UK Tourist Destinations Assignment

Introduction

Tourism industry has become really important to the UK economy and also for the economies of other countries that are strong tourist-destinations. Tourism helps to provide income-revenue, infrastructure, jobs, and also provides investment through-out the entire country (Gillian, 2007). Today more and more overseas-tourists are actually choosing UK as their tourist destination for spending their holidays. London is the major attraction in the European-market and is also considered as one of the major destinations of tourism that the overseas-visitors want to visit during their travel to Europe.

Today, Europe and a few other worldwide tourist-destinations are the major-actors in the tourism-industry. This UK Tourist Destinations Assignment introduces the main UK and the world-wide tourist destinations in-terms of income generation and visitor numbers and also their respective location. This UK Tourist Destinations Assignment would also look into the social, physical and cultural features of the chosen world-wide destinations and the trends and issues which affect their popularity, as an important part of the most essential knowledge and selling-skills required by the managers in the travel and tourism industry. By studying the statistics, visitor numbers and a few other relevant data, this report gives an analysis on the past issues that affected tourism which would in-turn enable the reader to appreciate the impact that those issues can have on a tourist destination and its continued-popularity. Those issues would analysed and the potential of responsible-tourism would be explored to enhance the host-community.

Task 1

1.1 Analysis of the main tourist-destinations for each country (UK and a world-wide country) and to research the main-generators in the world in terms of the income generation and visitor numbers.

A country that is largely favoured by tourists for a visit is called a tourist receiving country. For instance, if the tourists like to visit a country like Japan, then Japan is a tourist receiving country. A tourist generator country is that country from which the tourist come from. For instance, if the tourists are coming from the United States of America, then it would be regarded as the tourist-generator (Butler & Pearce, 1999). The UK in general is one of the biggest tourist-generating country in the world. The following table provides detailed-statistics of the major tourist receiving countries:

Source: "2014 Tourism Highlights". World Tourism Organization.

The World Tourism Organisation has reported the following 10 countries as most-visited in-terms of the total number of international-travellers in the year 2013.

Rank	Country	International tourist-arrivals (year:2012) (in millions)	International tourist-arrivals (year: 2013) (in millions)	Change in % (2011 – 2012)	Change in % (2012 – 2013)
1.	France	83.0	84.7	( + ) 1.8	( + ) 2.0
2.	USA	66.7	69.8	( + ) 6.3	( + ) 4.7
3.	Spain	57.5	60.7	( + ) 2.3	( + ) 5.6
4.	China	57.7	55.7	( + ) 0.3	( - ) 3.5
5.	Italy	46.4	47.7	( + ) 0.5	( + ) 2.9
6.	Turkey	35.7	37.8	( + ) 3.0	( + ) 5.9
7.	Germany	30.4	31.5	( + ) 7.3	( + ) 3.7
8.	UK	29.3	31.2	( - ) 0.1	( + ) 6.4
9.	Russia	25.7	28.4	( + ) 13.5	( + ) 10.2
10.	Thailand	22.4	26.5	( + ) 16.2	( + ) 18.8

Table 1: Rank wise comparison of major tourist receiving countries

The international-tourism receipts rose to US $ 1.159 trillion or (€ 873 billion) in the year 2011 corresponding to an overall increase in real-terms of 5.3 percent from the year 2012. The World Tourism Organization reports that the following countries (given in table 2) as the top 10 tourism-earners in the year 2013. The US is undoubtedly the top earner according to the report.

Source: "2014 Tourism Highlights". World Tourism Organization.

Rank	Country	International tourism-receipts (year:2012) (in billions)	International tourism-receipts (year: 2013) (in billions)	Change in % (2011 – 2012)	Change in % (2012 – 2013)
1.	USA	83.0	84.7	( + ) 1.8	( + ) 2.0
2.	Spain	66.7	69.8	( + ) 6.3	( + ) 4.7
3.	France	57.5	60.7	( + ) 2.3	( + ) 5.6
4.	China	57.7	55.7	( + ) 0.3	( - ) 3.5
5.	Italy	46.4	47.7	( + ) 0.5	( + ) 2.9
6.	Thailand	35.7	37.8	( + ) 3.0	( + ) 5.9
7.	Germany	30.4	31.5	( + ) 7.3	( + ) 3.7
8.	UK	29.3	31.2	( - ) 0.1	( + ) 6.4
9.	Australia	25.7	28.4	( + ) 13.5	( + ) 10.2
10.	Turkey	22.4	26.5	( + ) 16.2	( + ) 18.8

Table 2: Showing the income-generation data for different countries.

