Research Exercise: Issues in Global Tourism

STUDENT DETAILS

Student Name: Mah Zhen Jia

Student Number: C3211268

Class Time: E2

Tutor: Mr Justin Kung

1. OVERVIEW OF THE TOURISM ISSUE(value 3 marks)

Write one paragraph (250 words) that identifies the key themes associated with the issue as reported in the newspaper article.

Title of Issue: Socio-cultural Impacts

The issue is about scams especially those used by the locals to defraud tourists. The article provided common examples of scams experienced by tourists in Western countries - Paris, Turkey and Rio.

In ‘Gold’ ring method, in the street of Paris, a fairly poor-looking woman would open her palm with a fake ‘gold’ ring and try to sell it to tourist for a few Euros. The unsuspecting tourist would buy the ‘gold’ ring, thinking of reselling it at high price.

Metro system method involved ‘free and easy’ budget tourists travelling on train or bus in Paris. A group of playful children would surround the tourists to distract them and then stole their valuables.

‘Black Widows’ (prostitutes who fleece unsuspecting adventurous tourists of all their valuables by dropping drugs that paralyse into their drinks) method (Tulloch 2014)

. In one episode of Scam City, the reporter played the role of a victim by going to a carnival in Rio, talking with a unknown lady, let her spiked his drink while secretly recording the whole process on camera. Next day, he woke up, found himself been robbed, lost virginity.

Taxi scam method. A journalist, Woodman, revealed a story of a taxi scam in Rio. Two female friends of Woodman visited Istanbul, a state in Turkey and they both took a cab. Upon reaching the location, the two women passed a 50-lira note to pay for a 10-lira fare. The driver however claimed that he only received 5-lira note and showed it to them. When the two women argued with him, the ruthless taxi driver abandoned them on an unknown place.

The article hopes to advise tourists to be more vigilant and take precautions because scams is inevitable in many countries. In addition, tourists are the best and easiest targets.

2. OVERVIEW OF THE BROADER CONTEXT OF THE ISSUE (value 3 marks)

Write one paragraph (250 words) that positions the selected issue in the context of the broader tourism management topic. This contextualisation should be based only on information on the topic provided in the course textbook.

There are broader positive and negative issues that tourism can bring besides crimes.

Positive Impacts

Tourism contribute very importantly to the economics of a country by generating high income for the country.

Bring more jobs opportunities for the locals especially small shops and hawkers. This will allow locals to purchase clothing, supporting their children education and transportation.

Improve the lifestyle of the locals by sharing new ideas/new technology/new ways of tourists management.

Tourism help to shape the future of younger generation by bringing in new perspectives in education. This would enable the young to understand different culture, lifestyle and the world at large.

Negative Impacts

Upset the current and peaceful socio-cultural lifestyle due to conflicts between locals and tourists because of different cultural backgrounds in the two countries.

Tourists may have ulterior motives. They might get involved in illegal activities prostitution, gambling, drugs. Crimes can be classified into three groups:

1) Crime committed by tourists against the locals - tourists selling counterfeit goods at a ridiculously low price to the locals.

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2) Crime against tourists by locals - locals used methods like price fixing, harassment or robbery to cheat tourists.

3) Crime committed by tourists against tourists - some tourists took advantage of big events like World Cup, Olympic Games to cheat other tourists.

Tourism can cause damages to the beautiful and natural environment of the country. E.g. mass tourists had damaged some parts of the Great Wall of China (a world heritage).

In summary, Tourism is an enormous and complexity industry that can create positive and negative impacts on the country. Without proper management, some negative impacts could be disastrous.

3. IDENTIFICATION OF KEY WORDS FOR LITERATURE SEARCH (value 2 marks)

Write a list of the key words that you used to guide your academic literature search. This information can be presented in point form.

- Socio-cultural Impacts

- Tourism criminal

- Tourists are vulnerable

- Taxi Scams

4. IDENTIFICATION OF ACADEMIC SOURCES (total value 12 marks)

Write a list of 6 academic references that you located in your literature search that are relevant to the topic and explain in a statement of 2-3 sentences (50-100 words) why each reference is useful in informing your understanding of the topic. The references must include 3 academic books/book chapters and three academic journal articles. Reference these sources with the APA style using the Faculty of Business and Law Gold Guide.

Source 1

Citation:

Sharma, Ramji. Tourism and the Value System: An Impact Assessment from Socio-cultural Perspective. Himalayan Journal of Sociology & Anthropology. 2008, 3, 106-125.

Statement:

This article explained some of the crimes activities: criminal targeting tourists, prostitution and labour division.

Tourists had been targeted because they were vulnerable and unfamiliar to the country. They might be carrying valuables like camera, phones and gold. These valuables could be sold in the black market for high price.

Sex-Tourism (prostitution) is common in some countries, they believe that sex tourism could generate high revenue for them due to lack of undeveloped destination.

Even though tourism has created many jobs but it cannot provide all jobs for the locals because of high unemployment rate situation.

Source 2

Citation:

Pearce, Philip L. Tourist scams: exploring the dimensions of an international tourism phenomenon. European Journal of Tourism Research. 2011, 4 Issue 2, 147-156. 10p. 3 Charts

Statement:

This article concluded that scams are common in many countries. Tourism scams usually targeted at tourists who were unaware of the situation in the countries or to gain benefits from them. The article has provided information of some countries has already started to fight crimes against tourists and developed some measures of countering crimes against tourists.

Source 3

Citation:

Olga Gjerald (2005) Sociocultural Impacts of Tourism: A Case Study from Norway, Journal of Tourism and Cultural Change, 3:1, 36-58,

Statement:

The article provided 10 influential factors that affect socio-cultural impacts. They interviewed 22 permanent residents of the North Cape community.

It concluded that both the existing theory and current study suggested countries must see tourism positively whether they are economically independent or not.

Source 4

Citation:

Zaliha Zainuddin, Putra Hilmy, Ammar Ghafar, Mohd Salehuddin Mohd Zahari, and Salleh Mohd Radzi. Current Issues in Hospitality and Tourism, Aug 2012. Destination competitiveness, tourism performance and resident's quality of life (Chapter 89 - pg 497 -501). CRC Press 2012.

Statement:

Tourism delivers a large economic impact and consequences in the industry. Consequences like social, environment and cultural impact. In general, locals recognised that tourism development would bring positive economic impacts as well as negative economic impacts like scams, prostitutions and public securities. To conclude, in areas of undeveloped areas, tourism should focus on reducing negative impacts whereas in those developed areas, the industry can bring in more goods and services to generate more incomes.

Source 5

Citation:

Lickorish, Leonard J; Jenkins, Carson L. Introduction to Tourism. Social and Cultural aspects of tourism (pg 81). Taylor and Francis.

Statement:

Tourism socio-cultural impact had been a difficult issue to resolve in many countries. The structure of the community and leadership is very different from the western and other part of the countries.

To conclude, there are two objectives that destination manager must do. They must understand the interests of the local community, and protecting the tourist. This is to ensure that in the long-run tourists will not view that country in an unfriendly attitude.

Source 6

Citation:

Page, Stephen. Tourism Management. Managing the visitor and their impacts. (chapter 11 - pg 313) Taylor and Francis

Statement:

In general, tourism socio-cultural impacts could be affected by the following elements. The element are:

- tourists and locals differences of cultural and behaviour

- numbers of tourists and locals in the destination

- visibility and availability in tourism developments

- bringing new job employment which lead to positive and negative impacts.

However, tourism development is based on the economic, climatic season geographic,. In certain country, it has 4 seasons that requires special catering and certain country it has many natural sightseeing.