Chapter 13. Back to the Big Picture: Globalization and Trends
13.3 Conclusion: The View from Canada
Morgan Westcott and Wendy Anderson, Eds
Tourism in Canada is already being impacted by globalization. The doors of the provinces have opened to travellers around the world, but especially from emerging markets such as China. Shifting products and services to meet the needs and desires of these new visitors will require flexibility and creativity for Canada’s tourism industry in the future.
Canada has also been impacted by the increase in new destinations, fighting for share of the growing tourism economy. Social media and other recent innovations in communication will continue to grow in importance for Canada to generate awareness of its many tourism products and services. Canada’s many unique cultures and experiences will help keep the country competitive as long as the industry also recognizes the potential negative impacts that tourism can have.
Recognition of tourism’s importance in Canada’s economy, along with supportive legislation and funding, is key to the long-term survival of the industry. At the same time, steps must be taken to prepare for the effects of climate change, with potentially shorter winters and reductions in precipitation. Canada’s tourism industry is already feeling the effects of collaborative consumption as services such as Airbnb grow in popularity across the country. The spread of technological advances and improved wireless access will help the industry satisfy this aspect of the market, while also increasing the means to raise awareness with more potential visitors.
To take advantage of these global opportunities, Canada’s tourism industry will have to react quickly to existing and emerging trends. In the meantime, we hope this textbook will serve as foundation for emerging tourism and hospitality professionals as they continue to learn about the industry.
What are some of the possible benefits and drawbacks of globalization on tourism?
Key Terms
- Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC): a forum that brings together countries from the Asia Pacific region (including Canada), and which has a Tourism Working Group that looks at policy development in a tourism context
- Authenticity of experience: a hot topic in tourism that started with MacCannell in 1976 and continues to today; discussion of the extent to which experiences are staged for visitors
- BRIC: an acronym for the growing economies of Brazil, Russia, India, and China
- BRICS: the acronym for the BRIC countries with the addition of South Africa or South Korea
- Collaborative consumption: also known as the sharing economy, a blend of economy, technology, and social movement where access to goods and skills is more important than ownership (e.g., Airbnb)
- Conscious consumerism: refers to consumers using their purchasing power to shape the world according to their values and beliefs
- Cultural commodification: the drive toward putting a monetary value on aspects of a culture
- Fad: something taken up in a finite, short amount of time — can represent a valuable business opportunity, but investment can be risky
- Globalization: the movement of goods, ideas, values, and people around the world
- Homogenizing: making the same, as in the effect of tourism helping to spread Western values, rendering one culture indistinguishable from the next
- In country: a term to describe using a local-ownership approach in order for the wealth generated from tourism to stay in a destination
- International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO): a specialized agency of the United Nations that creates global air policy and helps to develop industry capacity and safety
- MINT: an acronym for the countries of Mexico, Indonesia, Nigeria, and Turkey
- Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD): an organization 31 member countries who gather to discuss a range of policy issues, with a special committee dedicated to tourism
- PESTLE: an acronym for political, economic, social, technological, legal and environmental forces
- Tourism world-making: the way in which a place or culture is marketed and/or presented to tourists
- Trend: a phenomenon that influences things for a long period of time, potentially shifting the focus or direction of industry and society in a completely different direction
- VFR: an acronym for visiting friends and relatives; a tourism consumer market
How well do you know your key terms?
Exercises
- What are three benefits of globalization in terms of tourism? What are three negative impacts due to global tourism?
- Why is it important for a local tour operator, general manager, or tourism business owner to think about globalization? Where should we be looking to understand globalization and future trends? Name three sources.
- How can you tell the difference between a fad and a trend?
- Identify two current political trends by reading this week’s headlines or scanning a social media news feed. What impacts do you see those trends having on tourism and hospitality?
- The claim of an authentic experience is a common promise for tourism marketers. Thinking back to previous chapters (e.g., Chapter 3 on accommodation, Chapter 6 on entertainment, Chapter 12 on Indigenous tourism), name two ways visitors can determine whether an experience is authentic. In your own words, what is the value of authenticity, if any, in a globalized world?
- The industry has lobbied the Canadian government for policy changes that could help our country become a more competitive destination. Name two areas where these changes could be made.
- Name an economic trend that is prevalent in today’s news and media (e.g., the position of Canada’s dollar versus the U.S. dollar). List the five sectors of tourism, and next to each, identify two impacts this economic trend will have on the sector. Will the effects be the same across the industry? Or different?
- Name three environmental trends (e.g., climate change). For help, you can refer back to Chapter 10 on environmental stewardship.
- Destinations are beginning to recognize a trend toward travel as a bonding experience for families and groups. What kinds of experiences can be developed to attract this market? Name three examples.