France tops the table for the arrival of tourists (tourist receiving country) and also ranks 3^rd in the international income-generation. 84.7 million Tourists visited France in the year 2013 and it generated US $ 60.7 billion in the year 2013. This is primarily due to the fact that the UK is one of the biggest tourist-generator country and also it’s very easy and cheap to travel from UK to France. Another important factor, is that France has a very low rate of crime that is only eight murder per million. Yet another factor is its physical environment and also the presence of the Eiffel Tower at the heart of France. The currency used in France is also the same as the currency with the whole of Europe (Gartner, 1996).

1.2 Analysis of the statistics to determine the tourism-destination trends and also predict the future trends

This task will look at the tourism-trend in UK and France and would also provide future-prediction of the tourism trends in the 2 countries. France is generally regarded as the leading tourist-destination in the world-tourism industry. The main reason behind it is the presence of various attractions in France like the beaches, historic monuments, the mountains, etc. France has begun to emerge as the most favoured tourist-destination for the visitors and it’s also predicted that France will continue to attract more number of tourists in the country in the upcoming years. The falling-prices for the Euro is another factor which increases the tourism-trend in France as the visitors get a better exchange-rate in France.

The Ireland Tourism-industry gets to gain a lot of revenue through the tourists in France. The revenue generated through the French-tourist in 2010 was € 177 million. The tourism-industry in France was greatly impacted negatively due to the Global Financial crisis but however there was a strong-recovery as compared to the other industrial-sectors in the country. In France, the Tourism industry is regarded as a major-source for economic growth and job-creation (Saayman & Saayman, 2006).

There is a very strong competition offered by the other tourist-destinations like Italy, Brazil, Indian and China. In the upcoming years, France would have to face several challenges like globalization and environmental impact. To deal with these issues the government of France has started a plan called “Strategie Destination France 2010-2020”.

The UK has always remained amongst the popular tourist destinations and a big-source of income-generation in the whole economy of the country. The table given below provides the trend of tourist-visit in the UK along with the ranks of different cities in the country:

Source: "Towns & Cities: VisitBritain Corporate Site":

Table 3: Showing the ranking for London cities for number of tourist visited

As seen from the above table, London is in the top of the list for the highest tourist number primarily because of the large number of tourist-attractions in London. Some of the major attractions are the British Museum, London Eye, Tower of London, Buckingham Palace, etc. (Du Plessis et al, 2005).

Manchester takes the second place in the UK because of the presence of several craft and design centres, Cathedral shopping exhibitions, etc. Birmingham secures the third place in England as it has several attractions like the Birmingham botanical-garden, millennium point, The Aston Hall, etc.

The tourism in UK is going to boom in the future because of several factors like:

• London is the only city in the world to have hosted the London Olympic Games three times in the year 1908, 1948 and 2012. It has helped to increase the tourist inflow.
• The government has focus to develop the coastal-resort so as to enhance the domestic and international tourism in the country.
• Several eco-tourism organizations are helping to promote UK as an eco-tourism place which helps to attract a large number of tourists in the country.

Task 2

2.1 Analyse the physical, social and cultural features of the world-wide tourist Destination selected by explaining their appeal to the tourists

London has been selected for this task as the tourist-destination for which the analysis of the physical, social and cultural features would be done so as to understand the appeal that is made by such factors for the London visiting tourists. London is the most visited tourist-destination in the UK and comprises of various attractions for which both the international and the domestic origin tourists visit London. By focusing on the economic-significance of London for tourism, it can be seen that more than 16 million overseas visitors toured London in the year 2013 that contributed to net 17 billion dollar towards the UK economy. Therefore tourism is regarded as one of the primary factors for the economic-development of London. Tourism in London contributes to the net revenue generated through exhibition and shopping by visitors. It provides opportunity for employment for a huge number of people. Furthermore, economic-impacts of tourism are not completely immediate as the development of more tourist-spot in recent times in London or the expenditure made by the government for online-advertisement in order to promote as a World destination for tourists would yield huge benefits in the near future (Mbaiwa, 2004).

