mass tourism

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Mass tourism in the city of Mar del Plata on the Argentine Atlantic coast
Tourists look at elephants in Sri Lanka
Mass tourism at Mont Saint-Michel (Northern France)

Under mass tourism is understood in tourism a large number of travelers on a specific destination .

General

Mass tourism arises equally through package tours and individual trips , because a large number of travelers opt for the same travel destination. From an economic point of view, mass tourism shows itself in the high seasonal demand for certain travel destinations and in correspondingly high hotel capacities (large hotels) in the target areas. Most of the time, mass tourism is characterized by the fact that there are more tourists than the local population in certain places or regions . Mallorca recorded a total of 10.3 million tourists in 2017, but only 813,729 permanent residents live here. An extreme example is Hallstatt in the Salzkammergut , whose 778 inhabitants face around 2000 mainly Asian day tourists every day .

The fact that the supply is sometimes less than the demand is shown by overbooking for air travel or hotels . The travel law , which also regulates overbooking, arose not least from the emergence of mass tourism, which developed into an important economic factor in Germany , so that the legislature felt compelled to consider the travel contract , which was not previously regulated by law, as an independent type of contract. The travel contract has therefore been regulated in Section 651a (1) BGB since January 1979 .

The travel destinations affected are particularly seaside resorts , for example on the European and especially Spanish Mediterranean coasts and the South American coasts, and ski areas , especially in the Central Alps . But also classic cultural travel destinations are places of mass tourism; Examples are Venice or the Eiffel Tower . Especially at the seaside resorts, mass tourism arises mainly from package travelers, as the professional organization associated with it makes it easier to accommodate large numbers of tourists in a small area compared to individual tourism.

Castles on the beach in Benidorm , Spain

Holiday resorts that primarily consist of large hotel buildings, in bathing resorts such as ski areas around the world, are colloquially also disparagingly referred to as bed castles (see problem of cold beds ).

The Mediterranean is the most important travel destination in the world, with more than 220 million holidaymakers visiting this region every year. It is estimated that the number of vacationers in this area will grow to around 350 million by 2020. A total of around 700 million people worldwide go on trips abroad every year. Where mass tourism from different countries of origin meets, a pattern of places often forms, each dominated by a language group, for example on Mallorca or the Canary Islands .

history

As early as 1837 Heinrich Wenzel compared the emerging mass tourism with a swarm of locusts when he described the mass of English people who “cross the Rhine, Switzerland and Italy”. The first package tour was the train journey for 570 English workers from Leicester to Loughborough , organized by the Baptist preacher Thomas Cook on July 5, 1841 , in which the cost of travel and meals were included in the price. By 1854 Cook expanded the travel business and made it his sole maintenance. Cook organized the first foreign package tour on May 17, 1861 for English workers by rail and ship to Paris . Cook's 7-day package tour consisted of prepaid coupons for travel, room and board. He propagated the rail journey for a mass of customers ( English "Railways for the Millions" ).

The business opened by Karl Riesel (1829–1889) in 1854 , which offered company trips , is considered to be the first travel agency . Motivated by Cook's successes, the brothers Carl (1833–1911) and Louis Stangen (1828–1876) founded travel agencies in Breslau and Berlin in 1863, where they introduced “separate courier trains” as the forerunners of today's special travel trains. In December 1869, Stangen organized the first tour group for the opening of the Suez Canal . In 1871, Ludwig Pietsch described the brothers as the “leaders of entire migrations”. From 1889, Hapag-Lloyd launched its first social trips with music steamers, and bathing and recreational trips in particular established themselves from around 1900. In Germany, trips organized by travel agencies increased in popularity around 1898. They advertised with package tours “à la Cook” and were based on the British market leader . Hapag-Lloyd acquired the Stangen travel agency in 1905. In 1907 there were already about 120 German travel agencies. However, their package tours could initially only be used by wealthy strata of the population.

At the beginning of the 1960s there were around 220 tour operators in Germany . In 1961, Josef Neckermann expanded the range of products offered by his mail order company Neckermann Versand KG to include “Vacation trips for everyone”. The first travel catalog , a six-page leaflet as a leaflet, appeared in 1963 as a supplement to his mail-order catalog. In cooperation with the Swiss holiday company Hotelplan , he offered air travel (with the Vickers Viscount 814) to Spain, Tunisia and Yugoslavia for the first time; almost 18,000 bookings were received. “Neckermann offered package tours as cheaply as lamps or housewares up to then. 14 days Mallorca for 338 DM. Flight. Hotel. Full board. Everything included. "

