Protect the Environment For Travel And Tourism Industry.

Tourism takes place for leisure or for recreational purposes and in the majority of cases, this will be for a holiday. We can also say that a tourist  is a temporary visitor who stay in a place for the purpose of holiday for at least 24 hours. Since the year 1950, the tourism industry has been a very fruitful sector to economy of many countries . Since then, many destinations including Mauritius and Maldives have started to develop this new emerging sector. The tourism sector has been very beneficial to us; for example, in the year 2009, the revenue from this sector to government was of about Rs 36 billion in Mauritius. We can thus see that tourist have contributed enormously and they have also brought along many positive impacts on the environment.

Let us now have a brief view of the positive environment impacts that have been brought by tourists;

Firstly, there has been improvement in our environment. For example, nowadays people have the opportunity to see wildlife animals and plants in their nature. Thus, people who have great interest in the flora and fauna are more inclined to exert pressure on the government in order to maintain our natural flora and fauna.

The landscaping of a destination is an important factor from the Travel and Tourism industry. Tourists have played an important role in improving the appearance of the environment of many destination. Landscaping can be carried out by planting trees, cleaning of rivers and lakes and enhancing the appearance of buildings.

Conservation is another positive impact of tourism. Tourist are attracted to areas of natural beauty, region of historical and architectural interests and places offering abundant and interesting flora and fauna. Tourist spending in conservation areas can provide the fund required to conserve and improve both natural and the man-made environment.

Having seen the positive impacts, on the other side, there are also many negative impacts imposed on the environment. There is the erosion of nature resources. When there are too many tourists who visit a natural area, the pressure and impact that they impose do not only damage wildlife but also disturb endangers wildlife.

Another negative impact is that there is traffic congestion. Congestion can cause inconvenience to local resident ; the local transport service can  be disturbed and there is also an increased danger to pedestrians. 

Furthermore, there is pollution of air and water. Air travel and road traffic inevitably pollute the air to some extent. Water is polluted by detergent and sewage. Water disposal is becoming a big problem in many destinations which is reducing the numbers of tourist due to diseases cause by these pollution. Thus many business is being affected by this reduction in tourist .

Therefore, to prevent businesses from being affected, we should try to prevent pollutions both water and air pollution.

Credit : BI