Social-benefits of tourism cannot be overlooked. London-tourism is beneficial from social-perspective also. Social-factors have a great appeal to the visiting tourists. For instance, London-tourism is a source of cultural understanding and peace. Tourism involves the exchange of the peace-process along with the understanding of culture of the host tourist country so that the visiting tourists can have a better understanding of the developing culture. The local community greatly benefits from the tourism industry. It supports various local businesses as most industries located in London like the food, apparel, construction industry are mainly backed by the huge revenue generated from the tourism-industry.

One more socio-cultural benefit of the tourism-industry is that it offers a comparatively large seasonal-employment for the people living in the host country. It is particularly of great benefit for the students studying in London. The cultural impact in London due to the tourism it would feature the growth of the craft and design market which would in turn enhance the cultural-aspects of London world-wide (Beaver, 2002).

Impact on the environment due to the tourism-industry is both positive as well as negative. The positive-impacts comprises of the infrastructure development like the water-drains, roads and the maintenance of the historical monuments that are maintained and repaired so as to increase the number of visitors touring London. Apart from these, there are several negative impacts as well such as waste discharge, pollution, soil erosion, etc.

London Eye

The physical factors of the destination place for tourism in London include the Buckingham Palace, The London Eye, The Tower of London and many others (Harrington et al, 2003). The mixture of such appealing destination places in London highly appeals to the tourists and hence they love to make multiple-visits to London.

2.2 Comparison of the features of tourist-destination in a developing country and leading tourist-destinations.

Some of the main features that can be put in comparison between a developing-country and a leading tourist-destination include branding, purpose of tourism, infrastructure and management of the historic tourist-destinations. For this task, two tourist-destinations are selected and compared, one in a developing country and another in a highly developed country. India is selected as the developing-country which comprises of the tourist-destination Taj Mahal in Agra and it is going to be compared with London that is now a tourist-destination of the present developing countries. By comparing them in terms of the infrastructure, it can be observed that the supporting-infrastructure elements like the roads, construction industry, travel industry and the airline industry are having a much better support to London tourist-destinations as compared to Agra in India.  

Taj Mahal, Agra (India)

In terms of branding, the government has promoted London and several other stake-holders in the tourism-industry in the UK as a conference-city in order to attract the business-tourists to come to London and spend heavily. Also with the help of offline as well as online promotional-activities, awareness about the cultural and heritage elements are bestowed among the potential visitors (Lew, 2008). Some websites like “visitbritain.com” are helping in branding London via the online media. The Indian Government has also made various attempts so as to promote the tourist-destinations in India. However, when comparing both of those, the efforts for branding have been done in a much better way via the British media and hence it has resulted in a heavy tourist-inflow for London.

The purpose of tourism is yet another factor that is affecting tourism in both developing and developed countries (Pizam, 2002). In India, Tourism is primarily for leisure that brings in seasonality of the Indian tourism Industry whereas in London there are various different purposes of tourism like leisure, heritage, business and education that makes it a completely perfect-destination for around-the-year-visit. In terms of the management of the historic monuments, London has put really high focus so as to preserve the historic-monuments and also manage the tourism industry. But however in case of India, a higher level of effort is required to preserve their historic-monuments.

Task 3

 3.1 Comparison of the current appeal of leading tourist-destinations with that of the presently developing tourist-destinations.

In the present context, in order to compare the appeal of the present leading tourist-destination with the presently developing tourist-destinations, the United Kingdom and Costa Rica have been considered respectively. Even though the 2 tourist-destinations are having completely different characteristics, still in the present task a comparison would be made on the basis of their appeal to the tourists. UK is amongst the top ten tourist-destinations in the world with 31.2 million visitors in the year 2013. On the Costa Rica is situated in Central America and also ranked 5^th place on the basis of environmental sustainability. Some of the highly popular destination for tourism in Costa Rica includes Corcovado National park, Arenal Volcano, Manuel Antonio National park, Dominical Beach and Montverde Cloud Forest Reserve that is a huge forest which contains more than 300 plant and animal species.

