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Travel and tourism is the largest industry in the world, but calculating its economic impact is quite difficult. The one thing everybody can agree on, though, is that it’s huge. There are two things which have influence on the growth of tourism. There are firstly — social factors, and secondly — technology and the way it’s developed. Let’s consider the social factors first of all. Demand for tourism is determined mainly by the amount of wealth a country has, which is why countries such as Japan, Australia, the USA and western European countries have contributed most in terms of tourist numbers in the past. However, growing wealth in developing countries will mean that demand for holidays abroad will take off there in the near future, boosting tourism enormously.
That said, the majority of tourists are still from what are called the developed nations. However, studies show that their number will not rise much further in the next few decades because their populations are fairly stable. As a result, there’ll be a growth in the number of retired people who’ll have more time on their hands. This will influence the kind of tourism wanted: fewer skiing holidays will be required, but there’ll be an increase in the number of people wanting to visit art galleries.
Let’s turn now to the second factor in the growth of tourism. The technology that sustains mass tourism today is the jet plane. Air travel has opened up the world. In 1970, scheduled planes carried 307 million passengers. Today there are four times as many. In fact, cheaper and more efficient transport has been behind the development of mass tourism from its beginnings in Britain in the 19th century. The first package tours were arranged in 1841 by
Thomas Cook, an entrepreneur whose company subsequently became one of the world’s largest tour operators. In his day, it was the railway that allowed his business to flourish.
Today, technology is proving important in other ways as well as in transportation. In the past, people went to a travel agent to find and book their holiday. Now many of these people are bypassing the High Street travel agents and booking their holidays themselves on the Internet. Airlines have been keen to encourage this direct approach as it keeps down their costs, and increasingly High Street travel agents are finding their business is disappearing. These days there may be more tourists to go around, but there is also more competition among destinations, as cities, countries and continents all compete for tourist revenue. But becoming a tourist destination is not quite as straightforward as it may seem. For example, Ireland used to sell itself as a place to enjoy the beautiful countryside. However, it soon discovered that it was attracting young student backpackers without any money. So how did Ireland set about increasing revenue from tourism? Well, the Irish Tourist Board came up with the idea of promoting the country’s literature, using the names of writers such as Oscar Wilde and James Joyce to appeal to older, richer tourists who would spend their money in the hotels and restaurants of the country. However, there are other ways of appealing to tourists. The US is dotted with places that claim to be the capital of something or other — sometimes things which may seem rather strange: Crystal City, for example, is the world capital of the vegetable broccoli, and then there’s Gilroy — famous for its garlic. These towns are trading on a single gimmick to attract the tourists.
Festivals are another way to bring them in — literary, food, art — they’re all staged for one reason only: to attract tourist revenue.  Many a town has sought to copy the success of Stratford,  Ontario, which was transformed from a small run-down blue-collar town to a bustling culture centre by the effort of Tom Patterson, who managed to persuade a British director to stage their first drama festival in 1953.
But then boosting a city through tourism is nothing new. In 18th Century England, Bath Spa became fashionable after the owners of the hot baths employed Beau Nash, the trendsetter of his day, to promote the city. I want to end the lecture there for today. Now, thank you.