Culture and Tourism

Manzella (2006) describes tourism as source of enormous pleasure and enjoyment for millions of those who love the venture, creating communication and contact among people from diverse backgrounds, cultures and regions. Tourism is one the sectors that is growing very rapidly in the developing countries. As a result these developing nations are have made increased efforts to improve financial reserves and foreign reserves through the sector. The media coverage including: TV shows, magazines, travel documentaries, video series and newspapers have given tourism an additional advantage making it more integrated and global industry. The exportation of culture has seen tourism industry yield a lot of benefits. Particularly in some major destinations like South America, the Caribbean and South Asia were able to make tremendously good results over the last decade explaining how tourism sector has benefited from globalization. For the coming years, the projections are that the sector will continue recording good yields. 

Through the employment of electronic technology, the growth of tourism industry has been boosted by enhanced access to hotel and fare information, other than utilizing online reservation services. Although Europe remains the world’s leading tourism destination, the rates in developing countries are rising day in day out due to globalization. In parts of Asia and Africa, growth of the sector is expected to increase to 4.8% annually if the countries improve the infrastructure and security (Weibing, 2005).

Due to its fast growth rate, tourism has become one of the big industries in developing nations and as a result, it has served as a major foreign exchange earner for them. The major assets making the sector to flourish is their natural assets hence the sector goes along way in making these countries enhance conservation of their natural resources like wildlife and natural forests. The quality of the environment determines the accomplishment of the industry hence in most of these countries; efforts are being made to improve it. These are other forms globalization of tourism serves to benefit the host countries.

Other than just in developing countries, tourism and tourists development impacts all countries of then world. Their impacts are felt on communities, environments and economies, among these effects, some are very beneficial while others can lead to concerns. The positive results of tourism globalization include emergence of new and sustainable forms of tourism such as soft-tourism and ecotourism (Weibing, 2005). Some of the negative aspects of tourism globalization is the erosion of indigenous cultures of the host countries and also as reported, tourist attempt to gain their best of their experience and therefore taking getting everything from the environment and leading to damage on the land which can be permanent in cases; this situation is has been observed in the Caribbean especially Jamaica.

Cultural globalization is a form of globalization that results interaction of people from different cultural backgrounds. In other words it is the cross-cultural interaction, global mobility or global communication. This influences cultural values and norms to a big extent and affects social equity and social solidarity of developing nations. This has been witnessed in most African countries that have emulated the ways of lives and culture of Western countries (Geddes, 2004).

There are fears that self-interested individualism that is experienced in the market place extends to cultural values and norms leading to escalating social inequity and exclusion, isolation from civic participation an decision-making, lack of taking part in social activities, and obstacles to material source  and employment (Weibing, 2005). On the other hand, an individual who is socially integrated has a lot of connections both as a form of further distal connections and close social contacts. However, the social networks’ geographical scale is rising as a result of global media and communications; particularly over the internet hence people are continually accessing different cultures. Some of it is very harmful to humanity as many individuals can learn bad behavior like drug abuse, child trafficking, and child molestation over the internet. While on the other hand the internet can be used as a tool of learning good behavior like accessing helpful information and research for life improvement.

The radio and the televisions are other ways that have increased cultural globalization. Through these media of communication, some cultures have been eroded and others acquired. Children are the most affected by watching the televisions because they get exposed to pornography that can easily mould them into future perpetrators of sexual violence (Kilgour, 2007). In Africa, many people have left their ways and turned to different modes, for example, to ape the western fashion that is sometimes perceived as “scanty”.

Some studies link the digital split between the rich and the poor to the social segregation from the global civil society hence an increased gap between the two parties due to globalization. It is therefore very important to note that as much as their sexist the positive sides of cultural globalization, there are also many negative sides that it brings along. The developing countries are still experiencing both sides of the effects with proponents and opponents of the two sides determined to give reasons to push their respective agenda forward (Geddes, 2004).