“Tours and travel first leave you speechless, and then turn you into a storyteller.” Tourism is a beautiful experience and can be simply defined as a trip for pleasure. However, the deeper meaning for tourism can be found below:
Meaning
Tourism is the act of travel for mainly relaxation and purposes. World Tourism Organization defines tourists as the people who “travel to and stay in places outside their usual environment for not more than one consecutive year for leisure, business, recreation and other purposes not related to the exercise of an activity remunerated from within the place visited.”
Tourism can be of several types. Domestic tourism involves residents of the same country making visits in their own country at various places. Inbound tourism is the one when residents of other country visit your country. Outbound tourism is when residents of our country visit another country.
Tourism is not only a leisure and fun activity. Rather, it is also the industry which draws, accommodates and entertains tourists and helps generate income for the country. Tourism opportune us to explore new culture, meet new people and do fun and adventure at different places.
Also read: Short Paragraph on Tourism
Importance of Tourism
- Economic Progress – The tourism industry aids and supports the foreign exchange reserves. It benefits our country in generating foreign currency. Every year a large number of tourists visit India and other places. They visit places; stay and shop in our country. All this contributes to a significant amount of foreign currency generation. Despite global recession, Indian tourism grew 6.9 % to approximately $42 billion in the year 2010.
- Source of Income – Tourism is a continual source of income for the public & private income. The government charges various forms of tax that is called government revenue. The income generated through these taxes is the public income. The profit earned by a seller, by selling items like local artifacts, handicraft items, etc, to the tourists is called private income. Tourism also helps in employment generation. It created jobs specifically in hotel industry, hospitality industry, service sector, entertainment and transportation industry.
- Development of Infrastructure – Have you ever noticed how the look and status of a place changes when it is declared a tourist place? Actually, tourism aids and encourages infrastructure development by making way for dams, roads, connectivity, airport improvements, and any other activity that helps a tourist in visiting a place in a much better way!
- Societal Progress – Tourism is a wonderful method for cultural exchange. It also encourages societal progress as tourists learn to show respect, tolerance and love for each other when they visit new places.
- Cultural Heritage - Tourism helps explain beauty, art, history and culture of our country. Different people visiting any country take beautiful cultural concepts along with them and spread those concepts to others while visiting other places of the world. Similarly, the local skills, languages and art get a wide exposure through tourism.
Also read: Importance of Tourism in India
Conclusion: Tourism attracts and invites numerous visitors across the world to come and visit a country. It also helps in the economic progress of a country and generates employment too. Tourism is also a wonderful method for cultural exchange! Hence, every country should encourage tourism as much as possible because tourism lets us explore and discover how beautiful this world is!
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