Independent City Sites Compete With MSM [by rafat] : Our conference contributor Dorian Benkoil has penned an interesting report for Borrell Associates, covering the indie city website competing against local TV and newspaper websites. These low-cost and scrappy competitors shun local news, obituaries and classified ads, focusing almost exclusively on fun and interesting things to do around town.
Many of these independent local sites are reporting revenues well into six figures, and some recently formed their own trade group, Associated Cities. A flurry of acquisitions has begun as well, including a $500,000 acquisition for a "City.com " URL, and a $12 million offer by a newspaper publisher for LasVegas.com. (This reminds me of the New City Network of indie websites back in the late 90s..it is now defunct)
Independent sites tend to have a fraction of the traffic and revenue of competitors who are financed and promoted by traditional-media outlets, but the underdogs offer an interesting lesson: Keep it simple, keep it upbeat, and don't forget the out-of-market traffic. They are focusing on sites that win attention from locals and travelers alike, and are tapping ad revenues from some of the largest spenders on interactive advertising: hotels, casinos, airlines, real estate agents, resorts and restaurants. [Nov.29: Link] | Nanopublishing |
Wednesday, November 30, 2005
Borrell: Independent Local Sites Threaten Newspapers
| by Wendy Davis, Wednesday, Nov 30, 2005 6:00 AM EST |
| AS IF THE NEWSPAPER INDUSTRY didn't have enough headaches, a new study finds they face growing competition from independent local Web sites that focus on travel and entertainment. "Locally focused pure-play Internet sites have gained a foothold in many markets," states the report, "Independent City Sites Gain Steam: A New Threat to Old Media," released Tuesday by Borrell Associates. These independent local sites are growing quickly and "elbowing in on territory that traditional local media properties have been trying to stake out for the past decade," states the report. Many of these sites use a url that includes the name of their city, like Houston.com and Toledo.com. As a result, they garner traffic even without much marketing, because some people navigate the Web by typing proper names directly into a url field. Toledo.com, for instance, is the tenth most trafficked site in the city, according to the report. For the most part, these sites focus on entertainment, nightlife, and travel, while rarely reporting on local news, according to the report. Borrell also states that annual revenues at these local sites have "moved into the six-figure range"--and in some cases, surpass $1 million. "As the Internet tide rises, these once-mired local boats have begun to float," states the report. "From Atlanta to Yuma and from the suburbs of Syracuse to the tiny Gulf town of Port Aransas, Texas, small, independently run local sites have begun to pick up significant steam." So far, however, independent city.com sites have profit margins of around 24 percent--compared to Web sites of local media, which are around 60 percent, according to Borrell. The independent sites also account for less than 1 percent of local online advertising, while media-run Web sites take in between 3 and 18 percent, according to the report. The newspaper industry, meanwhile, continues to struggle with profit margins and circulation, as well as ad dollars that have been lost to online classifieds like Craigslist. Earlier this week, the Pew Internet & American Life Project and comScore Networks issued a report stating that 26.3 million Web users visited one of the top 15 classified sites in September--marking an 80 percent increase from last year. |
Monday, November 28, 2005
Partnerships are key to online travel search survival
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By Kyle Peterson
CHICAGO (Reuters) - The online travel search market is fast filling up with Web sites offering the cheapest bookings, and experts warn that the smaller entrants without partnerships with major service providers are sure to fail.
Unlike full-service online travel agencies such as Expedia Inc. (EXPE.O: Quote, Profile, Research) that sell tickets and make reservations, travel search engines sniff out bookings and direct users to Web sites where they can make purchases. Some travelers use search engines to avoid booking fees that travel agencies charge.
The newest breed of these businesses are the so-called meta-search sites that present users with lists of bookings for comparisons.
The trouble is that too many sites are doing the same thing and too few travelers care, according to Henry Harteveldt at Forrester Research.
"There is a glut. They're not working," Harteveldt said. "Our research indicates these meta-search sites just aren't gaining any traction."
Data from Forrester shows that only 6.5 percent of travelers who planned trips online used travel search engines to plan a trip, compared with 44 percent who used a travel agency.
About 27 percent of travelers researched trips using general search engines such as Google and Yahoo!. And 25 percent looked at sites hosted by travel service suppliers such as airlines and hotels.
"The truth is that meta-search really doesn't matter," Harteveldt said.
