Introduction
The modern society is characterized by rapid development of production that resulted in increase of people’s living standards all over the world. These changes influenced people’s behavior and existing tourist needs as compared with the previous years. Over the recent years, tourism has become one of the leading and fastest-growing sectors of the global economy. It is acknowledged to be the economic phenomenon and is predicted to have a very promising future due to its rapid growth and great popularity. According to the World Tourism Organization (UNWTO), the growth of the tourism industry will be irreversible in future, and by 2020 the number of international tourist arrivals will reach 1.6 billion visits (UNWTO).
Actually, this economic sector is the fundamental one for many developed and developing countries and its contribution to the world economy (gross production services) is more than $4 trillion (according to the UNWTO data). Though global tourism suffered greatly from the economic crisis of 2009 and considerably fell, there was growth in 2010. The further growth is possible due to the emerging countries, and European countries are likely to have the lowest growth rate. Travel and tourism provides more than 15% of international investment and bring $302 billion revenues in the form of taxes (Pavlic).
These factors fully explain the fact that today tourism plays a major role in the global economy development and is currently one of the most profitable businesses in the world. Therefore, questions about modern and future trends in tourism, its prospects and its development dynamics are extremely crucial.
This research work reveals the recent specific tendencies in the modern tourism management. The paper also provides information concerning today’s tourism market development and its major peculiarities analyzes the recent trends in tourism and discusses the future tourism prospects.
Brief description of today’s tourism market
It’s obvious that modern tourism field develops extremely rapidly. Its development contributes to rapid economic growth in many countries. However, the tourism industry of a certain country is heavily influenced by the global trends in tourism and the society at whole. The development of the tourism industry contributes to revenue, job creation, infrastructure development, and building of new tourist facilities. In many countries tourism has become an important source of revenues and is one of the most promising sectors of the national economy. Actually, development of recreation and tourism industry and enhancement of its impact on economic development have become one of the priorities of the global economy.
The current growth of tourism is the outcome of raising globalization, which has influenced the key incentives in world tourism:
- Economic growth and social progress have led to increased volume of business and private trips.
- Trip prices have become lower due to new improved vehicles.
- Financial and cultural level of employees and workers in developed countries has been considerably improved. They have an excellent opportunity to earn more and, consequently, to spend more on vacations.
- Employees may receive longer vacations in comparison with the previous period.
- The development of inter-state relations and cultural exchanges between the countries led to expansion of interpersonal relationships between and within regions.
- Services development stimulates the development of telecommunications.
Actually, these global changes are interconnected with the development of social network. This may lead to some changes in the tourism sphere, which may be successfully implicated in the future (Pavlic):
1. Increased cooperation between producers.
The modern society is characterized by the tough competition, in which suppliers of services and goods try to cooperate with each other to seize the collaborative advantage. Of course, of prime importance here is the partnership between airlines, tour operators, and hospitality groups. They should cooperate to provide tourists with the high-quality services.
2. Increasingly cooperated consumers.
Social network becomes extremely important for people’s work and leisure. It means that people from different networks may closely cooperate with each other influencing other people’s opinions in a wide range of spheres. The boundaries between work, leisure and private lives are effaced, people search for friends in different social networks as they can provide important information or valuable contacts.
3. Changing value network
Traditional value chains are giving place to more complex value networks that involve many additional suppliers to the travel sector. Moreover, tourism becomes more flexible in its development; it cooperates with other economic sectors and with society.
Accordingly, the conclusion that can be drawn from the above is that development of tourism and other social and economic spheres in recent years has caused network society rise that influences services production and consumption. Thus, the social network is the modern driving force for the future tourism development.
The drivers of tourism
Scientists distinguish several factors influencing international tourism development, which can be divided into two major groups (Richards):
- Factors that act independently of tourism industry activities (economic, political, social, ecological)
- Factors that contribute to the development of tourism and are actively used by travel agencies in their work (scientific and technological potential).
1. Economic factors
- Tough competition. Tourists are eager to get more for less money.
- Wealth is concentrated mainly in Asia.
- Growing demand for cheap offers
- Weakening financial markets
2. Political factors
- Political uncertainties restrict or even prevent travelling
- Increasing terrorism. Additional reinforced security measures, strict entry control exaggerates tourists’ travel.
- Growing intercultural conflicts that make travelling very dangerous.
- Worsen trust in politics.
