Comprehensive Notes on Travel and Tourism

Unit 1: Changing Nature of Travel and Tourism

The travel and tourism industry encompasses all businesses catering to tourist needs. It's evolving due to shifts in customer preferences.

Topic 1: Reasons for People Travel

Factors increasing travel:

• Increased transportation availability
• Longer holidays
• Greater affordability

Factors limiting travel:

• Disease
• Disasters
• War or terrorism

Leisure Tourism

Tourists seek attractions, activities, and a break from routine. Types include:

• Nature and Adventure Tourism: Nature tourists visit natural environments like mountains, lakes, and marine areas, while adventure tourists participate in challenging activities such as rock climbing, white-water rafting and scuba diving.
• Sports Tourism: Involves participating in, competing in, or spectating sports.
• Health and Wellbeing Tourism: Includes activities like jogging or spa treatments for health and wellness.
• Culture Tourism: Travel to experience traditions, art, and architecture.
• Sightseeing Tourism: Visiting famous or beautiful sights, natural or man-made. Social media has popularized this, sharing images and selfies quickly.
• Special Interest Tourism: Enjoying hobbies or pastimes like painting or cooking on a leisure trip.

Business / MICE Tourism

Work-related travel, often summarized as MICE:

• M - Meetings: With colleagues or customers. Hotels may offer meeting rooms and packages.
• I - Incentives: Rewards for excellent work performance.
• C - Conferences / Convention: Large meetings for exchanging information.
• E - Exhibitions / Trade Events: Display events for travel and tourism organizations to showcase products and services.

VFR (Visiting Friends and Relatives)

Increased by:

• Improved transportation
• More disposable income
• More time off work
• More family/friends living away from home

VFR tourists consume transportation, accommodation, and catering services.

Other Types of Tourism

• Medical Tourism: Seeking treatment for medical conditions. Differs from Health and Wellbeing Tourism as it addresses a medical condition needing treatment.
• Religious Tourism: Pilgrimages based on spiritual beliefs.
• Legal Tourism: Travel for legal reasons such as court appearance.

Topic 2: Types of Tourism

• Domestic Tourism: Visiting destinations within one's home country.
• Inbound Tourism: Tourists traveling abroad to your home country.
• Outbound Tourism: Tourists traveling away from their home country.
• Mass Tourism: Large numbers traveling to popular destinations, often through packaged tourism, which can lead to overcrowding, environmental issues, and displacement of local populations.
• Packaged Tourism: Organized by travel and tourism businesses, combining transportation and accommodation.
  • All-Inclusive Packages: Include travel, accommodation, and catering.
  • Mass-Market Packages: Sold in bulk, potentially contributing to mass tourism.
  • Special Interest: Caters to niche interests or hobbies.
  • Dynamic Packages: Customized packages chosen by customers.
• Specialist Tourism: Based on specific interests, ranging from low-cost to luxurious.
  *Photography and Film Trips
  *Painting and Cooking Courses
  *Cultural and Adventure Tourism are extremely popular
• Unpackaged Tourism: Independent travel involving separate arrangements for travel, accommodation, and activities.
• Short-Haul Tourism: Flights less than three hours. (e.g. Miami to Atlanta)
• Long-haul Tourism: Flights more than six hours. (e.g. Miami to London)
• Independent Travel: Self-arranged tourism experiences, often using websites or apps.
• Sustainable Tourism: Minimizing negative impacts and maximizing benefits to the environment and local people.
  • Environmentally sustainable tourism (Ecotourism and Responsible Tourism) causes the least possible negative impact on the environment
  • Socially sustainable tourism conserves local people’s ways of life into the future.
  • Economically sustainable tourism brings jobs and money to destinations.