An Internet search for "travel search engines" yields dozens of results, including not only well-known brands like Expedia and Orbitz, which is owned by Cendant Corp. (CD.N: Quote, Profile, Research), but also a slew of names like AllCheapFares, Kwikfly and Travel Now.
Experts say the travel search market is reaching a point where competitive pressures threaten to smother start-ups before they can get a toe hold.
"I think it's going to be a lot tougher road for some of the new companies to try their hand at travel search," said Phil Carpenter, vice president of corporate marketing at search engine SideStep. "I think it's getting really challenging for new players to enter the space."
Carpenter said the key to success is in partnerships with big-name travel suppliers and other travel service companies. Only then will users be confident that they are getting access to the best deals possible, he said.
SideStep, a leader in travel search, just this month announced deals with Hilton International, Amazon.com and American Airlines.
SideStep searches more than 100 Web sites for travel bargains. But the company is not alone in that approach and faces competition from search engines like Kayak.com and Yahoo! FareChase. Other competitors include general search engines.
Meanwhile, online travel agencies such as Expedia and Priceline.com (PCLN.O: Quote, Profile, Research), which made their reputations locating cheap fares, are adapting to the new competitive environment by personalizing research and bookings instead of relying solely on finding low prices. The agencies hope to expand their businesses by addressing all travel needs and making recommendations.
"The online travel agencies haven't really felt the pinch," said Lorraine Sileo, an analyst at PhocusWright, a travel research company. She said the newest crop of travel search sites are a bigger threat to each other than to established travel agencies.
Still, the appeal of ad revenue, lucrative partnerships or a buyout remain key motivators for people looking to jump on the travel search gravy train. What's more, e-commerce trends suggest their optimism is not misplaced.
Data from Forrester Research showed that in 2005, travel has been the largest sales category in online commerce with $62.8 billion of the total sales of $172.4 billion. The travel component on Web commerce is expected to account for $119.1 billion of a total $328.6 billion by 2010, Forrester said.
SideStep's Carpenter said there is still money to be made in the online travel industry as long as a company has an innovative approach and the funds to carry out a vision.
Friday, November 25, 2005
Google Space
| Google extends searching offline | |||
Google Space, at Terminal One of London's Heathrow airport, will allow people to log onto the net and check e-mail while they wait for flights. For Google, the space will be used to test its myriad product launches on the public. "We see it as a huge focus group," said Lorraine Twohill, Google's European director of marketing. "For many of our users, we have always been something in their computers and they have never actually met us," she said. Core DNA
With trained Google staff on hand at the booth, it will be a chance to road-test some of its new product launches and get invaluable feedback. Depending on the success of the Heathrow "pod", Google could become a recognised physical presence in airports, stations and even high streets around the world, said Ms Twohill. Google has been a phenomenal year of launches, even by the standards of a cutting-edge tech firm. Desktop search, Google Earth, Google Mail, Google Local, Google Toolbar, picture management store Picasa and Google Mobile have all come online in recent months, as Google continues to expand its search catalogue to all aspects of daily life. Also out of the labs this month is Google's personalised search, which, alongside a bespoke homepage which can be built to your own personal needs, also offers more personalised searching, remembering what you have previously looked for and selecting things it thinks you want to see. While it may seem as if Google has its fingers in many pies at the moment, all its products are interlinked, said Ms Twohill. "It all comes back to our core DNA of search," she said. As well as moving into a physical space, Google is also likely to make a play for our pockets too, with Ms Twohill earmarking mobile - alongside personalisation - as important areas for the firm in the future. Google's ever-expanding product portfolio has led some commentators to question whether it is making a bid to be the next Microsoft. According to Ms Twohill, its ambitions are more modest. "We are still a tenth the size of Microsoft and are not ready to be compared to them," she said. It is true though that Microsoft is increasingly vying for a share of the search market and this can only be a good thing, she thinks. "A space like search needs two or three key players. While search is not Microsoft's heritage, if it sets its mind to something it will do a good job and grow the space for everyone," she said. | |||
Thursday, November 17, 2005
Neighborhood search a boon for real estate
Neighborhood search a boon for real estate
Online services take local search to a new level
Wednesday, November 16, 2005
By Glenn Roberts Jr.
Inman News
 Yahoo! Local map |
Neighborhoods are taking shape online as Internet companies expand the capabilities of local search.
