Tourism Business as the World’s Largest Industry and Employer

Ecotourism
The latest trend in tourism, known as ecotourism, receives great interest and attention from environmentally conscious travelers. Unlike traditional tourism, ecotourism promotes environmentally responsible travel and seeks to ensure that visitors “take nothing but photographs and leave behind nothing but footprints”. An equally important part of the ecotourism equation is “sustainable” tourism that enables local people to protect their natural and cultural resources and profit from them at the same time.
The truly “green” traveler also emphasizes the necessity for tours that strictly limit group size, coordinate with native guides, and donate a percentage of tour profits to community projects or research.
The ecotourism umbrella seems to shelter all kinds of outdoor travel-related products – from beach hotels that happen to be near a rain forest to a national park visit, guided bird-watching, or scientist-led Antarctic cruising. It also encompasses adventure expeditions, such as trekking and river rafting, as well as less rigorous trips to culturally exotic or archaeologically important locations.
An early model for ecotourism came from East Africa in the 1970s, when Kenya began collecting fees from safari-bound tourists heading into its national parks. Those revenues were earmarked to support conservation and park maintenance in its vast wildlife preserves. According to the World Tourism Organization, Kenya developed a good thing. In an early national parks study, the organization determined that each lion in Kenya’s Amboseli Park was worth $27,000 per year in revenues to local tribes and an elephant herd about $610,000.
Another popular destination was the Galapagos Islands, perhaps the world’s most renowned natural “laboratory” of flora and fauna unique to the region. Some island landings were closed to locally based ships and yachts, and, by law, international passenger vessels were not permitted to cruise anywhere in the Galapagos archipelago.
Similar practices were implemented in Antarctica. The International Association of Antarctica Tour Operators, a group of travel companies concerned with the protection of wildlife and sites of historic and scientific interest, set guidelines, for example, that no more than 100 people may land at any one site at one time.
Australia established guidelines to help developers to protect environment when planning projects. In addition, the Australia tourism ministry undertook to ensure that indigenous communities participate fully within the tourism industry. In some national parks, for instance, Aboriginal people were trained to operate tourism businesses and were closely involved in the development and interpretation activities at visitor centers.
Another positive result from ecotourism came from the ecotourists themselves, as they created a demand for smaller and greener lodgings worldwide. One of the pioneers in ecolodges was Stanley Selengut, whose Harmony Lodge on St. John in the U. S. Virgin Islands was the world’s first resort to use materials fabricated from recycled trash and to operate exclusively on sun and wind power. The lodge won the Global Ecotourism Award in 1995. With missionary zeal, Selengut advocated profitable and sustainable development of ecolodges that limit energy consumption, preserve the ecological balance, recycle waste, and avoid corrupting local cultures.
Ecotourism experts are confident that ecotourism is no longer a fringe part of the travel industry. Preservation of nature for tomorrow drives most of the discussion about a kinder and gentler tourism. For the future, balances need to be struck between our interest in visiting a place, the carrying capacity of the destination, and the well-being of all those living there.