Topic 3: The Changing Industry’s Structure

Components of the Industry

• Accommodation and Catering:
  • Hotels
  • Guest Houses
  • B&Bs
  • Hostels
  • Homestays
  • Camping
  • Serviced Apartments
  • Restaurants, Cafes, Street vendors and Takeaways
• Travel Agents and Tour Operators:
  • Travel agents sell tourism products and services.
  • Tour operators create holiday packages.
• Transport Providers: Offer various transportation types.
  • Road Transport: Car hire, Taxi, Luxury Coach, Buses
  • Rail Transport: Train companies, Tram operators, MRT and Underground operators
  • Water Transport: Ferry, Cruise ship, Water taxi, Gondola, Barge and Canoe operators
  • Air Transport: Schedule and Charter flights, Low-Cost, Long/Short haul flights
• Visitor Attractions: Natural sceneries to built attractions.
  • Natural Attractions: Scenery for sightseeing such as waterfalls and mountain valleys.
  • Built Attractions: Museums, art galleries, and historic monuments.
• Ancillary Services: Additional services beyond travel, accommodation, and attractions.
  • Tour agents / Guided tours
  • Currency exchange
  • Car / Bike Hire.

Changes in the Industry

• Integration: Components are becoming more integrated.
  • Vertical Integration: Merging of businesses from different components.
  • Horizontal Integration: Merging of businesses from the same component.
• The Rise of Independent Travel and Dynamic Packaging: Tour operators are providing accommodation, transport, and ancillary services online, which allows independent travelers to pack their own holiday. This is known as dynamic packaging.
• Increasing Sustainability Awareness: Sustainable tourism products and services are being provided more.
• Online Travel and Tourism Booking: Easier and more popular due to websites and social media.

Key Concepts

• Change and Development: Travel and tourism are constantly changing due to several reasons such as technology.
• Marketing and Management: Successfully marketing products and services to customers is the key to managing travel and tourism organizations.

Unit 2: Travel and Tourism Destinations

Topic 1: Types of Destinations

Destinations vary in size and are classified as:

• Resort Towns: Reliant on leisure tourism, including beach, seaside, skiing, and spa resorts.
• City Destinations: Attract leisure, business, VFR, and medical tourists
• Countryside Areas: National/nature parks and nature reserves for leisure tourists.
• Coastal and Island Destinations: Beach destinations, including marine reserves.
• Purpose-Built Resorts: Planned and built for tourism, such as theme parks and all-inclusive resorts.
  • Theme Parks: Major tourist attractions with many amusements and rides. They cover large areas and often provide accommodation and catering facilities such as hotels and restaurants.
  • All-inclusive Resorts: Destinations planned and built especially for tourism. They are large hotels on large sites with many facilities and services provided at a single price.

Topic 2: Appeals of Destinations to Differing Customers

Tourists choose destinations based on appeal, which can be limited by affordability, availability, and restrictions.

Elements of destination appeal:

• Accessibility: Ease of reaching destinations due to transport links and infrastructure (roads, airports, ports).

  • Accessibility is important for destination appeal as for a person with reduced mobility (PRMs). Increasingly, accessibility provision is made for people who have specific mobility needs.

• Built and Natural Attractions Surrounding area adding to the appeal.

  • Access to the internet and the rise of social media has allowed tourists to post photographs on social media, boosting awareness of attractions in less well-known and distant destinations.

  *Attraction that can switch between seasons can appeal to many tourists due to not being restricted during certain seasons.

• Sustainable Practices and Provisions: Ecotourism products and services appealing to responsible tourists.

  • These can be programs whether local tourism authorities inform tourists on how to care for the environment and for the culture of local people.

• Weather and Climate: Important factors known widely.

  • Online weather forecast makes it possible for tourists to make informed choices about where to go. This can be for summer beach holidays or other locations.

• Historical and Cultural Attractions: Local traditions, markets, language, arts, and music add to appeal for these attractions.

Other Elements

• Increase ease of access to, and sharing of, information using the internet and social media.
• Related greater demand for further away, different, newer destinations enabled by economic growth and social changes, such as increased leisure time.
• Increase desire to travel for sustainably and to behave more socially and economically responsibly in increasing numbers of ecotourism destinations.