Neighborhood-specific searches allow users to move beyond the typical geographic parameters of city or ZIP code to find relevant matches, though defining neighborhood names and boundaries can be an imperfect science.
Yahoo! in August announced the launch of a " search by neighborhood" feature for major metropolitan areas, through Yahoo! Local. It is now possible to search for real estate agents in San Francisco's "Lower Haight" or "Marina" areas, for example, or in New York's "Chelsea" or "Soho" neighborhoods.
Yahoo! Local has divided San Francisco into 31 neighborhoods, and New York City into 24 neighborhood areas.
Other online sites, too, provide neighborhood-specific information to users, and experts say real estate is a natural beneficiary of neighborhood-based search.
As some print advertising dollars shift online, the battle has heated up among online search sites to tailor information and advertising opportunities based on the criteria selected by users. Local online search has grown into an important subset of national search – an estimated 15 percent of all searches on the Web are local – and neighborhood search is an emerging subset of local search.
"There are a lot of people who recognize that the way that people look for things is by neighborhood or by colloquial names that exist," said Greg Sterling, program director for The Kelsey Group, a company that provides research and analysis for yellow pages, electronic directories and local media companies. The end result is more flexibility – and less search time – for users.
"What's at stake? Better ad targeting and the ability for advertisers – especially in the real estate context – to buy keywords aligned with neighborhoods, which is the way people really think about their environments in the real world. Accordingly, this will offer a better local-search consumer experience," Sterling said. "This is definitely the way these things are going to move – (companies) are trying to make these tools conform to the way that people really live."
Sterling also said that Yahoo! is a front-runner in neighborhood-specific searches, and the company's announced plans to acquire Whereonearth, a local online search and advertising technology company, should aid the efforts to expand local search.
Point2 Realty Solutions, a real estate technology company based in Saskatoon, in the Canadian province of Saskatchewan, is working to define neighborhood names and boundaries to provide more property-search options. The company's Point2 Homes site allows users to search properties by neighborhood .
"Our goal is to geographically identify every area in North America, and then eventually the world, by its local neighborhood names," said Jeff Tomlin, manager of market research at Point2. The company started the project this summer.
Local municipalities and real estate professionals have been a solid source of information on neighborhood names and boundaries, Tomlin said. "The solution we are building has two benefits: Number one, we want to create a solution for our members that helps them be more easily found; and we are helping our users to create a better connection to consumers."
Point2's real estate customers are accurate in describing the neighborhood location of properties that they list for sale, Tomlin said. "The client knows exactly what neighborhood they're in, even if they're sort of on the edge of two neighborhoods. Our members are the best sources for that – they know the area themselves."
The neighborhood project "is a work in progress – it'll be a work in progress for some time," he said, adding that neighborhoods are continually evolving and forming.
Craigslist, which operates online community sites in major markets across the globe and carries for-sale and rental property listings posted by its users, allows users to self-identify location by neighborhood. A user who wishes to post a property for sale in San Francisco, for example, can choose from a list of 32 neighborhoods, and the neighborhood name appears in the top line of every posting.
The New York Times' real estate site allows users to search for properties by neighborhood areas, and several other property-search sites also offer neighborhood-specific listings.
Keith N. Hampton, assistant professor of the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, said that Internet technologists are struggling with the same questions about neighborhoods that sociologists have been struggling with for decades, adding that it's "fascinating" to see efforts to expand local and neighborhood search capabilities online.
"Defining neighborhoods is certainly difficult and problematic. What are neighborhood boundaries for any given neighborhood? It is almost impossible for outsiders to define boundaries in a way that makes sense (for local residents)." Every person has a mental map of neighborhood areas, Hampton said, so it is typical for people to disagree on neighborhood boundaries.
Hampton is a principal investigator for I-Neighbors.org, an Internet site that allows residents to define neighborhood areas and connect with their neighbors.
It's beneficial for actual neighbors to define neighborhood boundaries, he said, because it is a means to "establish local trust in self and identity – being able to identify what your community really is. The value of the Internet is supposed to be in its ability to cut down the cost of traversing great distances. But it has this localization – the ability to bridge very local distances."
He noted that neighborhood boundaries change, and in some cases some small neighborhoods can potentially be amalgamated or absorbed into a larger neighborhood area, and can lose individual character or identity in the process.
