Change of international tourism--indicator of globalization

* What is Tourism and Tourist?

Tourism is travel for recreational, leisure or business purposes.

The World Tourism Organization defines tourists as people who "travel to and stay in places outside their usual environment for more than twenty-four (24) hours and not more than one consecutive year for leisure, business and other purposes not related to the exercise of an activity remunerated from within the place visited."

* "Globalization" : good or bad news?

Since the mid-1960s, the cost of international flights has declined, and foreign travel has become a routine experience for millions of middle- and working-class people. Diplomats, business people, and ordinary tourists can feel “at home” in any city, anywhere in the world. Foreign travel no longer involves the challenge of adapting to unfamiliar food and living arrangements.

The international tourism belongs to the Economic globalization. Economic globalization means globe-spanning economic relationships....Economic globalization has been accelerated by what telematics has done to the movement of money...(Christopher Chase-Dunn, Kawano, Nikitin,1998) 

Nowadays, tourism has become a popular global leisure activity. In 2008, there were over 922 million international tourist arrivals, with a growth of 1.9% as compared to 2007. International tourism receipts grew to US$944 billion (euro 642 billion) in 2008, corresponding to an increase in real terms of 1.8%.

As a result of the late-2000s recession, international travel demand suffered a strong slowdown beginning in June 2008, with growth in international tourism arrivals worldwide falling to 2% during the boreal summer months.

This negative trend intensified during 2009, exacerbated in some countries due to the outbreak of the H1N1 influenza virus, resulting in a worldwide decline of 4% in 2009 to 880 million international tourists’ arrivals, and an estimated 6% decline in international tourism receipts.

In addition, the local business also need to compete with the global giant. 
You aren't going to compete globally -- if you are not enabling your companies to compete with the world's most innovative and creative companies.(MacKinnon, 2010)

* The general changes of international tourism

The tourism is well developing with the increasing globalization. There are some facts:

1. Different destination

With the development of globalization, people started to explore different places as their travel destinations. From the table below, we could find that the top 3 places are well-developed countries and very open to the world. But besides US, other two have negative percent changes in year 2008.

2008 rank	Country	Arrivals (millions)		Percent change 2007/2006	Percent change 2008/2007
		2007	2008
1.	France	81.9	79.3	3.9%	–3.2%
2.	United States	56.0	58.0	9.8	3.6
3.	Spain	58.7	57.3	1.1	–2.3
4.	China	54.7	57.3	1.1	–3.1
5.	Italy	43.7	42.7	6.3	–2.1
6.	United Kingdom	30.9	30.2	0.7	–2.2
7.	Ukraine	23.1	25.4	22.1	9.8
8.	Turkey	22.2	25.0	17.6	12.3
9.	Germany	24.4	24.9	3.6	1.9
10.	Mexico	21.4	22.6	0.1	5.9

But those countries which were quite closed and mysterious now start to be very popular. From the chart below, we could see that Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Malaysia has very bright future as tourism destination. And this also shows the globalization has happened in more and more areas and affecting more countries and people. 

Chart 1 Top 10 Growth Destinations in 2009

2. More people are getting involved

According to the World Tourism Organisation (WTO), about 900 million people are likely to have travelled abroad in year 2007

This is 5.7 per cent more than during 2006 and higher than earlier estimates of four per cent.

In 2008, there were over 922 million international tourist arrivals, with a growth of 1.9% as compared to 2007. International tourism receipts grew to US$944 billion (euro 642 billion) in 2008, corresponding to an increase in real terms of 1.8%.

3. The development of tourism

• The booking system become more and more convenient
• Tourists are more experienced and knowledgeable
• More worldwide suppliers in the tourism industry E.g; Flight companies

* Tourism and International Management in the global context

Globalization has increased the interdependence between countries, economies and people. It involves not only the giant corporations, but also small and medium sized business together with family-run firms. In tourism, globalization has impact on the supply and demand side. Supply side, such as worldwide acting suppliers, computerized information and reservation systems, decreasing costs of air travel and the possibilities of having access to destination with relatively low price and income levels, as well as emerging new destinations. Demand side, such as increasing income and wealth, tourists are more experienced and knowledgeable.

* Cases of Globalization in Tourism

1. Hotel is a good example of tourism globalization. In the USA and Canada, REIT (Real Estate Investment Trusts) introduced a very important novelty, which is the breakup of the management and ownership of the hotel, which had been traditionally joined. This reform enables faster return of investment.

 Six Continents Hotels is a leading corporation in making a strong strategic effort in forming partnerships in different businesses all over the world. It is the first hotel enterprise offering on-line booking in real time.

Meanwhile, it also builds constantly and manages partnerships with popular travel web sites such as priceline.com, travelocity.com and lastminute.com, and also with new media, sales promotion companies and air carriers. Six Continents Hotels has established strategic partnerships with 47 global air carriers.

2. The Air Travel Industry

Air companies are merging worldwide. Many U.S. businesses that don’t export could be successful in overseas markets. But first they have to overcome their fear of the unknown, research and identify opportunities, and then execute on a well-conceived strategy to go global.(Brutto, 2010)The five major alliances are: Star Alliance, Oneworld, Wings, Qualifier and Global Sky Team. The alliances started with the appearance of hubs offering services to millions of passengers from smaller emissive markets, such as Frankfurt and Vienna.

In air travel, there are two types of alliances: equal and disproportional. For disproportional alliance, there is less cooperation in terms of marketing and promotion contracts and shares in frequent flyer programs. Equal alliances are strategic and presuppose a stronger impact on operation, partners monitor each other. Cooperation includes pricing, standardization of equipment, service and supplies, development of common brands and so on. A very popular alliance called " code sharing", which represents 70% of cooperation between air companies and ensures total independence of each air company. Code share means that an air company, for instance Adria, leases a number of seats on a flight of another company, for instance, Lufthansa, and sells them as their own.

To conclude, the enterprise globalization management has the advantage of gathering capital, cost, market resource and brand, which enable the corporation to optimize the resource and make best use of international market. Collectivization and internationalization of tourism corporations is the trend and keeps increasing. Globalization and tourism have been interactively affected each other.

References:

1. 2008. The World's Top Tourism Destinations , Infoplease.com. Retrieved from

http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0198352.html#ixzz1DHYDNf6o

2. 2007. Global tourism 'is increasing', Property Showrooms.com. Retrieved from http://global%20tourism%20%27is%20increasing%27/

3. Euromonitor

4. Chase-Dunn, C. Kawano, Y. and Nikitin, D. 1998. Globalization：A World-Systems Perspective


5. Peric, V. 2005. Tourism and Globalization. Retrieved from
http://www.fm-kp.si/zalozba/ISBN/961-6573-03-9/peric.pdf

6.2010,Google's License Renewal in China: Victory, Defeat or Stalemate?,Arabic Knowledge@Wharton. Retrieved from http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/arabic/article.cfm?articleid=2505

 

7. Brutto, D. 2010. Globalization 4.0 and the New Logistics: The Gravity of Trade Has Shifted, Foreign Press Association, New York.