3. Social factors
- Shorten number of young people and children in Europe
- Raising demand for individual tours
- Decreasing number of full families. Singles will prevail
- Recession of the European middle class.
- Less time for leisure due to work overload
4. Ecological factors
- Climate changes. New touristic areas will appear.
- Dangerous sun due to ozone holes.
- Terrible traffic that complicates travelling
- Exhausted oil reserves, opening of new travel forms.
5. Technological factors
- Rapid development of information and communication technologies.
- Developed transport: faster, more comfortable and cheaper
- Developed GPS services
- Extreme innovations, for instance underwater resorts
However, along with the positive factors tourism is impacted by the number diverse factors, including natural disasters, social upheavals, wars, economic crisis, terrorist attacks.
Nevertheless, since 1950, there has been no significant decline in the growth rate of international tourism, which had the annual growth of at least 4% during the last 15 years (“Research”).
Tourist macro regions
The modern international tourism is characterized by a significant territorial unevenness. It reflects the different socio-economic levels of the world countries: the developed countries accounted 57% of tourism revenues, developing countries - 30%, countries with transition economies - 13%. Hence, there exist five tourist macro regions in the world:
1. Europe (which includes the countries of Western, Northern, Southern, Central, Eastern Europe; the Eastern Mediterranean states of Israel, Cyprus and Turkey).
2. American (including the North, South, Central America, islands and the Caribbean territory).
3. Asia Pacific (including East and South East Asia, Australia and Oceania).
4. African (including African countries except Egypt and Libya).
5. Middle East (including Western and South-West Asia, Egypt, Libya).
These macro regions are characterized by the gradual development dynamics, but the pace and number of tourist arrivals is not similar (Figure 1).
Figure 1. Share of tourist arrival to world macro regions (Source: UNWTO data)
Thus, the largest share belongs to Europe (58%). Presence of all types of recreation resources, stable economic and political situation in the macro region, the presence of infrastructure and advantageous geographical location make this macro region the leader in tourism and in total quantity of tourist arrivals. However, the European resorts are more expensive than other macro regions resorts. This factor negatively affects the development of tourism in the region.
The second position is occupied by the Asia-Pacific macro region; the share of tourist arrivals here is 19 %. This is due to the presence of unique and exotic recreational resources, high level of service, and low prices. However, the negative impact on the development of this macro region and the number of tourist arrivals has an unstable political situation, frequent natural disasters such as earthquakes, tsunamis, floods.
The U.S. macro region is on the third place which has slightly lower proportion of tourist arrivals due to a faster rate of development of the tourism industry in other macro regions. This region is characterized by all types of recreational resources, developed infrastructure. However, the unstable political situation in South America, natural disasters in the U.S. (hurricanes, floods) cause decline in the share of tourist arrivals.
African macro region is the fourth in the list. Africa has the cheapest holiday destinations in the world with rich natural recreational resources, which increase the number of tourist arrivals. However, underdeveloped infrastructures, low level of tourism services, the lack of significant cultural and historical recreational resources negatively affect the tourism industry in this tourist macro region.
Middle East tourism macro region is characterized by the lowest share of tourismarrivals, which is 2 %. This is due to the unstable political situation in the region, the lackof developed tourist infrastructure. However, the long tourist season, the presence of richrecreational resources, both natural and cultural history, intimacy of developed Europeanstates positively influence the development of tourism in the region and amount a significant share of its tourist and recreational potential.
Recent trends in tourism development
In fact, tourism has become a phenomenon that has entered the daily people’s lives. Moreover, in the beginning of the XXI century tourism obtained the third place among the leading sectors of the global economy in terms of income (UNWTO).
In many countries, tourism is one of the priority sectors, which contribution to GDPnational income is 20-45 % and revenues from foreign tourism is the major source of foreign currency (“Understanding”). Travel industry encourages the development of other industries, such as construction, telecommunications, food processing, agriculture, trade, consumer goods manufacturing. This business attracts entrepreneurs for many reasons: little starting investment, increasing demand for tourist services, high profitability and minimum payback term.
According to the recent data, France, which takes about 80 million foreign tourists, is the leader among other popular tourists’ destinations. It is followed by Spain, the U.S. and Italy, which receive together more than 150 million tourists. Thus, identifying leaders in foreign tourists receiving, we can confidently state the fact that tourism has the greatest impact on the economy in these countries. However, revenues from tourism are unevenly distributed in the world (Figure 2).