Wikipedia, a free encyclopedia Web site that allows its users to edit entries, features numerous neighborhood descriptions , including rough or specific neighborhood boundaries.
Jimmy Wales, a spokesman for Wikipedia, said he doesn't know how many neighborhoods are defined at the site, though, "Community input would be crucially important to determining where a neighborhood begins and ends, because 'neighborhood' is absolutely a social concept, a social construct, and there's no a priori or algorithmic way to guess at it."
 Lockhart Steele, Curbed.com |
"I think everyone in New York defines neighborhoods in slightly different ways. Some neighborhoods are literally defined by a couple of blocks," said Lockhart Steele, founder and publisher of the Curbed.com blog site.
Curbed.com readers can choose to read postings that are specific to neighborhoods. The site identifies 14 Manhattan neighborhood areas, for example, and also includes information categorized by neighborhood in Brooklyn and Queens.
Earlier this year, Curbed.com hosted a light-hearted neighborhood-naming contest, dubbed "'Hoodwinked." The winner pitched the name "RAMBO (Right After the Manhattan Bridge Overpass)" for a neighborhood stretching between Tillary Street and York Street, north of the Manhattan Bridge.
There is a general trend, Steele said, to provide more focused information online. "You can always get more detailed. There is the question of: 'Do readers want to view everything?'" For editorial purposes, Steele said that he adopted fairly rigid neighborhood boundaries for Curbed.com.
"I think neighborhood-specific search...is going to be a pretty big deal," and real estate companies have already inquired about placing advertisements on neighborhood-specific pages at his blog site, Steele said. "Drill-down search is presumably one of the better ways to find really qualified leads." While neighborhood search is one potential avenue for expanding local search capabilities, Steele said innovation in search technologies is not a one-way street. "I don't believe search is moving in any one direction.
***
Send tips or a Letter to the Editor to glenn@inman.com or call (510) 658-9252, ext. 137.
Copyright 2005 Inman News
Wednesday, November 16, 2005
RealTravel
» Travel Journal Site Gets $1 Million Seed Funding [by rafat] : RealTravel, an online travel journals site based out of Los Altos, CA, has received $1 million in seeed funding. The funding was bu what it calls "high-profile angel investors in the travel, media and social networking industries", though no names were disclosed.
RealTravel combines travel blogging and social networking... [ Nov.15: Link] | VC/M&A |
RealTravel combines travel blogging and social networking... [ Nov.15: Link] | VC/M&A |
tourism by Answers.com
On this page:
tourism
tour·ism ( tÊŠr'Äz'É™m) 
n.
n.
- The practice of traveling for pleasure.
- The business of providing tours and services for tourists.
| Tourism Learn Travel & Tourism in Canada at Education Direct. Free InfoPak! tourism.careersmart.ca |
| Charming and Cosy Hotel 5 unit old charming cottages - 4 * Chenonceaux Loire Valley France http://www.bonlaboureur.com |
Note: click on a word meaning below to see its connections and related words.
The noun tourism has one meaning:
Meaning #1: the business of providing services to tourists
Synonym: touristry
| World Travel Guides Attractions, events, recreation, dining, online booking & more! http://www.officialtravelguide.com |
tourism
Tourism can be defined as the act of travel for the purpose of recreation , and the provision of services for this act. A tourist is someone who travels at least eighty kilometres (fifty miles) from home for the purpose of recreation, as defined by the World Tourism Organization (a United Nations body).
A more comprehensive definition would be that tourism is a service industry, comprising a number of tangible and intangible components. The tangible elements include transport systems - air, rail, road, water and now, space; hospitality services - accommodation, foods and beverages, tours, souvenirs; and related services such as banking, insurance and safety & security. The intangible elements include: rest and relaxation, culture, escape, adventure, new and different experiences.
Many sovereignties, along with their respective countries and states, depend heavily upon travel expenditures by foreigners as a source of taxation and income for the enterprises that sell (export) services to these travellers. Consequently the development of tourism is often a strategy employed either by a Non-governmental organization (NGO) or a governmental agency to promote a particular region for the purpose of increasing commerce through exporting goods and services to non-locals.
Sometimes Tourism and Travel are used interchangeably. In this context travel has a similar definition to tourism, but implies a more purposeful journey.
The term tourism is sometimes used pejoratively, implying a shallow interest in the societies and natural wonders that the tourist visits.
