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306 industry
tertiary industries, an expression coined in 1935 to
designate recognition of industrialised services. An
industrialised service is one subjected to similar
methods of financing, producing, managing and
marketing to those used in manufacturing since
the eighteenth century.
`Tourism industry', therefore, refers broadly to
collections of business firms, organisations and
other resources which foster or support activities of
tourists, in particular by providing services. While
no consensus exists about the precise components
�because the collections are diverse), a custom has
developed for referring to industrial sectors, such as
travel services as travel agents, tour operators,
carriers providing transportation, accommodation,
food services and attractions �including
entertainment and recreational resources). Components
of various sectors are located across three
geographical realms in whole tourism systems.
For example, travel agents do their main work pretrip
in traveller-generating regions, while carriers
perform their main roles along transit routes and
most accommodation is in destination regions.
While there is now wide agreement that tourism
is industrialised, there are different views regarding
the nature of that industrialisation. Three positions
can be suggested. First, many researchers perceive
tourism as being totally industrialised; they see this
industry as representing all resources used by all
tourists. This view leads many observers to
describe it as one of the largest in the world.
Second, some researchers point out that referring
to `the' tourism industry is misleading if it implies
that all resources used by tourists, anywhere, are
linked into one industry. These observers prefer
`tourism industries' as a general expression, keeping
the singular for specific cases. A third view
agrees that tourism industries exist but argues that
tourism is a form of human behaviour which is
partly but not wholly industrialised. Differences
between the first and third views require further
elaboration.
The first view, commonly used, regards the
tourism industry as the aggregate of all businesses
that directly provide goods or services to business,
pleasure and leisure activities away from home
environments �Smith 1988). This allows researchers
to measure the industry by demand-side analyses,
surveying tourists' expenditure and converting the
findings into a supply-side notion. Since tourists
consume the same wide range of services and
goods as people consume in non-tourist roles in
their routine lives at home, sector analyses of the
industry span the entire consumer economy. Thus,
the tourism industry as commonly conceptualised
permeates all consumer-related industries.
The theory that tourism in many places is partly
industrialised �Leiper 1995) stems from observing
that only some services and goods used by tourists
come from suppliers with strategic business relationships
to tourism. The proportion varies in
different places and times. Many retailers serve a
mix of tourists and non-tourists �such as local
residents) and do nothing distinctive to promote to
or service the former. Describing a firm as a unit of
a tourism industry merely because tourists are
among customers might be realistic if `industry' is
simply taken to reflect economic impact, but it is
unrealistic and misleading if `industry' carries its
normal meaning, an assiduous, intentional, strategic
application of resources. Further, many tourists'
needs are satisfied to some extent by non-economic
factors, such as sunshine and incidental displays of
customs, which are resources used by tourists but
outside any industry in the normal sense of that
term.
Measuring partial industrialisation requires surveying
suppliers and other resources in order to
bisect resources used by tourists into one category
forming tourism industries and another category
representing non-industrialised or independent
tourism. This allows that many firms and organisations
can be in more than one industry simultaneously.
Many cases are marginal, strategically
positioned on the fringes of tourism industries.
Suppliers in the business of tourism normally cooperate
with one another to some extent. These
links convert collections of independent suppliers
into synergistically cohesive industries. One link is
package tours, typically involving cooperation
among airlines, hotels and travel agencies.
Another is computerised reservation systems, in
which various tourism-related businesses participate.
See also: management; marketing, resources;
systems, tourism