INTRODUCTION

    Tourist Industry, multisectoral activity that requires inputs from many industries agriculture, construction, manufacturing and from both the public and private sectors to provide the goods and services used by tourists. It has no clearly determined boundaries and no physical output; it is a provider of services which in range will vary between countries; for example, in Singapore shopping is a major tourist activity but not entertainment; in London, both shopping and entertainment are important inputs to the tourism sector.

THE TOURIST

    All types of traveller engaged in tourism are described as visitors, a term that constitutes the basic concept for the whole system of tourism statistics; the term visitor may be further subdivided into same-day visitors and tourists as follows: (1) visitors are defined as those people who travel to a country other than that in which they have their usual residence, but outside their usual environment, for a period not exceeding 12 months and whose main purpose of visit is other than the exercise of an activity remunerated from within the place visited; (2) same-day visitors are visitors who do not spend the night in a collective or private accommodation in the country visited; while (3) tourists are visitors who stay in the country visited for at least one night.

These new definitions will, when used by countries, greatly improve the current quality of tourism statistics, which are not easy to analyse due to the inconsistencies in definitions and classifications used. With these limitations in mind tourism is still acknowledged to be an activity of global economic importance.

HISTORY OF TOURISM

    Tourism can be recognized as long as people have travelled; the narrative of Marco Polo in the 13th century; the grand tour of the British aristocracy to Europe in the 18th century; and the journeys of David Livingstone through Africa in the 19th century are all examples of early tourism. Thomas Cook is popularly regarded as the founder of inclusive tours with his use of a chartered train in 1841 to transport tourists from Loughborough to Leicester. Before the 1950s, tourism in Europe was mainly a domestic activity with some international travel between countries, mainly within continental Europe. In the period of recovery following World War II, a combination of circumstances provided an impetus to international travel. Among the important contributing factors were the growing number of people in employment, the increase in real disposable incomes and available leisure time, and changing social attitudes towards leisure and work. These factors combined to stimulate the latent demand for foreign travel and holidays. The emergence of specialist tour operators who organized inclusive holidays by purchasing transport, accommodation, and related services and selling these at a single price, brought foreign holidays within the price-range of a new and growing group of consumers. The package or inclusive tour democratized travel in Europe; foreign holidays were no longer the preserve of the affluent and socially elite classes.