Prerequisite factors
"Travel", as an economic activity, occurs when the essential parameters come together to make it happen. In this case there are three such parameters:
- Disposable income, i.e. money to spend on non-essentials
- Time in which to do so.
- Infrastructure in the form of accommodation facilities and means of transport.
Individually, sufficient health is also a condition, and of course the inclination to travel. Furthermore, in some countries there are legal restrictions on travelling, especially abroad. Communist states restrict foreign travel only to "trustworthy" citizens. The United States prohibits its citizens from traveling to some countries, for example, Cuba.
History
Wealthy people have always travelled to distant parts of the world to see great buildings or other works of art; to learn new languages; or to taste new cuisine. As long ago as the time of the Roman Republic places such as Baiae were popular coastal resorts for the rich.
The terms tourist and tourism were first used as official terms in 1937 by the League of Nations . Tourism was defined as people travelling abroad for periods of over 24 hours.
The Grand Tour
The word tour gained acceptance in the 18th century, when the Grand Tour of Europe became part of the upbringing of the educated and wealthy British nobleman or cultured gentleman. Grand tours were taken in particular by young people to "complete" their education. They travelled all over Europe, but notably to places of cultural and aesthetic interest, such as Rome, Tuscany and the Alps.
The British aristocracy were particularly keen on the Grand Tour, using the occasion to gather art treasures from Europe to add to their collections. The volume of art treasures being moved to Britain in this way was unequalled anywhere else in Europe, and explains the richness of many private and public collections in Britain today. Yet tourism in those days, aimed essentially at the very top of the social ladder and at the well educated, was fundamentally a cultural activity. These first tourists, though undertaking their Grand Tour, were more travellers than tourists.
Most major British artists of the eighteenth century did the "Grand Tour", as did their great European contemporaries such as Claude Lorrain. Classical architecture, literature and art have always drawn visitors to Rome, Naples, Florence.
The Romantic movement (inspired throughout Europe by the English poets William Blake and Lord Byron, among others), extended this to Gothic countryside, the Alps, fast flowing rivers, mountain gorges, etc.
Health tourism & leisure travel
It was not until the 19th century that cultural tourism developed into leisure and health tourism. Some English travellers, after visiting the warm lands of the South of Europe, decided to stay there either for the cold season or for the rest of their lives. Others began to visit places with health-giving mineral waters, in order to relieve a whole variety of diseases from gout to liver disorders and bronchitis.
Leisure travel was a British invention due to sociological factors. Britain was the first European country to industrialize, and the industrial society was the first society to offer time for leisure to a growing number of people. Initially, this did not apply to the working masses, but rather to the owners of the machinery of production, the economic oligarchy, the factory owners, and the traders. These comprised the new middle class.
The British origin of this new industry is reflected in many place names. At Nice, one of the first and most well established holiday resorts on the French Riviera, the long esplanade along the seafront is known to this day as the Promenade des Anglais; in many other historic resorts in continental Europe, old well-established palace hotels have names like the Hotel Bristol, the Hotel Carlton or the Hotel Majestic - reflecting the dominance of English customers to whom these resorts previously catered to.
Winter tourism
Even winter sports were largely invented by the British leisured classes initially at the Swiss village of Zermatt (Valais) (year?) and St Moritz in 1864.
Until the first tourists appeared, the Swiss thought of the long snowy winter as being a time when the best thing to do was to stay indoors and make cuckoo clocks or other small mechanical items.
The first packaged winter sports holidays ( vacations) followed in 1903, to Adelboden, also in Switzerland.
Organized sport was well established in Britain before it reached other countries. The vocabulary of sport bears witness to this: rugby, football, and boxing all originated in Britain, and even Tennis, originally a French sport, was formalized and codified by the British, who hosted the first national championship in the nineteenth century, at Wimbledon. Winter sports were a natural answer for a leisured class looking for amusement during the coldest season.
Mass travel
Mass travel could not really begin to develop until two things occurred.
a) improvements in technology allowed the transport of large numbers of people in a short space of time to places of leisure interest, and
b) greater numbers of people began to enjoy the benefits of leisure time. A major development was the invention of the railways, which brought many of Britain's seaside towns within easy distance of Britain's urban centres.
The father of modern mass tourism was Thomas Cook who, on 5 July 1841, organized the first package tour in history, by chartering a train to take a group of temperance campaigners from Leicester to a rally in Loughborough , some twenty miles away. Cook immediately saw the potential for business development in the sector, and became the world's first tour operator.