Today's mass tourism could only be made possible by these package tours, because tour operators were able to lower their travel prices thanks to their bargaining power for flight bookings or hotels , so that low-wage earners could also benefit from this form of travel. Large tour operators such as TUI AG , which has been active on the German travel market since October 1923, were founded for this purpose. In Germany in December 1978 a new travel law was created as a reaction to the constantly increasing package tourism , which the previously applicable regulations of the purchase contract law of the BGB were not up to. The previously unregulated travel contract became the most important type of contract in mass tourism.

economic aspects

In economics, mass tourism works like mass production ; the law of mass production also applies to it . Leading tour operators are large companies , in whose favor economies of scale work. This is because the production volume ( sales revenues ) can increase more rapidly than the production factors used (scale elasticity> 1). This results in falling marginal costs , which - at constant prices - lead to increasing profits or - with constant profit margins - to price reductions. In addition to the tour operators' bargaining power, this is the reason why travel prices have tended to fall for decades .

For the travel countries in which the travel destinations of mass tourism are located, mass tourism represents an important source of foreign exchange income . For these states it acts like an export , because it increases foreign exchange income in their service balance. The foreign exchange income includes the prices for flight tickets , hotels , excursions or other services on site, provided that these companies have their place of business in the country of travel . In addition, mass tourism promotes employment and thus contributes to reducing unemployment and the unemployment rate . This in turn relieves the state budget through decreasing transfer payments and increasing consumption and investment in the travel destination, which in turn results in higher tax revenues .

Since mass tourism is characterized worldwide by high season or low season , it is considered cyclical in the states affected by this, so that the seasonal businesses (such as hotels or other service providers) mainly operate with seasonal workers and a small permanent workforce.

Socio-cultural aspects

Mass tourism not only exacerbates the negative effects generally associated with tourism in a quantitative and proportional manner , but also brings about qualitative impairments for the host country, in particular in the form of a displacement or superimposition of the autochthonous culture and a shift in the population structure in the tourist areas. So shifted z. B. the population structure of Mallorca dramatically. While the island was an emigration area before 1960, it became an immigration area afterwards. In 1991, the population of Mallorca consisted of 25% immigrants from outside the Balearic Islands and 4% foreigners. In large cities, such as B. Prague , the hotels, restaurants, apartment complexes, etc. necessary for the tourism infrastructure are displacing the residents, as many tenement houses are bought up in order to convert them accordingly.

Effects of mass tourism result not only on the material but also on the intangible cultural heritage of a target area. Socio-cultural identities are influenced by the changes in expressions and meanings.

The displacement of local culture is particularly related to the specific range of interests and needs of mass tourists, who, in terms of travel sociology, are often part of the so-called integration , action or harmony milieu (cf. travel motivation ). Those in question are primarily less interested in the culture and character of the host country than in finding familiar structures at home. Accordingly, the restaurants in places of mass tourism increasingly offer dishes from the guests' countries of origin; the staff speaks their language; Foreign-language newspapers are available at the kiosks . Sometimes even doctors, lawyers and other service providers from the home of the tourists settle down. This development is taken to extremes in so-called resorts , holiday complexes, in which guests are often offered a closed parallel world separated from the host country.

In order to limit the negative effects of mass tourism, the World Tourism Organization passed a Global Code of Ethics for Tourism in 1999 . Mass tourism can lead to overtourism when there is conflict between locals and tourists.

Ecological aspects

The ecological balance is largely negative for mass tourism . Apart from the pollution caused by air traffic or cruise ships, tourism leaves a considerable amount of pollution on beaches, in the seas and in tourist resorts. The travel destination countries build tourist infrastructures that they would not need for themselves ( misallocation ). In some cases, the local population adapts the customs and habits of tourists that they do not know themselves. The sustainability of mass tourism is not guaranteed, it can be viewed as problematic from the perspective of sufficiency, so that self-restraint is necessary. If ecological requirements are met by tourism, one speaks of ecotourism .

In contrast to mass tourism, there is gentle tourism , which was first propagated in 1977 and first presented in full as an ecological alternative in 1982.

Mass tourism in literature and art

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's Italian Journey is a travelogue in which he describes his stay in Italy between September 1786 and May 1788. His travelogue animated the later mass tourism. The movie Die Strandflitzer , published in November 1978, sees itself as a parody of the then newly created club vacation à la Club Méditerranée and ironically criticized the effects of mass tourism. Gerhard Polt drew an impressive picture of modern mass tourism in his film Man speaks deutsh (February 1988). Among other things, the criticism of mass tourism was reflected in the radio play "You don't fill beds with tears" by the Austrian folklorist , mountain farmer and dialect poet Hans Haid , produced by ORF in 2008 .

The novel Liv (2017) by Kevin Kuhn follows a young backpacker and shows mass tourism in the digital age.

