Tourism

What is Tourism?

Tourism is a worldwide spread activity that is nowadays reachable to almost everyone in the planet. As example, year 2012 was a milestone achieving 1 billion tourists around the world. This amount rises to a 4-5% rate each year.

Tourism has both positive and negative impacts around the world.

UNEP and UNWTO studies proof that tourism is responsible of about 5% of global CO2 emissions, being the transport sector (air, trail and car) the highest contributor, for about 75% of the tourism sector total emissions.

Because tourism continues to grow, and many industries and economic activities are connected to it, we are forced to develop new ways that mostly enhance the positive impacts. This is how Sustainable Tourism is born, and its definition is:

“Tourism that takes full account of its current and future economic, social and environmental impacts, addressing the needs of visitors, the industry, the environment and host communities” (UNWTO and UNEP, “Making Tourism More Sustainable”).

Therefore, sustainable tourism is a way of tourism management that is relevant to all types of destinations wishing to maintain growth, local identity and its natural and cultural resources in the long term, no matter whether they are developed to welcome many or few tourists.
In ¨it is about us¨, we believe that all of us as TOURISTS, can be a pillar to sustainable tourism.

Each of us can make a huge difference depending on our choices while travelling. Our main objective is to inspire you with tips that may help you travel and behave in a more sustainable way while doing tourism, enhancing your positive impact and reducing your negative one. This is ¨best practicing tourism: making all of us aware of how good our impact can be each time we travel, will be developed in a tourist e-booklet.

 

Who is a Tourist?

A tourist has been defined as ¨anyone who spends a night outside its residence¨.
The motivations are diverse: holidays, health, visiting friends and family, business, study, etc.

For any of your trips, destinations develop many services for you to be able to travel, like:

• Access to the destination: sea, road, rail and air;
• Basic services at the destination: restaurants, lodging, hospitals, security;
• Outfitting attractions: parks, beaches, cultural heritage, shops, etc.;
• Additional services as need energy, gas, sanitation, etc.