- Thinking into the future, predict one trend in each PESTLE area (political, economic, social, technological, legal and environmental) that you feel will have long-lasting effects on tourism and hospitality.
- Imagine you own a small tourism or hospitality business. Using one future trend you identified in the previous question, and referring back to Chapter 11 on risk management and legal liability, identify three ways you could mitigate the negative impacts of this trend.
Case Study: The Rise of Dark Tourism
A 2014 article in the The Atlantic titled “The Rise of Dark Tourism” profiled the increase in travel to destinations and cities related to war, famine, disease, or other dark cultural phenomena, often in real time.
The article primarily used examples of travel to war-torn areas of the Middle East. For instance, a tour that culminates at the Quneitra Viewpoint allows visitors to watch battles of the Syrian civil war in real time. Tour leaders include a retired Israel Defense Forces colonel who shared that tourists to the area “feel that they are a part of it. They can go home and tell their friends, ‘I was on the border and I saw a battle'” (Kamin, 2014, para. 2). Other tours travel to the Israeli border town of Sderot, an area on the Gaza Strip under heavy rocket fire.
According to Philip Stone, director of the Institute for Dark Tourism Research at the U.K.’s University of Central Lancashire, while war tourism is not a new phenomenon, the increased commercialization has marked a new trend. Dark tourism now has a more sophisticated infrastructure than the days when Thomas Cook took visitors to see hangings, and the increase in technology and interpersonal communications has caused this area of tourism to grow at a faster rate (Kamin, 2014).
The article cites media phenomena such as VICE videos (online documentaries) and celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain’s show Parts Unknown, as well as the growth of the adventure tourism industry, as contributing factors. They list hyper-extreme tour operators such as War Zone Tours and Wild Frontiers (both in operation since the 1990s) as pioneers of the sector. More recent examples include former journalist Nicholas Wood, who formed Political Tours, a company that takes around a year to plan small-group excursions to political hot spots such as Libya, to the tune of $7,000 per guest (Kamin, 2014).
In addition to group tours, FIT (fully independent travellers) are creating their own extreme experiences, such as joining protestors in Kiev’s Independence Square and visiting Tahrir Square in Egypt to witness the election of Mohammed Morsi (Kamin, 2014).
Travel to North Korea is also a growing market, doubling in size each year with between 6,000 and 7,000 people making the trip in 2013. Some travellers cite their visits to countries and areas such as these with motivating them toward becoming journalists and activists. Others state their experiences are therapeutic, helping them to understand their own difficult experiences or those of others, such as the military service of family members (Kamin, 2014). According to one of these tourists, “You go to the most extreme place in order to not be alone with your feelings. You really can’t be anywhere else but there” (Kamin, 2014, para. 25).
Refer to the Institute for Dark Tourism Research and answer the following questions:
- Would you classify this type of travel as a trend, or a fad?
- The article seems to imply that dark tourism is an extension of adventure tourism. Do you agree? Why or why not?
- How does the concept of authenticity of experience factor into dark tourism?
- Imagine you are a citizen in a part of the world that is experiencing hardship and this type of tourism is increasing in your community. How might you feel about it?
- Imagine you go to a famous battlefield where Canadians had fought and died, such as Vimy Ridge the World War I battlefield in France. What are the visitor motivations and what is the outcome of the visitor experience?
- Would you classify visits to Ground Zero in New York as dark tourism? Why or why not?
- What are the implications for tourism operators in these areas in terms of risk management and legal liability?
References
Bachman, J. (2016). Even the Super Rich Want Free Wi-Fi in Hotels. Bloomberg. January 25, 2016.
BC Ministry of Attorney General. (June 2008). The diversity of visible minorities and ethnic origins in BC. [PDF] Retrieved from www.welcomebc.ca/welcome_bc/media/Media-Gallery/docs/communities/visible_minorities_ethnic_origins.pdf
BC Stats. (March 19, 2020). Quarterly population highlights. Retrieved from https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/data/statistics/infoline/infoline-2020/20-46-quarterly-pop-highlights
Brooks, B. (2020). 4 Major Trends that are Already Changing the Legal Sphere in 2020. Lawyer Monthly. February 2020. Retrieved from https://www.lawyer-monthly.com/2020/02/4-major-trends-that-are-already-changing-the-legal-sphere-in-2020/
Buhalis, D. & Law, R. (2008). Progress in information technology and tourism management: 20 years on and 10 years after the internet – the state of eTourism research. Tourism Management, 29, 609-623.
Business Insider. (2014). George Magnus: These 5 big demographic trends are shaping the world right now. Retrieved from http://www.businessinsider.com/5-demographic-trends-shaping-the-world-2014-4
Campbell, P., MacKinnon, A & Stevens, C. (2010). Global studies. Chichester, Surrey, UK: Blackwell.
