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local people and culture, thus minimising the
chance for meaningful encounters and exchange
�see alienation). At the same time, they also bring
little economic benefit to local communities as
visitors have few opportunities to spend money on
local goods and services; whereas resort income is
maximised, the majority of tourist spending
occurring within the �often foreign-owned) resort
complex.
Conversely, tourism ghettos may be considered
an effective means of reducing the negative
impacts of tourism. The damage from tourism's
development is restricted to relatively small areas
of frequently non-productive land and, by segregating
tourists from the local population, the
chances of confrontations and the longer-term
process of acculturation are reduced, thereby
protecting the traditional culture and lifestyle of
host communities. In practice, this is the approach
adopted by some countries such as Tunisia,
whereas other countries pursue a policy of dispersing
tourism development.
See also: resort enclave
Further reading
Gunn, C. �1994) Tourism Planning:Basics, Concepts,
Cases, 3rd edn, London: Taylor & Francis.
Pearce, D. �1989) Tourist Development, 2nd edn,
Harlow: Longman.
gift
RICHARD SHARPLEY, UK
Although many items are acquired as holiday
souvenirs, others are purchased as gifts for
relatives and friends back home. Some tourists
are known for buying presents; for example, the
Japanese, as in their country the exchange of gifts is
an important component of the social fabric.
Visitors to Third World destinations sometimes
bring inexpensive articles to distribute to local
children.
EDWARD M. BRUNER, USA
global distribution systems
Global distribution systems �GDS) are computer
databases used by retail travel agents to research
and book all types of tourism products. They
were originally created by the airlines but have
grown to be the major electronic distribution
system for the entire tourism industry. The
GDS are Sabre, Apollo/Galileo, SystemOne/
Amadeus, Worldspan and Abacus. The central site
of each contains many large mainframes connected
to thousands of terminals through some of the
largest data communication networks in the civil
world.
globalisation
PAULINE J. SHELDON, USA
Globalisation is a term under which prevailing
models of social, economic, and political organisation
have popularly been collected, although the
term itself has only seen widespread use since the
1980s. Within the context of Western society, there
have been three waves of globalisation: colonisation,
development �in the sense of capitalist
development), and what is frequently termed
neoliberal capitalism. In respect to this third wave,
the process of globalisation is characterised by such
factors as free trade zones, technological dependency,
restructuring of science and technology,
privatisation, debt±equity swaps, mergers and
acquisitions. It affects virtually all aspects of
economic activity that are related to free-market
economies: communications, transportation,
agriculture, manufacturing and more. Further, it
is a social process that affects every component of
each economic activity ± reorganisation of the
labour process and management, production,
distribution channels, marketing, exchange,
technology, information, telecommunications,
education and training ± moving all of these
components away from local control into a global
and/or regional scope, from small scale to large
scale, and from centralised to decentralised structures.
A central feature of globalisation is that many
contemporary processes or problems �including