How beneficial tourism is to a country for its skilled, unskilled and government workers, in the long run, is wholly dependent on how the country and its citizens make use of the revenue obtained from tourism and how they adapt to changing circumstances along the way. Taking this theme of mine as the primary point of my essay, I shall develop upon these ideas by exploring these through the lens of skilled, unskilled and government workers in each of the following paragraphs.
Tourism provides a way for unskilled workers to gain enough money to jump up the precarious ladder of the complicated intricacies of the social ladder. Bullock carts rush past on unpaved, pothole-ridden roads, precariously close to Shyam, a tour guide educating a group of inquisitive, starry-eyed foreigners upon the nature of his life in the slums. Soon, he surmises, they will reach the monolith structure right in front of his locality, where he would be able to add to the clinking coins in his tattered trousers. As he rushes forward, impatient and eager, the coins in his pocket jingle in the otherwise desolate landscape. He is snapped out of his reveries of living in a luxurious two-bedroom apartment in the city with his future children and future wife by a rude question from one of the annoying foreign brats. "In five years, you will see where I am," Shyam murmurs under his breath as he attends to the entitled prat. Is tourism beneficial to Shyam? In this situation, of course, it is! Shyam is uneducated as his parents did not have the time, nor the patience to send him to one of those government schools. Tourism, however, has provided Shyam with the opportunity of displaying his life to the world while gaining money out of it. Is tourism beneficial to all unskilled workers? A person like Shyam, dedicated to moving forward in life will easily be able to take advantage of this opportunity to build a long-term plan for the future by gathering money through these means. A study conducted by a sociology team at Bracken University found out that countries classified by the OECD council as “developing” reported a 35% increase in the number of people living over $20 every week, five years after tourism was introduced into the official government budget. Thus, in the long-run, tourism may only be beneficial to unskilled workers if they take advantage of the jobs presented and save money up for progressing forward in life. On the other hand, the situation for skilled workers is a little different and shall be explored in the next paragraph.
Skilled workers too have certain benefits from tourism that helps them in the long run. A survey conducted by the World Tourism Organization in 2015, aimed at finding out the impact of tourism on the host country’s infrastructure revealed that 79% of the 65,000 respondents believed that their country’s infrastructure had improved significantly when there was a huge influx of tourists into their countries. The survey also reported that 80% of people in tourism-dependent countries were classified as being “Very happy” with their current job status, compared to only 37% who said the same from countries dependent upon “Other factors”. Explaining these results on employment, Poutros Tamini, chairperson of the organization and chief researcher on the project says, “An influx of tourists into a country forces the government to provide better facilities to improve the image of the country on the international stage.” He further ruminates upon the matter saying, “How would you feel if a person entered your home and found it unkempt and dirty?” Famous economist John Lard elaborates upon this matter further saying “As countries develop their infrastructure, skilled workers like engineers and architects are hired at high salaries to prepare the high-rise skyscrapers and luxurious five-star hotels. Hotels create jobs for skilled workers catering and hospitals create a high-demand for doctors. Other professions benefit as well”. These tie up neatly with and complement a similar study conducted by the Social Sciences Department at Blackwood University where researchers found out that the average salaries reported by respondents for specific professions were consistently 27% higher on average in countries that were tourism-dependent. What matters is what this infrastructure and these high-paying skilled workers do with the enormous amount of money gained by tourism as well as how long the influx of tourists lasts. If the attractions bringing in tourists lead to perpetual revenue, these skilled workers would benefit for life. In other situations where this is temporary, long-term benefits will depend on where this revenue has been invested. Considering the impotence of some skilled workers, some fail to keep sight of the big picture and soon be reduced int their job satisfaction to their counterparts in other countries. Nevertheless, it is safe to say that with safe and wise investments, tourism will benefit these skilled workers in the long run as well. The long-term effects of tourism on countries and their governments as a whole, however, are dependent on where the revenue gained is spent and how actions taken by the government develop and these shall be explored in more detail in the next paragraph.
The long-term impact of tourism on a country as a whole depends upon how the government deals with the money obtained and this can be explored through examples. In a country like Turkey, where tourism is already on a decline due to the rising insurgency in the region, the money obtained through tourism has largely been squandered to forward certain extremist agendas. As a result, the World Bank reported a 2% decline in GDP for Turkey in 2018 with further declines forecasted for the future. On the other hand, a country like Mauritius developed on the back of tourism. Despite a 3% decline in tourists as reported by the state agency in 2018, the country’s GDP grew by an impressive 5% according to calculations carried out by the World Bank. Why are there so different results? Well, as Sam Wilson, head of Tourism studies at Oxford notes, “Some countries invest the money and revenue obtained from tourism directly into infrastructure. Others use it to forward government propaganda and intend on spending upon infrastructure and creating long-term jobs in the country later.” Clearly, the long-term impact of tourism on a country is wholly dependent upon its government’s policies as well as its actions. The effect of this cannot be fully evaluated without taking into account all the actions of the country.
To conclude, it can easily be inferred that the long-term benefits upon a country of tourism are dependent upon the actions of its people, skilled and unskilled workers as well as government policies. If the revenue for tourism is used wisely and tourism growth is planned accordingly, tourism will surely be beneficial to a country in the long-run.
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