Chung, N. & Koo, C. (2015). The Use of Social Media in Travel Information Search. Telematics and Informatics, 32(2), pp. 215-229.
CreditSuisse. (2018). Research Institute: The Future of Politics. Retrieved from https://www.credit-suisse.com/media/assets/corporate/docs/about-us/research/publications/future-of-politics.pdf
Da Silva, G.G. (2020). BRICS Development (Brazil, Russia, India, China And South Africa) In Global Political Economic Rules. International Journal of Science and Society, Vol 2, Issue 2, 2020, pp. 168-175.
Dickinson, J.E., Ghali, K., Cherrett, T., Speed, C., Davies, N., & Norgate, S. (2014). Tourism and the smartphone app: capabilities, emerging practice and scope in the travel domain. Current Issues in Tourism, 17(1), 84-101.
Fang, Z., Gu, B., Luo, X., & Xu, Y. (2015). Contemporaneous and delayed sales impact of location-based mobile promotions. Information Systems Research, 26(3), 552-564.
Flight Global. (2015). Airport security. Retrieved from http://www.flightglobal.com/features/9-11/airport-security/
García-Crespo, Á., González-Carrasco, I., López-Cuadrado, J.L., Villanueva, D., and González, Á. (2016) CESARSC: Framework for creating cultural entertainment systems with augmented reality in smart cities, Computer Science and Information Systems, 13 (2) (2016), pp. 395-425
Gonzalez, B.L. (2019). Why responsible consumption is everyone’s business. World Economic Forum. Retrieved from https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/09/why-responsible-consumption-is-everyone-s-business/
Government of Canada. (2012). Socially conscious consumer trends: sustainability. [PDF] Retrieved from www5.agr.gc.ca/resources/prod/Internet-Internet/MISB-DGSIM/ATS-SEA/PDF/6308-eng.pdf
Government of Canada (2019). Canada’s Tourism Vision. Retrieved from https://www.ic.gc.ca/eic/site/095.nsf/eng/00002.html
Gretzel, U., Sigala, M., Xiang, Z. & Koo, C. (2015). Smart Tourism: Foundations and developments. Electronic Markets, 25, pp. 179-188.
GroupMap. (2020). PESTLE Analysis. Retrieved from https://www.groupmap.com/map-templates/pestle-analysis/
Hamari, Juho & Sjöklint, Mimmi & Ukkonen, Antti. (2016). The Sharing Economy: Why People Participate in Collaborative Consumption. Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology. DOI:67. 2047-2059. 10.1002/asi.23552.
Higgins-Desbiolles, Freya (2018). Sustainable tourism: Sustaining tourism or something more? Tourism Management Perspectives, Volume 25, pp. 157-160.
Hollinshead, K., & Suleman, R. (2018). The everyday instillations of worldmaking: new vistas of understanding on the declarative reach of tourism. Tourism Analysis, 23(2), 201-213. DOI:10.3727/108354218X15210313504553
Hopken, W., Fuchs, M., Zanker, M., & Beer, T. (2010). Context-based adaptation of mobile applications in tourism. Information Technology and Tourism, 12, 175-195.
International Monetary Fund. 2019. World Economic Outlook Database. Retrieved from https://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/weo/2019/02/weodata/index.aspx
Ipsos. (2020). Global Trends 2020: Understanding complexity. Retrieved from https://www.ipsos.com/en/global-trends-2020-understanding-complexity
Kamin, D. (2014, July 15). The rise of dark tourism. Retrieved from www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/07/the-rise-of-dark-tourism/374432/
Kim, D. & Kim S. (2017). The Role of Mobile Technology in Tourism: Patents, Articles, News, and Mobile Tour App Reviews. Sustainability, 9(11).
LexisNexis. (2020). Five Legal Trends to Watch in 2020. Retrieved from https://www.lexisnexis.com/community/lexis-legal-advantage/b/trends/posts/five-legal-trends-to-watch-in-2020
Loureiro, S.M.C., Guerreiro, J. & Ali, F. (2020). 20 Years of research on virtual reality and augmented reality in tourism context: A test-mining approach. Tourism Management. 77.
MacAskill, H. (2014, Nov 18). Five-fold increase in terrorism fatalities since 9/11, says report. The Guardian. Retrieved from http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/nov/18/fivefold-increase-terrorism-fatalities-global-index
MacCannell, D. (1976). The Tourist: A new theory of the leisure class. University of California, Berkeley.