Differing External Customer Types

External customers are tourists who use the products and services of a travel and tourism business and are not members of staff or otherwise part of the business. Types include:

• Families and Individuals

  • Individual tourists may belong to different age groups.

• Groups: School or college groups for educations purposes.

• Visitors with Language and Cultural Differences

• People with Specific Needs: Mobility, sensory, and dietary.

Topic 3: Changes in Travel Choices

Travel choices are changing, notably with more sustainable options. Types of travel includes:

• Air transport
• Water transport
• Overland transport using bridges or tunnels and road/rail.
  *Bridges, tunnel, and causeway connections are examples of fixed links – a connection or link between the rest of the country and/or connecting land.

Around Destinations

Tourists can choose to travel around destinations by:

• Road
• MRT, a type of rail transport used in some city destinations to transport large numbers of people easily, quickly, and cheaply.
• Water-based transport.

Key Concepts

• Customer Focus: The appeal of destinations is what attracts tourists

Unit 3: Trends in Travel and Tourism

Topic 1: Changing Global Tourism Flows

• Tourism flows are the movement of tourists between their residence and destinations.
• Tourists move from tourism-generating areas to tourism-receiving areas.
• The scale of tourism flow between places is measured in number of tourists.

Global tourism flows are still changing through:

• Long-haul flights and destinations enable tourists to travel further and in larger numbers to tourist-receiving areas.
• Inland tourism-receiving areas are developing more. City destinations have grown in popularity with the development of budget short-haul air flights. Rural tourism-receiving areas have become more accessible and appeal to a growing number of economists.

Numbers of Tourists

• Until COVID-19, tourism flow had been increasing since the late 20th century.
• Overtourism occurs when there are too many tourists in a destination, causing greater risk to a destination’s environment and causing difficulties for local people.

Factors Affecting Global Tourism Flows

Factors that affect global tourism flow change are:

• Economic Changes
  • Levels of Disposable Income and Levels of Employment and Unemployment employment and unemployment rates in tourism-generating areas affect levels of disposable income as the employed have more money than the unemployed.
  • Measures of National Economic Strength or Weakness, such as GDP (Gross Domestic Product GDP per capita means gross domestic product per person and is calculated by dividing a country’s gross domestic product by its population. This enables the relative economic wealth of countries’ populations to be compared.
  • Currency Exchange Rates Tourists are more likely to visit destinations that where tourism products and services are cheaper, especially when their own currency has a high value in another location.
  • Government Investment Government investments are money that national and local governments spend on developing their countries and areas.
  • Infrastructural Developments Developments in the infrastructure of tourism-receiving and tourism-generating areas improve accessibility and increase tourism flow.
• Social and Demographic Changes
  • Age Profiles The age profile of a country is the percentage of the population that is at certain ages.
  • Family Structures Family and household structure changes affect tourism flow as tourism-generating areas as declining birth rates have increasingly smaller families.
  • Attitudes to Tourism Impacts and Sustainability Awareness People are increasingly more likely to want to sustainably manage travel and tourism because of impacts on the environment and on the economic and social wellbeing of people who live in tourism-receiving area destinations.
• Health and Security Issues
• Disease Epidemic as seen with COVID-19 globally and the Ebola Virus outbreak.
  • Levels of Pollution and Sustainable Management Tourists are more likely to choose to visit destinations perceived as cleaner, greener, and more sustainably managed.
  • Disasters Events like earthquakes and oil spills, especially when reported by the media, cause leisure tourists to worry that their holidays will be disrupted and less enjoyable.
    *Levels of Social and Political Unrest, Crime, and Terrorism Tourism flows to more rigidly controlled destinations may be reduced, but greater levels of control can build tourist confidence in the safety.
• Technological Advances
  *Developing Forms of Transport: Increases the numbers of people travelling to destinations, especially if its sustainable forms of transport tourism.
  *ICT (Information and Communication Technology) is used to store, send, and share information and have helped increase tourism flow
  *Faster broadband internet and new cell phone networks have increased and quickened tourists’ access to information about destinations as well as ability to book travel online.
  *ICT advances have allowed booking travel to be easier and quicker through real-time reservations, which allow bookings to be immediately made without a confirmation wait.
  *Ticketless travel is travelling without paper tickets, allowing travel to be done through smartphone applications by digitally storing an electronic e-ticket confirmation.
  *Social Media platforms have increased tourism flows to favorably reviewed destinations.
  *Increased use of biometric passports in border control has eased and quickened tourist movements through airports, ports, and borders between countries.

