A quick history of tourism

To access the lastest release of the UNWTO on sustainable tourism click here. It talks about the further liberalization of tourism and how it releates to sustainability.

Here is the link to one of the latest campaigns of the UNWTO for tourism and its sustainability. Check out the video, the flyer, and the pdf presentation (the video may not work if you do not have the proper video player).

1. How tourism started
2. Figures of tourism development
3. How the world started to care about the environment
4. The beginning of the notion of sustainability

Tourism started with pilgrimage in the medieval times, when people would travel far away from their homes for an extended period of time, ranging from a few weeks to months or sometimes years. It became very fancy with what was called the "Grand Tour" (meaning the long journey in french) as youngsters from high classes of the British society, like Lord Byron or Stendhal, would travel all around Europe, and even farther, in an attempt to perfect their education. Health tourism became also fashionable, and places like Nice, on the French Riviera, started to be very famous.

Since over a century, we now talk about "mass tourism" which was allowed by a bundle of factors, mainly the access to leisure time by a greater amount of people with the creation of paid vacations, and the development of transportation technologies, with the addition of the transportation deregulation in the late 1970's.

An example of mass tourism : people starring at the fountain of Trevi in Rome, Italy.

Tourism is a very complicated activity to measure. If we just take a look at the definition of tourism according to the WTO, it is easy to see some of its flaws : "The activities of persons traveling to and staying in places outside their usual environment for not more than one consecutive year for leisure, business, and other purposes". For instance, I, as a French exchange student, am considered as a tourist quietly visiting Mount Holyoke College for a few months, regarding to this definition. It is not that I do not enjoy the peaceful environment of this wonderful institution, but I would certainly dislike to be called a "tourist" by my fellow classmates !

However, finding a better definition is hard work, and I am pretty sure that the UNWTO has tried, or may be still trying, to come up with a more accurate one. Either international travelers are left out of the statistics, or locals are included in them.

Here is a table published by the UNWTO in 1993 showing the evolution of the arrivals of international travelers. We can see how the amount was roughly multiplied by 28 in 50 years, whereas during the same period of time, the world population increased from 2.56 to 6.07 billions, not even multiplying by 2.5 - hopefully (statistics on world population US Census Bureau).

The first Earth Summit took place in 1972 in Stockholm. It was the first time that the international community officialy acknowledged that economic and demographic growth could be endless, whereas the planet and its ressources have limits.

The second Earth Summit, and the one everyody usually remembers, was in Rio in 1992. People had started to worry more and more, and this conference emphasized the necessity to reduce the emissions of green house gazes.

The third Earth Summit was held in Johannesburg in 2002 (Rio + 10). Its main theme was sustainable development and how it has to be linked to the alleviation of poverty.

These summits are supposed to be held every ten years. In 1982, people gathered in Nairobi but the political and military context of the time, coupled with the evident lack of interest from the US and its President Regan, undermined its impact. It is not even recorded as an official summit.

Some of the first steps of sustainable tourism were for instance the creation of national parks in the West of the United States, places where nature can be protected and even sanctified. Yellowstone National Park was created in 1878 and Yosemite National Park in 1880.

Sustainable tourism is a notion that dates back to 1987 and the Brundtland Report by the World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED) accessible here. The definition of sustainable development of the WCED is as follows : "progress that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of the future generations to meet their own needs". The three pillars of sustainable development are :

Sustainable development then became a buzzword in the 1990's. In 1992, at the Rio Earth Summit, the UNWTO started to intensively promote sustainable tourism. In April 1995, the UNWTO and the UNESCO help the World Conference on Sustainable Tourism, and adopted the charter for sustainable tourism, which development is "any form of development, provision or amenities, or tourist activity that emphasizes respect for and long-term preservation of natural, cultural, and social resources and makes a positive and equitable contribution to the economic development and fulfillment of people living, working, or staying in these areas".

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