What does tourism mean?
According to the RAE, tourism is:
- Activity or fact of traveling for pleasure.
- Set of means to facilitate tourist travel.
- Set of people who make tourist trips.
UNWTO (World Tourism Organization) tells us that:
- “Tourism is a social, cultural and economic phenomenon that involves the movement of people to countries or places outside their usual environment for personal, professional or business reasons. These people are called travellers (who may be either tourists or hikers; residents or non-residents) and tourism covers their activities, some of which involve a tourist expense.”
Etymologically:
- comes from the French word “tour”, from which derives “tourisme” which involves transfer but with the nuance of round trip travel.
Tourism development
In the first decades of the nineteenth century the term tourist begins to be used and later in the next century with the arrival of these to the main atractive areas, one begins to speak of tourism. All this is brought about by the industrial revolution, when the higher economic classes can afford to travel for pure pleasure.
However, moving from one place to another has always existed, but not always for recreational or leisure reasons.
In prehistory, relocation was motivated by physiological and safety needs. Once covered, the man could move to explore and extract the resources that would allow him to live and trade. With it came the curiosity to know new cultures, new lands, religions, ways of thinking, ways of healing physically and mentally…
What are the motivations nowadays for travelling?
Today, in addition to leisure and recreation, among the main motivations that lead us to travel are:
- Reduced stress and increased emotional well-being.
- Live new experiences and get away from routine.
- Experience the feeling of freedom, of adventure, of novelty.
- Create new memories.
- Facing new challenges that make us grow.
- To enhance self-knowledge.
- Open the mind to new cultures, ways of thinking.
- Meet new people.
- Give a vital change.
As an industry professional and a human being, I would recommend that you give yourself the opportunity to see for yourself the benefits of traveling, and by this I don’t mean that you hypothecate to the eyebrows to get to the farthest places, if you consider so, there is nothing wrong about it, but personally I have been able to experience a lot of enjoyment in organizing small getaways during the year to upcoming places. These getaways from being more economical and beneficial to mental and emotional health are easier to schedule than perhaps a trip of a week or more.
The world is full of wonderful places and I bet you have many of them very close to you.