Manuel Antonio National Park

When comparing the two tourist destinations, it can be observed that United Kingdom and Costa Rica are both having a great bio-diversity and a unique landscape. But the major difference between the two is that Costa Rica is a favoured tourist-destination for visitors who aspire to tour an exotic country that has a great variety of flora and fauna and also beautiful beaches. The UK on the other hand is favoured by tourists who are specifically interested in spectacular physical features like The Scottish Mountains, The British Isles, the Lake District, etc. (Deloitte, 2008). When it comes to culture, Costa Rica is having an original Spanish culture whereas UK introduces a new chapter for the people with its wide literature of Byron, Milton and Shakespeare, etc., home for the classical-music like Royal opera house, Royal Albert Hall and the Theatre in UK are age-old tradition and attracts a lot of visitors. Also in addition to all these, The Library, Museum and historic-architecture are few of the primary attractions for the tourists who are visiting UK.

UK Lake District

While comparing the means of transport in the two tourist-destinations, Costa Rica only has national roads that are in really poor condition and also overall public-transport system is underdeveloped. UK on the contrary has highly developed public-transport systems with buses, underground trains and airports. Even though the rate of crime is low in both the countries, UK has an impressive-taskforce that is absent in case of Costa Rica. UK in terms of environmental protection is ranked at the ninth place while on the other hand, Costa Rica is ranked at the fifth place in world-wide rankings. This difference is really small and insignificant.

Thus it can be said that the developed-countries like UK are having really unique-features for their tourist-destinations that appeals to both the international as well as the domestic tourists in comparison to features of the developing nations (Cooper et al, 2005).

3.2 Evaluation of how the characteristics of a tourist-destination affect its appeal.

While comparing the different characteristics of a particular tourist destination that affects its appeal to the visiting tourist, the following factors needs to be properly considered:

• Sales promotion and publicity is the most vital function that can have both a highly positive as well as highly negative impact on tourism-industry in the country. For instance, the 2012 Olympic coverage had a really positive impact on the London tourism industry.
• Rate of Crime is another important factor that decides the tourist inflow in the current times. UK is amongst one of the safest country when it comes to crime as it has a real low crime rate. However, pick-pockets do target the tourists at some places like the Oxford Street, Bournemouth Resort, Brighton Resort, etc.
• To enhance the product life-cycle in the UK, there is a really high-level of involvement present for the authorities so as to provide much better services to the tourists with the help of maps, information centres, current locations, etc. (World Trade Organisation, 2012).
• Several economic elements can also put a really high negative-impact on the tourism industry of the UK as ever-increasing cost of infrastructure, adverse exchange rates and increasing inflation can gradually reduce their net investment in some key areas like education and health and social care.
• Terrorist attacks, riots and political instability are also among major threats in the UK that may lead to the low level growth of the tourism industry.
• Over-commercialization for buildings and resorts in London may also negatively impact the tourism industry of the UK.

Therefore, it can be said that UK at present properly managing its appeal so as to attract a huge number of visitors from the whole world. UK can easily keep staying in the top 10 list for tourist destination world-wide by avoiding tourism leakage and enclave tourism (Yale University, 2012).

Task 4

4.1 Analysis of the issues which affect the tourist destination popularity.

There are various issues which affect the tourist destination popularity in the context of UK. Some of them are:

• Tourism-leakage has a high negative impact on the tourism industry as a whole. More than eighty percent of the revenue generated from tourism goes to the hotels and airlines and also adds to several local businesses. The average leakage of import in the UK is approximately 40% to 50% as all the services and goods demanded by the tourism industry are not easily available within the UK i.e. the host country.
• Enclave tourism is yet another factor that gradually affects the tourism industry of the UK as all the inclusive-packages negatively impacts the local businesses like pubs, coffee and bar shops. These type of packages that are designed for the tourists would become highly expensive especially for the tourist in UK.
• Adverse exchange rates and increasing inflation affects the UK tourism industry negatively as the strong pound makes the foreign currencies lower than its value and hence a low amount of spending would generally be made by the international tourists visiting the UK.
• All forms of social riots leads to total political instability. In the year 2011, social riots in London caused as a result of the global financial crisis led to a really bad image formation of London among the potential tourists for the UK (Hall, 2012).
• In the year 2011 and 2005, there were increasing tourism-attacks in the UK. Such types of tourism attacks pose a threat to the safety of the tourists in the UK and reduces the probability of the tourist arrival in the UK.
• Environmental impact is also made by the tourism industry. The high tourist inflow results in an ever increasing rate of pollution. It has been observed in London that during the peak time there is a high level emission of carbon dioxide that can affect the environment negatively in a variety of ways.
• Huge investment in infrastructure like the development of the supporting infrastructure for the growth of tourism, maintenance and repair of the historic monuments have significant impact on the investment policy of the government on some other important areas like education and health (Karanasios & Burgess, 2008).

