The Impacts of the Urban Tourism Industry

Time has changed now, no one want be static people like to travel abroad to explore the world. It is in human nature to find more and more place to entertain him. The main reason behind this all revolution is; the life is becoming materialistic day by day. This trend is helping the many countries to grow their economic condition as well. Like in any country have historic places; now they are making these places more attractive to get more people visit those monuments. People visit different areas according to their on liking. Every city and country has various types of attraction for the visitors. As we can say people go to Egypt to see mummies. If we talk about London, London has lots historic and cultural places like museum, art galleries, monuments and forts.

Keeping in accounts all these points tourism has become a growing industry now and every country is trying to promote its tourism industry. In this assignment we would try to analyse the definition of urban tourism and its impact. How the tourism industry is growing in the urban area. We selected the Edinburgh the city of Scotland. We would try to elaborate the history of tourism industry of Edinburgh. How they are planning to make it more attractive for future. We also tried to cover all the attraction of Edinburgh and all statistics regarding industry. Our main focus on the problem of tourism in Edinburgh. In this assignment, we shall try to find out problems and will give the conclusions and recommendations.

2. Urban Tourism:-

The concept of urban tourism is very broad and it consists of all kinds of entertainment activities that are held in cities. “The improvement of urban environment and the perfection of all kinds of services and facilities are all great attractions to tourists” It consists of good and suitable transport links, well-blooming market, better trade and good atmosphere for shopping, latest and developed information and technology, great service and leisure, modern urban land rich urban culture. Therefore a lot of people decide different types of cities as a destination to spend their holidays and the urban tourism in those cities are well-known. (Zou and Tian, 2002)

According to Colantonio and Potter (2006) the tourism that is held in urban area of the city is known as urban tourism. Urban tourism consists of different types of the activities. Different people visit urban cities for different purposes. They like to visit historical buildings, tourist attractions, landscapes, art galleries, special events, to see culture and heritage and for leisure purposes. Urban city also offers a lot of activities to increase tourism and attract the people. All those things are the characteristics of urban tourist. The image of the city is very important for all types of visitor, they (visitors) have a lot of expectations like the behaviour and attitude of the community. If it is positive, it attracts the visitors again and again. In this way, the tourism growth increases of that city.

The cities change in public culture, architecture and design, education, urban planning, parks and leisure and public party which resulted from dramatic redevelopment of the city’s central business and historic district. Urban tourism increasingly generates images of heritage and identify that are consumed as much by residents as by visitors. The cities where the tourism infrastructure and marketing are largely build up. (Chambers, 1997)

2.1 Impacts of Urban Tourism:-

According to Law (2002) now a day, the urban tourism is growing rapidly in every country of the world. It is providing a lot of advantages to local people in many different ways. The tourism growth in urban areas has caused economic, socio cultural and environmental. They have both positive and negative impacts.

According to Mak (2004) urban tourism has a wide range of economic impacts in urban areas. The community plays an important role to create more and more tourism in their city and in this their economies go up and they are the people who get benefits. The tourism and community depends on each other. When the growth of tourism increases, the more people who come to visit the city, they spend their money in different ways like accommodation, food, transportation, shopping etc.

The positive impacts of urban tourism help to increase in local economy of the city and also increase the living standard of the people. The numbers of job created in local area in different sectors e.g. hotels, travel agencies, restaurant etc. It also helps to improve infrastructure of transportation and created much business opportunity in that area. There are some negative impacts of economy is in urban cities as well. In such type of city, it is very difficult to live because the living cost is too much because the rate of land and houses are very high. Sometime it causes the unemployment because of season tourism in urban city. People do not get minimum wages because of a lot of manpower is available. (Theobald, 2004)

According to Holden (2008) when we talk of the environment, we talk of the surroundings such as soil, water, air, vegetation, wildlife and other scare resources. Everyday we are made aware of the environmental issues in the newspapers, on television or by observing our own surroundings. Pollution of the land, air, rivers and seas are just come of the issues that we are faced with. Tourism and environment are closely linked. When tourist visit urban area, they come to experience the environment and its natural beauty such as the sea, beaches, ancient sights, the wild life and the flora and fauna (vegetation). It makes sense to protect it. The positive impacts of urban tourism are as follows: