitudes of its
customers and therefore must be always prepared and willing to adjust to these
changes.

Importance of Tourism and Hospitality

Tourism and hospitality has become one of the world's major industries. Both
developing and highly developed nations are now taking a closer look at the following
potential benefits from tourism and hospitality:

1. Contribution to the balance of payments. Tourism and hospitality can help

correct the balance of payments and deficits of many countries by earning the much-
needed foreign currency in international trade. Examples of countries in which the
tourism and hospitality industry has helped reduce the deficits are: Spain, Mexico,
Philippines, Thailand, Hong Kong, and Singapore.

2. Dispersion of development. International tourism and hospitality is the best means to

spread wealth among countries; thus, bridging the economic gap between the rich and
the poor nations.

3. Effect on general economic development. Expenditures by tourists can have

beneficial effects on all economic sectors and can lead to the development of different
industries and other economic activities.

4. Employment opportunities. Tourism and hospitality is a source of employment. It is a

service industry, which could have a significant effect on those countries with surplus
labor such as the Philippines. For countries where there is a high rate of unemployment
and underemployment, tourism and hospitality can provide a ready solution.

5. Social benefits. Social exchange takes place when tourists come in contact with the
inhabitants of the places they visit. Their social background and their presence affect
the social structure and way of life of the local residents. In the same way, tourists are
also affected by the experience so that they often carry with them new habits and a new
outlook on life when they return home.
6. Cultural enrichment. Tourism and hospitality emphasizes a sharing and appreciation
of cultures rather than the lack of trust brought about by isolation. Through tourism and
hospitality, we can appreciate the rich human and cultural diversity that the world offers
and evolve a mutual trust and respect for one another and the dignity of life on earth.
Likewise, tourism and hospitality contributes to the preservation and development of the