He was soon followed by others, with the result that the tourist industry developed rapidly in early Victorian Britain. Initially it was supported by the growing middle classes, who had time off from their work, and who could afford the luxury of travel and possibly even staying for periods of time in boarding houses.
However, the Bank Holiday Act 1871 introduced a statutory right for workers to take holidays, even if they were not paid at the time. (As an aside, in the UK there is still no obligation to pay staff who do not work on public holidays.)
The combination of short holiday periods, travel facilities and distances meant that the first holiday resorts to develop in Britain were towns on the seaside, situated as close as possible to the growing industrial conurbations.
For those in the industrial north, there were Blackpool in Lancashire, and Scarborough in Yorkshire. For those in the Midlands, there were Weston-super-Mare in Somerset and Skegness in Lincolnshire, for those in London there were Southend-on-Sea, Broadstairs, Brighton, Eastbourne, and a whole collection of other places.
In travelling to the coast, the population was following in the steps of Royalty. King George III is widely acknowledged as popularising the seaside holiday, due to his regular visits to Weymouth when in poor health.
For a century, domestic tourism was the norm, with foreign travel being reserved, as before, for the rich or the culturally curious. A minority of resorts, such as Bath, Harrogate and Matlock, emerged inland. After World War II holiday villages such as Butlins and Pontins emerged, but their popularity waned with the rise of package tours and the increasing comforts to which visitors became accustomed at home. Towards the end of the 20th century the market was revived by the upmarket inland resorts of Dutch company Centre Parcs.
Other phenomena that helped develop the travel industry were paid holidays:
- 1.5 million manual workers in Britain had paid holidays by 1925
- 11 million by 1939 (30% of the population in families with paid holidays)
Outside Britain
Similar processes occurred in other countries, though at a slower rate, given that nineteenth century Britain was far ahead of any other nation in the world in the process of industrialisation.
In the USA, the first great seaside resort, in the European style, was Atlantic City, New Jersey .
In Continental Europe, early resorts included Ostend (for the people of Brussels), and Boulogne-sur-Mer ( Pas-de-Calais) and Deauville ( Calvados) (for Parisians).
International mass tourism
Increasing speed on railways meant that the tourist industry could develop internationally. By 1901, the number of people crossing the English Channel from England to France or Belgium had passed 0.5 million per year.
However it was with cheap air travel in combination with the package tour that international mass tourism developed after 1963. For the worker living in greater London, Brindisi today is almost as accessible as Brighton was 100 years ago.
Recent developments
There have been a few temporary setbacks in tourism, the latest being related to the September 11, 2001 attacks and terrorist threats to tourist destinations such as Bali and European cities. Some of the tourist destinations, including the Costa del Sol, the Baleares and Cancun have lost popularity due to shifting tastes and perceptions among tourists. In this context, the excessive building and environmental destruction often associated with traditional "sun and beach" tourism may contribute to a destination's saturation and subsequent decline. This appears to be the case with Spain's Costa Brava, a byword for this kind of tourism in the 1960s and 1970s. With only 11% of the Costa Brava now unblemished by low-quality development ( Greenpeace Spain's figure), the destination now faces a crisis in its tourist industry. Belated attempts to move towards "quality tourism" are difficult given competition from cheaper, unspoilt holiday destinations on the one hand and the legacy of decades of over-exploitation on the other. In many respects, Tenerife provides a paradigm of the negative impact of mass tourism. Organizations like Greenpeace and ATAN (http://www.atan.org/en) are particularly critical of development on the island, arguing that Tenerife's current tourism industry is both economically and environmentally unsustainable.
Receptive tourism is now growing at a very rapid rate in many developing countries, where it is often the most important economic activity in local GDP.
In recent years, second holidays or vacations have become more popular as people's disposable income increases. Typical combinations are a package to the typical mass tourist resort, with a winter skiing holiday or weekend break to a city or national park.
On 26 December 2004 a tsunami 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake hit Asian countries bordering the Indian Ocean, and also the Maldives. Tens of thousands of lives were lost, and many tourists died. This, together with the vast clean-up operation in place, has stopped or severely hampered tourism to the area.
Special forms of tourism
For the past few decades other forms of tourism, also known as niche tourism, have been becoming more popular, particularly:
- Adventure tourism: Tourism involving travel in rugged regions, or adventurous sports such as mountaineering and hiking (tramping).