Figure 2. Tourism revenues distribution in the world, % (Source: UNWTO data)
Regions with relatively high levels of economic development have the largest revenue shares. This means that in these regions tourism actively influences economic development.
In the terms of employees’ number tourism has become one of the largest employers in the world - more than 260 million people work in the tourism sphere. Moreover, tourism is an important source of jobs creation and it is predicted to create 2500 new jobs daily within the next 5 years (Alipour). This is one of the few sectors of the economy, where introduction of some new technology does not lead to the staff reduction. This is very crucial because absorbing more labor force, tourism reduces social tension. In addition, international experience shows that the tourism industry can develop in a period of economic crisis, which is important for Eastern Europe.
Another very important factor is the impact of tourism on the environment that can be direct, indirect, positive and negative one. Tourism can’t develop without interaction with the environment, but managing this development the negative impact can be reduced and the positive influence can be maximized. Positive impact includes the protection and restoration of nature, history, culture, establishment of national parks and nature reserves, forest conservation, flora and fauna protection. The negative impact, unfortunately, is greater; in particular, it is the impact on water quality in rivers, lakes, seas and air purity, the growth of harmful vehicles emissions, unauthorized temporal recreation centers, waste pollution, and historical monuments vandalism. Some types of tourism recreation, such as hunting, fishing and plants gathering, cause negative impact on fauna and flora. Population growth in tourist areas, construction of new tourist facilities needs to attract great number of natural resources, which, in its turn, increases the environmental problems.
According to UNWTO forecasts, the sphere of tourism will actively develop in the future. The number of travelers in 2020 will reach 1.6 billion per year, which means increase in tourist arrivals by 2.4 times compared to 2000. By 2020 the income from tourism will increase up to $2000 billion (UNWTO).
The most popular tourist destinations by the year 2020 are shown in Table 1.
The table shows that along with the annual growth by 8% the number of tourist arrivals in China will reach 137,1 million people by 2020. The second most popular tourist destination will be the United States (102.4 million), followed by France (93.3 million), Spain (71.0 million), Hong Kong (59.3 million).
Daily tourist expenditures, excluding costs for air travel will come to $5 billion a day.
According to the UNWTO, outbound tourism is expected to grow extremely rapidly. The largest countries, which will provide the hugest tourist flows, will be Germany, Japan, the U.S., China, and the United Kingdom. The volume of tourism between the countries of Western and Eastern Europe will grow mainly in the direction from east to west.
Yet with the economic rise of countries in Eastern Europe, the development of tourism infrastructure, transport systems in countries with the developing economy will be a source of the foreign exchange and new workplaces.
Tourism of the Future
Changes in tourism have influenced the needs and requirements of tourists all over the world. Travel agencies try to find an individualized approach in their work with the customers. However, the universal tourist doesn’t exist. The tourists’ wishes are extremely dynamic and require quick reaction, constant research of something new in the tourism market.
Experts of the World Tourism Organization identified the five most promising types of tourism in the twentieth century:
1. Cruises are one of the most promising and rapidly growing types of tourism. If in the early 1980s, the number of «cruise» tourists was approximately 1.5 million people, now their quantity is more than 10 million, and this number continues to grow.
2. Adventure travel is offered for tourists who like extreme and unusual holidays. There is the ever increasing demand for climbing the highest peaks in the world, and tours through the deep sea.
3. Cultural and educational tourism will actively develop in Europe, Asia, and Middle East.
4. Business travel has become very popular and will develop in future due to the rapid development of the world economy, the deepening of political and economic relations between the different world nations.
5. According to U.S. experts, space tourism will be very popular in future and will provide an annual income of $10 billion.
Conclusion
Actually, recent trends in international tourism may be characterized as positive ones. Analyzed data suggest that the tourism industry is actively developing: increasing number of tourist arrivals in the whole world and in all macro regions, new jobs in the tourism sector are being created and their number is growing, revenues from tourism are constantly increasing. Moreover, tourism is influenced by demographic and social changes, increased holidays within a year, tough market segmentation. That is why there are some problems in the tourism sector, quick solving of which may significantly speed up the development of tourism areas. Incontestable fact is that international inequality in the tourism sector is significantly. To achieve equivalent success in the world new ways to encourage the development of tourism should be based on international cooperation and developed social networks. Therefore, international cooperation and agreement between the key members of tourism (hotels, transportation, and travel agencies) should ensure the future development of the industry. Moreover, further scientific research in this area should be focused on finding the effective ways of solving the problems of the tourism industries.
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