Other meanings

The quantitative expansion of tourism that has been observed since the 1960s is sometimes referred to as mass tourism . In view of this development, some see the concentrated concentration of tourists as the only sensible solution.

statistics

The importance of mass tourism for the economy of a destination country is shown in its share of the gross domestic product . The higher this proportion, the more dependent the economic development of the destination country on fluctuations in mass tourism. Tourism had a share of the gross domestic product of 19.7% in Greece in 2017 , followed by Morocco (18.6%), Portugal (17.3%), Spain (14.9%), Tunisia (14.2% ), Italy (13.0%), Turkey (11.6%), Germany (10.7%) or Great Britain (10.5%). They are thus above the global average of 10.4%. In 2015, a total of 2.92 million people were employed in the tourism industry in Germany, which is 6.8% of total employment.

literature

Web links

Commons : Mass tourism  - collection of images, videos and audio files
Wiktionary: Mass tourism  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

Individual evidence

  1. Süddeutsche Zeitung of March 7, 2018, ITB: Almost 4.5 million German vacationers on Mallorca . Süddeutsche Zeitung , March 7, 2018, accessed on August 19, 2020 .
  2. kurier.at from May 13, 2018, Too many tourists: Hallstatt pulls the emergency brake , accessed on October 25, 2018
  3. Sören Bär, Holistic Tourism Marketing , 2006, p. 7
  4. DER SPIEGEL 32/2003 of August 4, 2003, Gift im Paradies , p. 102 ff.
  5. ^ Heinrich Wenzel, Travel Sketches from Tyrol and its Neighborhood , 1837, p. 202
  6. ^ Horst W. Opaschowski , Tourism. Systematic introduction - analyzes and forecasts . Opladen: Leske + Budrich 1996, p. 83, ISBN 3-8100-0716-1
  7. 147 years ago today… in Märkische Oderzeitung, Frankfurter Stadtbote 17./18. May 2008, p. 1
  8. Patrick Robertson, What was the first time and when? , 1977, p. 173 f.
  9. Wolfgang König, Geschichte der Konsumgesellschaft , 2000, p. 280
  10. Horst W. Opaschowski, Tourism: A systematic introduction to analyzes and forecasts , 2002, p. 48
  11. Ludwig Pietsch, To Athens and Byzantium: A Spring Trip , 1871, p. 2
  12. Marie-Louise Schmeer-Sturm, travel guide: basic course , 2001, p. 13
  13. Wolfgang König, Geschichte der Konsumgesellschaft , 2000, p. 280
  14. Rolf Hochreiter / Ulrich Arndt, The Tourism Industry: A Market and Competition Analysis , 1978, p. 111
  15. Michael Brückner / Andrea Przyklenk, Lost Brands - on the rise and fall of strong brands , 2013, p. 19
  16. Two weeks in Mallorca for 338 DM - 50 years ago Neckermann discovered the package tour, derwesten.de , accessed on October 8, 2018
  17. Headquarters for teaching media on the Internet e. V., Effects of Mass Tourism on Mallorca , accessed on October 8, 2018
  18. ^ Prague - between historical continuity and mass tourism ( Memento from January 16, 2008 in the Internet Archive )
  19. Burkhard Schnepel / Felix Girke / Eva-Maria Knoll (eds.), Kultur all inclusive ( Memento from December 13, 2013 in the Internet Archive ). Identity, tradition and cultural heritage in the age of mass tourism. Bielefeld: transcript 2013, ISBN 978-3-8376-2089-4
  20. z. B. also the corresponding sports and training facilities, cf. Axel Dreyer / Arnd Krüger (ed.): Sports tourism. Management and Marketing Handbook. 2nd edition, Munich: Oldenbourg, 2015. ISBN 978-3-486-57793-8
  21. Global Code of Ethics for Tourism of the World Tourism Organization (WTO)
  22. Wolfgang Strasdas / Hartmut Rein (eds.), Sustainable Tourism: Introduction , 2017, p. 25
  23. Jost Krippendorf, Tourism and Regional Development , in: Jost Krippendorf / Paul Messerli / HD Hänni (eds.), Tourism and Regional Development, 1982, pp. 365–382
  24. Catholic Film Commission for Germany, Film-Dienst , Volume 59, Issues 7-12, 2006, p. 36
  25. You don't fill beds with tears. In: oe1.orf.at. December 23, 2008, accessed February 6, 2019 .
  26. ^ Cora Stephan, In Praise of Mass Tourism , in: Voyage. Yearbook for Travel & Tourism Research 1/1997
  27. Statista the statistics portal, contribution of the tourism industry to GDP in selected countries in 2017