Topic 2: The Growth of Sustainable Tourism

Types of Sustainability

• Environmental Sustainability: The ability to sustain or conserve the environment in the future. Ways to manage this is through the 3Rs of Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle.

*Local governments can manage this by limiting visitor numbers to the rainforests to protect future biodiversity.
*Ecotourism: Tourists staying overnight in an ecolodges would be an example of ecotourists as ecohotels may provide locally produced meals, recycle waste, and generate its own electricity.

• Social Sustainability: The ability to sustain or conserve people’s ways of life in the future.
  *Responsible Tourism: Sustainable tourism behavior involving tourists and travel and tourism providers behaving respectfully towards the natural environment and towards local people in a destination.
• Economic Sustainability: The ability to sustain or conserve destination economies.
  *Economic leakage is when money that has come into a country from tourism leaves the country again and the destination country may not benefit from the leaked money abroad.

Reasons for the Growth of Sustainable Tourism

Environmental Impacts

• Positive Tourism Impacts: Conserving the environment and wildlife.
• Negative Tourism Impacts: air, water, and noise pollution from various transportations sources.

Social Impacts

• Positive Tourism Impacts: Tourism helps preserve the traditional customs and crafts of destinations.

• Negative Tourism Impacts: Conflict between tourists and the host community and damage to artifacts and heritage sites.

Economic Impacts

• Positive Tourism Impacts: Tourism brings jobs and money to destinations that allows local travel and tourism organizations to make profits, which can be invested and grow bigger.
• Negative Tourism Impacts: Economic and Multiplier Leakage, when money from travel and tourism comes into a country and then leaves instead of staying in the local economy.

Customers’ Values and Attitudes

• Since climate change awareness has grown, people are more aware of the need to be environmentally aware and protective. This has persuaded people to change their habits in a more sustainable direction.
• Social media has enabled people to express and share their raised awareness of sustainability. Increased use increased sustainability awareness, including the need for social and economic sustainability.

Travel and Tourism Providers Values and Attitudes

• Providers from all travel and tourism industry components have responded to increased demands for sustainable travel and tourism products and services.
• Providers such as tour operators are familiar with destination communities and are often aware of tourism’s positive and negative impacts.

Governments and Tourism Authorities Values and Attitudes

One way has been to organize education and training programs.

Education/Training Programs

Travel and tourism providers want to encourage sustainable practices, so they organize staff training programs. Staff who have been trained in sustainable and responsible tourism influence customers who are open to being more responsible tourists by guiding visitors on how to behave more sustainably when visiting local communities.

Availability and Promotion of Sustainable Tourism Products and Services

Travel and tourism organizations now provide more sustainable tourism products and services than in previous years as an ongoing trend.

Increased Accessibility of Natural/Wild/Remote Areas

Destinations that were rarely visited because of poor accessibility have become easier to reach in recent years.

Growth of Independent Travel and Dynamic Packaging

Increased internet access and the rise of social media have led to growth of dynamic packaging and more independent travel.

Media Influence

Influence from media such as television, film, magazines, and newspapers, and online and social media has helped independent travel and dynamic packaging to grow

Topic 3: Sustainable Tourism in Practice

Ecotourism Products and Services

• Eco-tours are holidays in the natural environment managed to allow ecotourists to visit without causing damage.
• Eco-friendly accommodation is provided for ecotourists to visit and stay in the natural environment without negative impact
• Ecotourism activities satisfy ecotourists’ wants and includes viewing and photographing wildlife, visiting local communities and adventure fun.