Despite of the above mentioned problems, UK has still managed to attract domestic and international tourists in an efficient manner because of which, today there is a high inflow of tourists from all parts of the world. Furthermore, the UK government needs to focus on the above factors to make the appeal of the UK as the top tourist-destination in the world which would also lead to an increment of the number of tourists visiting UK.

4.2 Potential for responsible tourism in order to enhance the host-community at the world-wide tourist destination selected.

In responsible-tourism activities, it’s very important to reduce the harmful impacts of the tourism industry on the economy, social life and culture so that the benefits that are sought through the tourism-industry can be increased. It is important to note that one out of every twelve people is indirectly or directly employed with the tourism industry and such impacts of the tourism-industry are generally sustainable in nature. Many heritage-organizations are funded mainly through the tourism-industry that leads to the preservation of the natural and cultural heritage of a country (Lawton & Weaver, 2006). The role of responsible-tourism in London is primarily to make a positive impact on the economy thereby helping to develop the local businesses with higher purchases and creating more opportunities for employment.

United world-tourism organizations promote the tourism industry as an instrument to help reduce poverty and also impose global-ethics in the tourism-industry. Responsible tourism in the UK primarily focuses on some emerging issues in the tourism industry like drugs, child-sex tourism, etc. Eco-tourism is also another responsible-tourism. Some of the main factors that need to focus in eco-tourism include building environmental awareness, positive-experience for the tourists, extending financial-benefits and promoting financial-support for conservation to the local community. United Kingdom has 28 natural and cultural UNESCO World heritage sites that are really committed towards responsible-tourism in the country.

Even though United Kingdom is heading towards responsible-tourism, there is still a need to promote its existing natural beauty and also maintain proper discipline in the tourism-industry so that the ethics are sustained in tourism that would eventually lead to a high level of responsibility being firmly imposed in the UK tourism industry.

Conclusion

In this UK Tourist Destinations Assignment, four tasks have been critically analysed. In the 1^st task it has been observed that in terms of revenue, United States of America is the first tourist-destination while France is the prime tourist-destination that tops the number of tourists visited annually. Further the future of tourism trend has been studied in the UK by analysing the increasing inflow of tourists in the UK and comparing it with the tourist inflow in different cities of UK. London is found to be the major source of inflow of tourists in the UK because of its cultural and heritage significance. In the second task, cultural, physical and environmental factors for two different tourist-destinations were analysed and it is observed that these factors were much more supporting in developed countries like the UK than the developing countries like India or Costa Rica. In the third task the appeal for the tourist destination in the UK and the factors that affects those appeals is critically analysed. In the final and the fourth task, an analysis is made on the different issues that affect the UK tourism, like social, political and economic factors. The role of the tourism-industry in the UK to promote responsible-tourism activities are understood wherein it is observed that the UK promotes responsible-tourism through developing several organizations and preventing emerging issues in tourism-industry like drugs and child sex tourism. To conclude, the tourist-destination management is a very important task and the stake-holders that are directly or indirectly involved in the tourism-industry should manage the tourist-destination suitably in order to develop its appeal to both the domestic as well as international tourists (Harris, 2000).

References

"2014 Tourism Highlights" (PDF). World Tourism Organization. 2013. Retrieved 13 June 2014.
"Towns & Cities: VisitBritain Corporate Site". VisitBritain. Retrieved 27 March 2015.
Beaver, Allan (2002). A Dictionary of Travel and Tourism Terminology. Wallingford: CAB International. p. 313. ISBN 0-85199-582-9. OCLC 301675778.
Butler, R.W & Pearce, D.G 1999, Contemporary Issues in Tourism Development, Routledge, Fetter Lane, London, pp.232-257