Leisure and Tourism - Case Study Example

Running Head: Leisure and Tourism Leisure and Tourism Introduction It has been predicted centuries ago that tourism will become one of the strongest if not the biggest, industries in the world (Kahn, 1976). Nowadays, it can be said that tourism has really become a major asset of every country. Tourism may involve different meanings and interpretations. Some may perceive it as a personal activity to pursue leisure while some people may think of it as an industry and work. Tourism entails business because it involves different products and services depending on the place involved (Riegner, 1992). People travel based on their personal needs or wants. But the most common factor is that people are capable of moving from one place to another (mobile) and are driven to leave their present places temporarily or permanently. Reasons for travelling may seem unlimited like the desire to go to a place where they can have good exposure to sun, desert, forest, shrines, cathedrals, museums, mountains, parks, rivers and etc. (Riegner, 1992). Though people may have more money because of the emergence of different jobs, it resulted to the scarcity in the available or free-time to engage in leisure and recreational activities like travelling to different places (McDonald and Murphy, 2008). The Concept of Tourism In general, tourism is defined as a brief travel that is meant to bring pleasure to an individual, which for others, it means work. Obviously, this involves the place for destination (Apostolopoulos et al, 1984). The subject matter of tourism, which is the tourist, was technically defined by the International Union of Official Travel Organization (IUOTO) as approved by the World Tourist Organizations as temporary visitors who are settling in the destined country for at least twenty-four hours, whose travel was classified into the following: (a) leisure (e.g. recreation, health, study, religion, holiday, and sport); (b) business (e.g. mission, family, meeting) (IUOTO, 1963). The given definition is mostly for statistical, legislative and industrial purposes (Burkart and Medlik, 1974). On the other hand, there are several sociologists who attempted to place a more sociologically sound definition to the word tourist like that of Knebel, Cohen, Leiper and P.L. Pearce (Apostolopoulos, Leivadi and Yiannakis, 1996). The term that is always related to tourism is the word leisure. People’s concept of leisure varies depending on the subjective perception of every individual. One’s concept is usually based on his or her actual or imagined activity for a particular time. Various researches have delved into studying the interrelationship between tourism and leisure during the previous decades. According to Honggen and Huyton (1996), the pursuit of leisure, which is usually done by means of recreation and tourism, is not just a simple social phenomenon but it involves a wider social context. This also involves a physical planning on the part of every host country. Hence, tourism and leisure have become part of the agenda of every government of a country. There are motivations that influence individuals in travelling from one place to another which are discussed subsequently in this paper. This paper will try to justify the position taken by the research/writer that tourism and leisure have indeed deeper basis than mere want of the people to travel from one place to another to have recreation. Various tourist motivations People may engaged into travelling overseas by reason of change in the environment, attractions to different cultures, to gain new experiences, to see the lifestyle of other people in other countries and experience it or just to visit their family and friends. According to Pearce (2005), people are travelling because of certain motivations like stimulation, personal growth, security, nostalgia, romance, and self-actualization. But for experienced travelers, they have certain motivations that have deeper meanings such as host-site-involvement motivation (e.g. to experience other cultures) and nature-related motivation (being closed with the nature). But the most common motivations are the people’s desire to relax, have self-development, escape different problems and situations and their respective relationship. In the sociological aspect, sociologists looked at tourism at the sociological perspective and presented their respective motivational theories for tourism. For example, an American historian and sociologist named Daniel Boorstin (1985) had once said that tourists are motivated to go to a certain place because they are curious about the culture of a certain place and they want to verify the ideas they had in mind about the place of destination. Tourists would want to have authentic experiences from certain places since they think that the modern life is empty and unauthentic. But for a British Sociologist John Urry (2004), tourists would just want to have a change in their daily routines and ordinary life, and that tourism is not about authenticity. Also, tourists would tend to look for a meaning from a site (site sacralization). Also, there are tourists who tend to be unconsciously ‘semiotic’ as they look at different signs from the sites (MacCannell, 1976). Looking at the psychological perspective of tourism and leisure, Erik Cohen (2004) presented in his book Contemporary Tourism: Diversity and Change the different meanings that different persons have and motivate them to travel to a certain place which are as follows: 1) Recreational – for some people, travelling and being a tourist help them in reducing their stress and tensions from their work. Thus, tourists do not really find a deeper significance in travelling; 2) Diversionary – tourists travel to run away from their boredom and daily routines; 3) Experiential – tourists having such meaning can be said to be the modern pilgrims as they are looking for authenticity from other places that are not present at home. This compliments the idea purported by Daniel Boorstin; 4) Experimental – tourists want to experience different lifestyles from other places; and 5) Existential – tourists find a new center for spirituality. Also, it is said that people find motivations to travel for leisure from the necessity to escape their usual routine and the stressful conditions they are facing in their everyday life and their desire to experience recreation. The leisure and recreation that people are looking for are sometimes cannot be found in their home and they therefore need to travel away from home to seek satisfaction through engaging in leisure and recreation (Honggen and Huyton 1996). The Constraint Model – Its Relevance to Tourism People may find different challenges in their desire to seek leisure and recreation. Thus, Crawford et al (1991) developed their constraint model that is widely used for general leisure studies. It likewise helps to determine the reasons why people are holding back from availing leisure and recreation opportunities through travelling and tourism (McDonald and Murphy, 2008). According to the constraint model, there are three types of barriers to availing leisure opportunities, namely: intrapersonal, interpersonal and structural constraints. The said barriers are ranked according to the hierarchy of importance. Where