Lesson 1: Destination Industries

"Travel early and travel often. Live abroad, if you can." Tom Freston

Above all, remember that tourism is a business. Like any business, it must be managed for sustainability, longevity, and profit. Countries, regions, and cities have their own umbrella tourism destination management organization. These are great starting points for travellers contemplating their next adventures.

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Part 2

The tourism industry is divided into various industries.

Check out four tourism industries tourists use to influence their travel choices.

Every region and country has major and minor attractions to attract visitors and generate tourism revenue. Attractions include historic sites, heritage homes, museums, halls of fame, art galleries, botanical gardens, zoos, water parks, amusement parks, casinos, and cultural attractions. Many attractions are educational in nature, however, others are solely for entertainment.

Due to local climate conditions, many outdoor attractions are seasonal while indoor attractions operate year round.

All attractions, no matter what the size, need a variety of staff with duties ranging from selling food and souvenirs, marketing the attraction, maintaining the facility, to managing the operation.

The adventure tourism industry is growing fast. More specific than the recreation and entertainment industry, it has many facets in common. The growing trend has surfaced where clients request active, recreational experiences or travel adventures where they learn about nature or culture. Since these adventure activities mean the tourist also requires transport, hotel rooms, and restaurants, other tourism sectors benefit. The major areas for Canada within this sector are outdoor adventure, ecotourism, ski resorts, golf, parks and marine adventures.

Recreation is the pursuit of leisure activities during a person's spare time and can include vastly different activities such as golf, painting, sport fishing, sightseeing, hiking, cooking or music. Recreational tourism hones in on these interests to create a similar activity, eg., a golf holiday or hiking trip.

Within the tourism industry, the recreation and tourism industry has projections to be the fastest growing tourism industry and offers unique work and career opportunities. This is one of the largest tourism industries and it is very diverse, sometimes overlapping with other sectors.

The majority of employers in the recreation and entertainment industry are small businesses, however, the last few years have shown very small businesses decreasing as mid-sized and large businesses increase.

Events and conferences contribute money to local communities. Not only do travellers spend money at the event or conference itself, but spin-off dollars are also spent on everything from accommodations to souvenirs. Travellers need transportation to and from the event or conference site, as well as food and beverage. Conferences often have social events or entertainment planned, so tourism dollars are spent on tickets, admissions, parking, beverage, and food.

Special events are just informal meetings of like-minded tourists. Think of a music festival. Money is generated from ticket sales but also, parking, food and beverage sales and, of course, souvenirs. On the other side, expenses include the cost of the music talent, physical stage construction, advertising, security, and event space rental. This spending is transferred from the traveller to the local economy.

The planning and organizing of any special event or conference can be complex and demanding. All facets need to be coordinated so that the event will run efficiently and profitably. Event planners are a growing industry to assist in this endeavour.