The reading focuses on the resultant trends in tourism arising from the interplay between tourism industry and other sectors. There are four key drivers that shape tourism trends: global economy and globalisation, natural resources and environment, science and technology and demographics. These drivers pose varied challenges and opportunity to tourism development world over. The key stakeholders in tourism development are tourists, industry, community, governments. Tourists define the services to be offered in the industry. Industries influence economic growth science and technology and have a bearing on tourism flow.
The community is the anchor of all the development initiatives. The government provides policy guidance that shapes the economy, the industries as well as the tourism industry. Since no single driver can dominate tourism development, an integrated approach that incorporates economic, social, cultural, political, technological, and environmental matters is the only avenue towards achieving sustainable outcomes from tourism development. The approach sets the context in which the tourism industry may be expected to develop over the coming decade and provides a flexible framework to discuss and debate the future.
The weakness of this approach is that each sector will have varying inputs in different regions and countries. Countries world over have varied economic, social, cultural, political, technological, and environmental status and hence some may have greater influence on global tourism development than others. The issues that impact tourism development globally are: population, natural resources and the environment, science and technology, the global economy and globalization, national and international governance, and safety/security issues.
These issues present both challenges and opportunities to public and private sector organisations around the world as they seek to achieve a sustainable tourism industry. Sustainable tourism industry should be consistent with wider economic, social, cultural, political, technological, and environmental trends affecting all nations (Dwyer, 2004).
Reference
Dwyer, L. (2004). Trends underpinning global tourism in the coming decade. In T. F. William (Ed. ), Global tourism (pp. 529-545), 3rd ed. , Maryland Heights, Missouri: Butterworth-Heinemann