an individual is not able to surpass his or her inner doubts, cannot determine his or her desire for which particular leisure should is preferred or not having the ability to participate, he or she would not be able to reach the next level of constraint in the said model. The interpersonal variables are those that motivate individual in choosing a particular leisure. The person’s personality, experiences or even self-esteem influence him/her in desiring to participate in a leisure activity. Interpersonal constraint may consist of stress, religion, anxiety, personal perspective about different activities and past experiences from leisure activities. Interpersonal variables are those that subsist between persons like family, friends, strangers and authority. This constraint may be developed from the interactions of a person from other individuals. This may become a barrier to opt in engaging in a leisure activity when an individual is affected by the preference of his or her partner in terms of the activities to engage with. Structural variables on the other hand, can prevent an individual to participate in a leisure activity such as lack of funds, family life, financial capability of the family, climate, season, work schedule, availability of the opportunity and awareness for it, and the feedbacks from other people who experienced a particular leisure activity. This constraint may also include the preference of the group where an individual belongs (McDonald and Murphy, 2008). Variables of Tourism and their Effects There are variables that cannot be separated to tourism and will always be factors in making a decision to travel, such as time, distance, transport, awareness and promotion and competitive choices (McDonald and Murphy, 2008). These elements are the usual considerations for every traveler. The element of “time” has always been a major issue for every individual who wanted to look for some leisure through travelling. The requirement of being in the workplace and meeting deadlines, the different responsibilities and duties of every worker, the unavoidable stress brought by working, the time spent in going to and from the workplace (McDonald and Murphy, 2008) and the irregular working hours (Barnes, 1989) are all factors for an individual to have a lesser chance to find available time to pursue leisure (McDonald and Murphy, 2008). The second variable is the distance (McDonald and Murphy, 2008). Generally, people are hesitant of travelling to far places or spend a big time of their short vacation on travelling (Law 2002). People are willing to just spend two to three hours in travelling (Blumbergs, 1991). The element closely associated to distance is the mode of transport particularly for travelers who only have short breaks. Due to the short breaks available, about 80 percent prefer to bring with them their private vehicle instead of taking public transport for local destinations (McDonald and Murphy, 2008). Awareness and promotion are also key variables for an individual to consider taking leisure through travelling. The most notable means of promotion is coming from satisfied visitors as they are the ones who become advocates for a certain place of destination through word-of- mouth, making others become aware of the leisure that is waiting for other people (McDonald and Murphy, 2008). Normally, people would look for personal recommendations from others to avoid committing mistakes and unnecessary expenses in choosing a destination where they can relax for their limited short breaks (Blumbergs, 1991). Another key variable is choosing a destination as there are many places competing in offering different ways of finding leisure and packages. However, the rise in the prices of petroleum affects the motivation of would-be traveler to travel to their desired destination (McDonald and Murphy, 2008). Conclusion It has been established based on the different literatures gathered that tourism and leisure has indeed a deeper basis than mere want of people to travel from one place to another for recreation. The previous discussions presented that tourism and leisure are affected by different motivational factors which are explained in the sociological and psychological perspectives. For instance, some sociologists considered that people want to go to other places to experience different cultures while for others, to find meanings to every signs in different places. In the perspective of psychology, Cohen presented 5 different meanings that people have in desiring to travel and take leisure from it. It has also been presented by the group of Crawford in their constraint model that there are different constraints that people experience that definitely influence and hinder their motivation to engage in leisure activities such as travelling. And it is up to the tourism industry, the different agencies involved, the private sector and tourism officials of every country and city to develop measures that will help build and establish different ways to restore the tourism industry especially that it can be clearly seen that tourism is really an industry that a place or country can gain income while introducing their respective products and cultures. All premises considered, it can be gainfully said that indeed, people travel from one place to another and take leisure therefrom due to different factors that have been explained from the discussions above. References Apostolopoulos, Y., Leivadi, S., & Yiannakis, A. (1984). The Sociology of Tourism. Routledge. Barnes, S. L. (1989). What is "An Average Family" for Recreation Planning?. Australian Parks and Recreation, 25 (3), pp. 12-15. Blumbergs, V. (1991). Short Break Holiday Market Research Report. South Australia, Steidl Smith and Associate. Boorsten, D. J. (1985). The Discoverers. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Burkart, A. J, & Medlik, S. (1974). Tourism: Past,Present and Future. London, Heinemann. Cohen, E. V. (2004). Tourism: Diversity and Change. Elsevier.   Crawford, D. W, and Jackson, E., and Godbey, G. (1991). A Hierarchical Model of Leisure Constraints. Leisure Sciences, 13 (4), pp. 309-320. Honggen, X, and Huyton, J. (1996). Tourism and Leisure: an integrative case in China. International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, 8 (6), pp. 18-24. International Union of Official Travel Organizations, (1976). The Impact of International Tourism on the Economic Development of the Developing Countries. Geneva, World Tourism Organization. Khan, H. (1976). The next 200 years: A scenario for America and the world. Morrow. Law, C. M. (2002). Urban Tourism: The Visitor Economy and the Growth of Large Cities. (2nd ed.). London, Continuum. MacCannell, D. (1976). The Tourist. Schocken Books. McDonald, S. M, and Murphy, P. (2008). Utilizing and adapting leisure constraints models to enhance short-break vacations: Case study of Melbourne, Australia. Journal of Vacation Marketing, 14 (4), pp. 317-331. Pierce, P. L. (2005). Developing the Travel Career Approach to Tourist Motivation. Journal of Travel Research, 43 (3), pp. 226-237. Riegner, H. G. (1992, Nov 30 ). New concepts in tourism development...with a tribute to the Buffalo soldiers. Business America, Urry, J. (2004). Tourism Mobilities. Places to Play, Places in Play. Routledge. Read More