Tourist Destination

Questions: 1. Analyze issues that affects the popularity of tourist destinations.2. Discuss the potential for responsible tourism to enhance the host community. Answers: 1. Analyze issues that affects the popularity of tourist destinations The cause and effect in the relationship of tourism is difficult and complex to identify. The issues on tourist destinations differ according to the place. The issues can differ according to the place; it can be the affect of development issue or environmental issue. It can also impact the culture and communities of the organization. Nepal has taken as a tourist spot so analyze the issues associated with it. Nepal, which was once the most attractive tourist spot, is affected because of reasons like lack of infrastructure development, environmental problem, and lack of publicity and safety facilities for the tourist. Further the country gets involved in internal conflict (Briassoulis and Van der Straaten 2013). Lack of infrastructure development- Lack of infrastructure contributed to affect the country to a considerable amount. Nepal has infrastructure issues like transportation and communication problem. Electricity is also a major issue for the country. Failure to match the demand of the tourist along with the electricity problems adversely affects the tourists of Nepal. Nepal is a landlocked country with China from the North and India from the south. The total road network and density are low and only 435 of the population of their country can access to all-weather roads. Moreover the capital of the country Kathmandu is considered as one of the seismically unstable Himalayas. The tourist of the country faces lack of drinking water within the economy. Environmental issue- Nepal has various environmental problems like loss of forests, forest degradation, soil erosion, air and water pollution and unmanaged solid waste. Trekking is the most attractive tourist activity of Nepal. The growth of it curbed because of the environmental problems like landslides. The earthquake of 2015 has affected the tourist to a considerable amount. Further the forest land declined from 30% to 22% in relation with the total area. The air and water is the most significant environmental problems in Nepal. The tourist mostly prefers Nepal because of participating in the activities like rock climbing, Bungee Jumping but people preferring o shift o other countries like India because of its major environmental problems (Holden 2016). Lack of publicity and safety- publicity makes a country more attractive and enables to gather tourists. However, the lack of it can affect negativity to the tourists. Bangkok and Malaysia is an example of it. The publicity attracts more tourists from all over the world (Tarlow 2014). However, Nepal does not incur much cost in publicity. It enables the tourist to visit other places as most of them gets ignore about the activities and scenetic beauty of the country. Safety is another concern for all tourists. Besides landslides and earthquake the country is affected by theft in the tourist sites and in hotel rooms. Internal conflict- Internal conflicts in a country makes people threaten for visiting the country. The feeling of security is most important for a tourist (Sharpley and Telfer 2014). However Maoists intervention in Nepal threatens the tourist to a considerable amount. The publications in various journals and articles hold the government responsible for not managing the crisis of the tourism. The internal conflict gave birth to loss in the tourism sectors of Nepal. 2. Discuss the potential for responsible tourism to enhance the host community Nepal has been taken as an example of tourist destination to better understanding about the responsible tourism. The part enhances the responsible tourism focusing on Nepal. Responsible tourism is the principles of the social and the economic justices and respect towards the environment and its culture. It helps to recognize the centrality of the host community and develop a sustainable and responsible tourism. It helps to create a positive interaction between the tourist industry, local communities and travelers (Sharpley 2014). It helps the operators to grow their business providing benefits in terms of social and economic to local communities and enables to respect the environment. The main form of responsible tourism is to address the environmental and the social concern through its policies and practice. The trek and expeditions of Nepal contributes in the responsibly tourism. Nepal has place porter welfare the top priorities. Nepal complies with the International Porter Protect ion Guidelines (Mihalic 2014). Further a member of Kathmandu Environmental Education project is a non-profit organization works for ecological and cultural prosperity of Nepal. The country further embraces the responsible tourism through encouraging the tourist to buy local products. The country further maintains the environmental and cultural ecology so that it does not get hampered. The flood in the eastern Nepal the country enables to take initiatives and distribute cloths, necessary items and tents to the victims. Responsible tourism helps to initiate benefits of tourism to local people and the places. It enables to make the place better to live and for the people to visit. The Cape Town declaration recognizes the Responsible Tourism through its variety forms. It characterized to minimize the negative impacts of economic, social and environmental. It imitates to enable economic benefits for the local people and enhance the host community. It also includes the local people in the decision that affect their life and changes in positive manner (Leslie 2012). It encourages to preserve the natural and cultural heritage of the country and maintain diversify of the world. It provides enjoyable experience for the tourists through its connections with the local people and understanding of the local culture, social and environmental issue. It further concentrates to give access for the people with disabilities and disadvantaged. It contributes culturally sensitive and engaging respect between the touris ts and the hosts to initiate pride and confidence. The benefits can initiate from the responsible tourism in economic benefits, soci-cultural benefits and environmental benefits. Economic Benefit- It enables to provide jobs in terms of tour guides or hotel housekeeping. Indirect employment can also initiate through agriculture, food, production and retail sectors (Sharpley 2014). Social Benefits- It can bring sense of pride and identity to the community especially in the rural and mountains areas of under developed countries. It also helps to preserve the traditions which might be risk in some countries if wouldnt preserve (Raviv et al. 2013). Environmental benefits- It provides financial support to secure their ecosystem and manage the natural resource. It enables to add values to the local business. Reference List: Briassoulis, H. and Van der Straaten, J. eds., 2013.Tourism and the environment: regional, economic, cultural and policy issues(Vol. 6). Springer Science Business Media. Holden, A., 2016.Environment and tourism. Routledge. Tarlow, P., 2014.Tourism security: strategies for effectively managing travel risk and safety. Elsevier. Sharpley, R. and Telfer, D.J. eds., 2014.Tourism and development: concepts and issues(Vol. 63). Channel View Publications. Sharpley, R., 2014. Teaching responsible tourism.The Routledge handbook of tourism and hospitality education, pp.171-184. Mihalic, T., 2014. Sustainable-responsible tourism discourseTowards responsustabletourism.Journal of Cleaner Production,30, p.1e10. Leslie, D. ed., 2012.Responsible tourism: Concepts, theory and practice. CABI. Raviv, C., Becken, S. and Hughey, K.F., 2013. Exploring values, drivers, and barriers as antecedents of implementing responsible tourism.Journal of Hospitality Tourism Research, p.1096348013491607.