Definitions of Tourism and Tourists :: Travel, Non-residents

According to Smith (1988), an author of a specialist dictionary on tourism, the word tourist was reportedly introduced in 1800 and the word tourism in 1811. However, what exactly is tourism? Who are tourists? Regardless of the fact that two terms have now been part of the English speech communication for over two centuries, there is still no universally acknowledged effective exposition for either. For over many decades, researchers and practitioners have produced many precise definitions for both tourist and tourism but no definition of either term has become widely recognised. According to Smith (1988), he suggests that there probably neer will be a single definition of tourism as economists, psychologists and geographers perceive certain things about tourism in their field (Smith 1988 as cited in Leiper 19953). However, any approach to defining tourism can be useful for the persons proposing it and for those who perceive the world in the subjective way. In this essay, academic authors such as Krapf and Hunziker (1942), Stear (2005) and McIntosh and Goeldner (1977) each go down tourism in different methodical approaches. After discussing tourism, the focus then shifts to tourists where again, Stear (2005), Leiper (1979) and Weaver and Lawton (2006), defines tourists and its heuristic concepts. One of the first attempts to define tourism was that of two Swiss academics, Professors Hunziker and Krapf of Berne University. They defined tourism in a 1942 study as a complex of environmental impacts the sum of the phenomena and relationships arising from the act and stay of non-residents, in so far as they do not lead to permanent residence and are not connected to any earning activity. This definition has been acknowledged by many international associations including the International Association of Scientific Experts on Tourism (AIEST). The advantages of this definition are is acknowledgements of wide-ranging impacts it bases a very bad number of issues tha t is studied under the name tourism. Additionally, Krapf and Hunzikers definition is highly intellectual as they manage to distinguish tourism from migration however its guess is based on travel and stay making an assumption that this is necessary for tourism, thus preventing day tours. While the definitions approach is reasonable, the definition is perceptibly too vague (Leiper, 1995 17) as it includes a huge amount of human activity that few thinking individuals would regard as coming within the reaching of tourism. Because of their broad definition on tourism, prisoners, hospital patients, boarding students and soldiers at war can easily fit in the definition, thus exposing a major defect.