Mehraliyev, F., Choi, Y. & King, B. (2020). Theoretical Foundations of Social Media Power in Hospitality and Tourism: A hierarchical model. Cornell Hospitality Quarterly. June 2020.
Nevett, J. (2019). The Greta effect? Meet the schoolgirl climate warriors. May 3, 2019. Retrieved from https://www.bbc.com/news/world-48114220
Nielsen. (2014a). Is sharing the new buying? Retrieved from www.nielsen.com/us/en/insights/reports/2014/is-sharing-the-new-buying1.html
Nielsen. (2014b). Doing well by doing good. Retrieved from www.nielsen.com/us/en/insights/reports/2014/doing-well-by-doing-good.html
Northam, J. (2014, May 13). The global economy: a world of acronyms. NPR. Retrieved from www.npr.org/blogs/parallels/2014/05/13/311852601/the-global-economy-will-mint-countries-be-the-new-brics
NTTO. (n.d.). The National Travel and Tourism Office. Retrieved from https://travel.trade.gov/
Papatheodorou, A., Rossello, J., & Xiao, H. (2010). Global economic crisis and tourism: consequences and perspectives. Journal of Travel Research, 49(1), 39-45.
Pine, Joseph & Gilmore, James (1998). Welcome to the Experience Economy. Harvard Business Review, July-August 1998. Retrieved from https://hbr.org/1998/07/welcome-to-the-experience-economy
Pollack, A. (2012). Conscious travel: Signposts towards a new model for tourism. 2nd UNWTO Ethics and Tourism Congress. Retrieved from http://conscious.travel/
Population Reference Bureau. (2013). 2013 World population data sheet. Retrieved from www.prb.org/Publications/Datasheets/2013/2013-world-population-data-sheet.aspx
Sacks, D. (2011). The sharing economy. Fast Company, 155, 88-131.
Shaw, D., Grehan, E., Shiu, E., Hassan, L., & Thomson, J. (2005). An exploration of values in ethical consumer decision making. Journal of Consumer Behaviour, 4(3), 185-200.
Statista. 2020. Number of outbound journeys of Chinese tourists from 2008 to 2018. Retrieved from https://www.statista.com/statistics/277250/number-of-outbound-journeys-of-chinese-tourists/
Statistics Canada. (2017). British Columbia [Province] and Canada [Country] (table). Census Profile. 2016 Census. Statistics Canada Catalogue no. 98-316-X2016001. Ottawa. Released November 29, 2017. Retrieved from https://www12.statcan.gc.ca/census-recensement/2016/dp-pd/prof/index.cfm?Lang=E
Swinhoe, D. (2020). The 15 biggest data breaches of the 21st century. CSO. Retrieved from https://www.csoonline.com/article/2130877/the-biggest-data-breaches-of-the-21st-century.html
TIAC. (2019). Mapping Tourism Success – TIAC’s 2019 Federal Tourism Platform. Retrieved from https://tiac-aitc.ca/2019_Federal_Tourism_Platform.html
Tourism for SDGS. (2020). Tourism for SDGS. Retrieved from http://tourism4sdgs.org/tourism-for-sdgs/what-are-the-sdgs/
Tripathy, A.K., Tripathy, P.K., Ray, N.K., and Mohanty, S.P., “iTour: The Future of Smart Tourism”, IEEE Consumer Electronics Magazine, Volume 7, Issue 3, May 2018, pp. 32-37.
United Nations Population Fund (UNPF). (2015). World population trends. Retrieved from http://www.unfpa.org/world-population-trends
United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs Population Division (2019a). World Population Prospects 2019: Highlights. [PDF] Retrieved from https://population.un.org/wpp/Publications/Files/WPP2019_10KeyFindings.pdf
United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs Population Division (2019b). World Population Prospects 2019 Highlights. Retrieved from https://population.un.org/wpp/Publications/Files/WPP2019_Highlights.pdf
United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs Population Division (2019c). International Migration 2019. Retrieved from
https://www.un.org/development/desa/pd/sites/www.un.org.development.desa.pd/files/files/documents/2020/Feb/un_2019_internationalmigration_wallchart.pdf
United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs Population Division (2019d). World Urbanization Prospects The 2018 Revision. [PDF]
https://population.un.org/wup/Publications/Files/WUP2018-Report.pdf
World Bank. (2020). International tourism, number of arrivals. Retrieved from https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/ST.INT.ARVL
World Economic Forum. (2019). Global Competitiveness Report. Retrieved from http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_TheGlobalCompetitivenessReport2019.pdf
World Economic Forum. (2019b). 4 Big Trends for the Sharing Economy in 2019. Retrieved from https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/01/sharing-economy/
World Tourism Organization. (2010). Demographic change and tourism. World Tourism Organization, Madrid, Spain.