a State the tourism impacts highlighted in the preceding sections.
b i Classify each impact into the broad categories of 'Biophysical' and 'Cultural'. ii Subdivide the 'Cultural' category into subgroups.
c For each impact categorised into groups and subgroups in part b, state the place/s in which the text mentions they occur.
dWho is affected by each of the tourism impacts?
e How and why have the impacts arisen?
fWhat alternatives may be available to the people or countries mentioned in the text?
gWhat are your opinions on the impacts?
Tourism in Asia
The scene depicted in the passage in Figure 3-1 entitled 'Congregating at the coast' can be witnessed during the tourist season at coastal holiday destinations or resorts in most Asian countries.
As they eat their evening meal, visitors from all parts of the globe compare experiences enjoyed on their coastal holidays. The menu they choose from probably includes local fish delicacies. The visitors admire the shells, coral necklaces and other curios from the coast and sea that they have bought. Stories of 'good' prices and bargaining techniques used with the local shopkeepers and traders continue into the night. Many visitors had ventured offshore in order to undertake a scuba-diving tour, and they proudly display cuts and abrasions that testify to their inexpert and unthoughtful encounter with sharp-edged coral.
Figure
Figure 3.1 Passage
TOURISM
What are the issues?
Over the past couple of decades, the boom in sun-surf-and-fun tourism in Asian countries has been enormous. The developing 'countries of this huge region have marketed strongly their sandy beaches, coral reefs, balmy temperatures and swaying palm trees to huge numbers of sun-seeking vacationers from the more affluent industrialised countries. The growth has been due in part to Asian airline companies' vigorous promotion of cheaper airfares and coastal holiday packages. It has also been due to changing interest in leisure pursuits among the well-off visitors from both the developed nations and other Asian countries, even though, on an international scale, some of the latter countries are poor. Activities such as snorkelling, sport fishing, windsurfing, whale watching, sailing and scuba diving have become very popular as well as the ever popular activities such as swimming and surfing.
The economic return provided by the boom in coastal tourism is enormous; some countries receive more than 50 per cent of their Gross National Product (GNP) from this type of tourism. Every year the Maldives, the small island nation of the Indian Ocean south of Sri Lanka and India, attracts more than 160,000 visitors, even though its own total population is about 228,000. In 1972 the small country had only two resorts; twenty years later it had more than sixty. Thailand, the population of which was estimated at 57.5 million in 1992, lists tourism as its leading foreign-exchange earner. (Foreign exchange is an export, because tourists bring money into the country and spend it there.) In 1987, tourism became Thailand's largest export, ahead of the traditional number-one export: textiles, and in the late 1980s, six million tourists spent more than $2 billion each year in the country.