NESSThai

ON-LINE

Natural�Value
Habitats
Sustainability
Greening�Tourism
Nature�Interpretation
Across�Cultures
Educating�the�Agencies
Small�Worlds

Please E-mail us at:

[email protected]

NESSThai Inc.

P.O. Box 48

Amphoe Muang

Krabi

Thailand

Network for Environmentally- & Socially-Sustainable Tourism (Thailand)

Natural Value

[�NESSThai Programmes�] [�Next�]

The Natural Value Programme is predominantly a research programme. It looks at the contribution made to the tourism industry by environmental quality and cultural stability. It also examines how the tourism industry fits into and affects local community structures and the environment.

font>

The Global Tourism Industry

The World Tourism Organisation claims that tourism is currently the world's largest tourism industry, with annual revenues of 3 trillion US dollars.

Tourism is a powerful force for globalisation, and has lead to the commercialisation of cultures throughout the world. But it has also served to stimulate local pride in tradition and history.

Tourism can have huge adverse effects on the environment, look at the use of energy in global travel as just one example. But it also serves to raise awareness of, and to bring psychologically closer, the environmental degradation in places that would otherwise not only be far from home, but far from mind too.

Tourism, the Environment & Culture

The tourism industry is also hugely dependent on the quality of the environment. One only has to look at the amount of money travellers will spend to see places like the rainforests of Borneo, the marine national parks of Thailand, the forests of Amazonia, and mountains of Nepal, to understand that these wonderful places are "worth" a great deal of money to travel agencies, airlines, hotel chains, dive shops, boot makers, tour guides, and the myriad of other service industries which serve the global tourism industry.

Local tourism operators benefit from the natural beauty of the environment in which they are located. If they are the original residents, this may have been pure luck, and completely unplanned. A small establishment of bungalows on a beach may provide an income over and above the coconut orchard, fishing, and rubber plantations that were the traditional income generators of island folk. This establishment may not take much from the environment, nor may it return much. Larger hotels, particularly multinationals, may have paid quite a bit more for the land, and invested substantially more in their hotels and resorts. The impact of their activities on the environment may be proportionately greater, and they may return even less to the natural environment or to the local community.

The clear seas, clean beaches, isolated coves, high mountains, lush forests, wildlife, cascading rivers and streams, all these aspects of the environment contribute to the tourism industry. They are cash in the bank to hotel operators, tour operators, resort owners. They are also value-added to the capital assets of tourism operations. And yet, these contributions are not measured nor attributed to the environment.�

Similarly, the charming temples, the scenes of monks on their alms rounds, the graceful dancing in gorgeous costumes, children laughing on their way to foreign schools, agricultural scenes, fantastic festivals and traditions, these aspects of culture and of traditional ways of life are part and parcel of the exotic holiday destination experience. The "taste" of a foreign culture adds considerable spice to an expensive overseas holiday. Handicrafts may make the souvenirs, but it is those thousand little differences in the way things are done, and the similarities in what is being done, that make the memories.

Researching the Natural Value that Underpins the Tourism Industry

Check Back in a While and See....

Descriptions of and reports on some of the work we have been doing.

Return to the Top of the Page

Go to Contents Page

Go to NESSThai Home

Please e-mail us:

E-mail

Number of Visits to this Page:

Hosted by www.Geocities.ws

1