Responsible and Ethical Tourism Behaviors and Practices

Respect for the environment and local culture can be shown by ecotourists visiting local community villages, events, and markets respectfully

Sustainably Managing Tourism Facilities

• Facilities can be sustainably managed by: reducing over-consumption and waste of resources and reusing resources or recycling waste.

Impacts and Attitudes

There can be positive and negative attitudes to Sustainable Tourism

Key Concepts

• Global and Growing The COVID-19 pandemic led to a notable change in the previous continuous growth of tourist numbers.
• Change and Development: Travel and tourism change because of the several factors that affect it.
• Sustainability and Responsibility Ecotourism and responsible tourism are types of sustainable tourism.
• Marketing and Management The economic sustainability of destinations depends upon the successful marketing of available tourism products and services.

Unit 4: Customer Service in Travel and Tourism

Topic 1: How Organizations Serve Customers Wants and Needs

External Customers

External customers use products and services of a travel and tourism business and are not members of staff or otherwise part of the business. This is:

• Families and individuals – including people from different age groups
• Groups – including educational groups.
• Visitors with language and cultural differences.
• Visitors with specific needs; mobility and accessibility, sensory, and dietary needs.

Internal Customers

Internal customers are individuals within a travel and tourism organization who receive customer service from the organization. This is:

• Members of staff working for a travel and tourism organization; for example, manager, front-desk receptionists, and restaurant waiting staff.
• Suppliers who contribute towards the external customer service provided by a travel and tourism organization; for example, an ancillary service supplier like a car-hire provides in a hotel.
• Staff of partner organizations, such as retail outlet staff at an airport.

Customer needs are not only regarding an external customer’s needs. Internal customer needs include:

• A safe working environment – all internal customers need a safe working where no risk or dinger are present to the health and wellbeing of staff working there
• Knowledge of procedures, routines, and performance standards for carrying out duties.
• Training appropriate to the job role.
• Motivation tools allow increased external customer service quality, the retainment of efficient and hard-working internal customers, attract and recruit inexperienced staff, as well as encourage teamwork

Topic 2: Importance of Quality Customer Service

For Travel and Tourism Organization

• An efficient workforce that serves customers well builds quality customer service.
• With increased customer satisfaction it creates a more loyal customer.

To Customers
Increased Pleasure

To External Customers

• A positive and fun experience for leisure tourists or relaxing and efficient for business tourists.
• A sense of satisfaction from being served well may create a feeling of good and that a return visit might be a promising idea
• Feeling of gaining value for their money spent.

To Internal Customers

• Increased job satisfaction fulfilled the feeling through serving customers well.
• Increased personal and professional development through working alongside and guided by other internal customers.
• The sense of being part of an effective team brings pleasure and enjoyment to external customers.

Topic 3: Ways of Assessing Customer Service Quality

Setting Customer Service Standards

Benchmarking is where an organization identifies the best way of doing things in customer service delivery.

Performance Management and Appraisal

Performance management is the communication between staff members and supervisor where they provide feedback to the staff member on job performance.

Customer Feedback

You can assess customer feedback for face-to-face interaction and through market research techniques.

Market Research Techniques:

Surveys is where a set of questions aimed at collecting quantitative data about travel and tourism markets may be used: These are done online on paper and be contacted by either telephone, email, on a website if online or in waiting areas and lobbies if on paper.

Mystery Shoppers are evaluated by members of staff but are not known: These mystery shoppers perform pre-set tasks, such as asking about a specified product.

Focus Groups may be used to collect information about the acceptability and usability of new or re-launched products or services or reactions to a current marketing campaign.

Supervisors and managers may do observed interactions where they observe interactions between customer service staff and customers: This allows a travel and tourism organization to collect information about the quality of customer service delivery and provide and discuss feedback with staff members.

Key Concepts

• Customer Focus: All travel and tourism organizations serve customers.