- Agritourism: Farm based tourism, helping to support the local agricultural economy.
- Armchair tourism and virtual tourism: not travelling physically, but exploring the world through internet, books, TV, etc.
- Cultural tourism: Includes urban tourism, visiting historical or interesting cities, such as London, Paris, Prague, Rome, Cairo, Beijing, Kyoto, and experiencing their cultural heritages. May also consist of specialized cultural experiences, such as art museum tourism where one visits many art museums during the tour, or opera tourism where one sees many operas or concerts during the tour.
- Disaster tourism: travelling to a disaster scene not primarily for helping, but because one finds it interesting to see. It can be a problem if it hinders rescue, relief and repair work.
- Drug tourism (for use in that country, or, legally often extremely risky, for taking home)
- Ecotourism: Sustainable tourism which has minimal impact on the environment, such as safaris ( Kenya) and Rainforests ( Belize), or national parks.
- Educational tourism: May involve travelling to an education institution, a wooded retreat or some other destination in order to take personal-interest classes, such as cooking classes with a famous chef or crafts classes.
- Gambling tourism, e.g. to Atlantic City, Las Vegas , Macau or Monte Carlo for the purpose of gambling at the casinos there.
- Gay tourism: Tourism marketed to gays who wish to travel to gay-friendly destinations which feature a gay infrastructure (bars, businesses, restaurants, hotels, nightlife, etc.), the opportunity to socialize with other gays, and the feeling that one can relax safely among other gay people.
- Heritage tourism: Visiting historical or industrial sites, such as old canals, railways, battlegrounds, etc.
- Health tourism: Usually to escape from cities or relieve stress, perhaps for some 'fun in the sun', etc. Often to "health spas".
- Hobby tourism: Tourism alone or with groups to participate in hobby interests, to meet others with similar interests, or to experience something pertinent to the hobby. Examples might be garden tours, ham radio DXpeditions, or square dance cruises.
- Inclusive tourism: Tourism marketed to those with functional limits or disabilities. Referred to as "Tourism for All" in some regions. Destinations often employ Universal Design and Universal Destination Development principles.
- Medical tourism, e.g .:
- for what is illegal in one's own country, e.g. abortion, euthanasia; for instance, euthanasia for non-citizens is provided by Dignitas in Switzerland.
- for advanced care that is not available in one's own country
- in the case that there are long waiting lists in one's own country
- for use of free or cheap health care organisations
Trends
The World Tourism Organization forecasts that international tourism will continue growing at the average annual rate of 4 percent [1] (http://www.world-tourism.org/market_research/facts/market_trends.htm). By 2020 Europe will remain the most popular destination, but its share will drop from 60 percent in 1995 to 46 percent. Long-haul will grow slightly faster than intraregional travel and by 2020 its share will increase from 18 percent in 1995 to 24 percent.
Space tourism is expected to "take off" in the first quarter of the 21st century, although compared with traditional destinations the number of tourists in orbit will remain low until technlogies such as space elevator make space travel cheap.
Technological improvement is likely to make possible air-ship hotels, based either on solar-powered airplanes or large dirigibles . Underwater hotels, such as Hydropolis , slated to open in Dubai in 2006, will be built. On the surface of the ocean tourists will be welcomed by ever larger cruise ships and perhaps floating cities.
Some futurists expect that movable hotel "pods" will be created that could be temporarily erected anywhere on the planet, where building a permanent resort would be unacceptable politically, economically or environmentally.
See also
- Backpacking
- Hospitality Services
- Hotel
- Passport
- Pilgrimage
- Tourism in literature
- Transport
- World Tourism Organization
- World Tourism Rankings
- List of popular tourist regions
- List of types of lodging
- List of international travel guides and web sites
This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)
Mentioned In
tourism is mentioned in the following topics:
Copyrights:
 |  | Dictionary definition of tourism The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition Copyright © 2004, 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved. More from Dictionary |
 | | WordNet information about tourism WordNet 1.7.1 Copyright © 2001 by Princeton University. All rights reserved. More from WordNet |
 | | Wikipedia information about tourism This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Tourism". More from Wikipedia |
 | | Translations for tourism Copyright © 2005, WizCom Technologies Ltd. All rights reserved. More from Translations |
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