Micro Perspective of Tourism and Hospitality

• Travel is brought about by the social nature of man
• Human beings feel comfortable in a tour group, making their trip more enjoyable and free from anxiety
• Camaraderie often develops friendships that last for years
• In some subcultures, travel is the accepted way of spending one's vacation
• Sabbatical leaves and foreign assignments allow university faculty members and employees to travel and develop a passion for it
• Tourism evolves mutual trust and respect for one another and the dignity of life on earth
• According to Pope John Paul II, tourism can facilitate more authentic and social relationships between individuals, helping overcome prejudices and fostering new bonds of fraternity
• Tourism involves the movement and contact between people in different geographical locations
• In sociological terms, this involves:

  • Social relations between people who would not normally meet
  • Confrontation of different cultures, ethnic groups, lifestyles, languages, levels of prosperity, and the like
  • Behavior of people released from many social and economic constraints of everyday life
  • Behavior of the host population reconciling economic gain and benefits with the costs of living with strangers
• The degree of conflict between host and guest in tourism depends on:

  • Similarity in standards of living
  • Number of tourists at any time
  • Extent to which tourists adapt to local norms
• Differences in patterns of travel based on age:

  • Younger people prefer more active recreational activities
  • Elderly prefer more passive forms of recreation like visiting friends and relatives, fishing, sightseeing, and playing golf
  • Older tourists travel to farther destinations, prefer ship travel, travel more in spring, and spend less than middle-aged tourists but more than younger tourists
• Income and social status influence travel habits:

  • Rich individuals and those with higher social status travel more than those with lower incomes and social class status
  • Higher income tourists stay longer and spend more per day than those with lower incomes
• Education is correlated with travel:

  • Better educated individuals have a greater desire to travel
  • More educated travelers tend to prefer activities that require interpretative and expressive skills, such as attending plays, concerts, art museums, reading books, playing golf, and skiing
• Life stages of the family affect travel:

  • Presence of children limits travel, leading to more leisure time spent at home
  • As children grow up and leave home, married couples renew interest in travel
  • Couples in this life stage usually have more discretionary income and are more financially capable to travel
• Travel clubs are a significant development in group travel:

  • Club Mediterranee is a notable example, offering travel opportunities and vacation destination facilities at a cheaper price for members
  • Accommodations range from deluxe to modest, with a wide choice of locations, climate, and vacation features
• Airline group travel arrangements include:

  • Reduced fares for groups of 15 or more
  • Charter services for affinity group tours
  • Public charters where an entire airplane is available for a group traveling to the same destination
  • Incentive tours given by firms to employees as a reward or motivation
• Special interest tours are gaining popularity:

  • Tours arranged for specific activities like bird watching, festivals, fishing, hunting, scuba diving, photography, flower arrangement, golf, skiing, and mountain climbing
• Preferences of international tourists are divided into four categories:

  1. Complete relaxation to constant activity

  2. Traveling near home to a totally strange environment

  3. Complete dependence on group travel to traveling alone

  4. Order to disorder
• Demand for activity-oriented travel has increased due to:

  • Shortened workweeks and lengthened annual holiday leave
  • People becoming used to greater leisure and seeking new activity skills like sailing, climbing, horse riding, and sports
• Most tourists on their first trip abroad tend to seek familiarity over novelty
• They search for something that reminds them of home, such as food, newspapers, living quarters, or someone from their own country
• Once they find a place where they feel at home, they tend to revisit that same place multiple times
• As travelers gain more experience, they become more interested in exploring new environments
• They want to see customs and cultures different from their own
• They want to interact with people who speak differently, eat differently, and dress differently
• There is an increasing positive attitude towards novelty and change in travel
• Tourists in the past joined package tours where transportation, lodging, food, sightseeing, and entertainment were fixed in advance by the tour agency
• Emergence of tourists who prefer personal autonomy regarding their leisure time and travel on their own
• New generation of tourists values informality in behavior, tolerance towards differences, and freedom from institutionalized regulations
• Demand for travel in modern society is shifting towards novelty, activity, autonomy, and informality
• Types of Tourist Roles:

  • Organized mass tourist and individual mass tourist are institutionalized roles dealt with in a routine way by tourist establishments like travel agencies and hotel chains
  • Explorer and drifter are non-institutionalized roles loosely attached to the tourist establishment
• 1. The Organized Mass Tourist This type of tourist is the least adventurous. He buys a package tour in which the itinerary of his trip is fixed in advance and his stops are well- prepared and guided. He seldom makes decisions for himself. He prefers a familiar environment rather than a new
• Social tourism is a subsidized system of travel through the intervention of the government, employer, or labor union to achieve social goals and purposes
• In the late 1930s, European countries passed laws on paid holidays to ensure that the ordinary worker could afford travel for recreation and rest
• Voluntary associations in the field of social tourism worked to obtain reduced fares and create a network of holiday centers for tourists of limited means
• In 1963, the International Bureau of Social Tourism (BITS) was founded in Brussels to encourage the development of social tourism on an international scale
• BITS has a membership of more than 100 associations worldwide
• BITS promotes tourism to achieve social objectives by studying issues such as youth and senior citizen travel
• Culture can be defined as a set of beliefs, values, attitudes, habits, and forms of behavior that are shared by a society and transmitted from generation to generation
• Knowledge of the culture of a country is important to understand how individuals within that country will behave