A mere century ago, there was no mass tourism industry to speak of, and travel was dangerous and difficult. Today, tourism is the largest single industry on earth. In 2000, the "traveling population" reached 650 million, generating US$450 billion for the industry. As globalization advances, the market will only expand.
Now that the masses have the desire and ability to journey for the sheer pleasure of it, what is the impact of the travel industry on the world? What are individual countries doing to create conditions for tourism? What kinds of places attract the most visitors? Believe it or not, business people have been considering these questions for well over a century.
In 1893 a US investment firm advised clients to put their money into Caribbean islands, forecasting that these would become the places where the fashionable set played. Today, every decent beach is being developed into a new Caribbean island. They have not only luxury hotels and socializing, but also scuba diving, whale watching, ballooning, and other activities, as well as live performances.
Besides beaches, investors are also exploiting the market for athletics. It is quite common in Europe, North America, or Japan for people to undertake international travel to see top sporting events, creating a synergy of commercial opportunities with the sports industry. Also, with the decline of traditional aristocracies, palaces, castles, and villas are being turned into hotels and conference centers. Meanwhile, tourists and investors alike continue to flock to theme parks, hot springs resorts, and locations of particular religious or cultural interest (like Bali or Tibet).
Taiwan, which enjoys warm weather year-round, last year launched a program aimed at doubling tourism. Since the disappearance of SARS, those in the travel industry are even more determined to get Taiwan's tourism industry up to take-off speed. Following models such as those discussed above, there are theme parks, beach recreation areas, whale-watching on the East Coast, and places where local industries are combined with local culture and human interest. Events like Tungkang's Fresh Tuna Season, the Sky Lanterns of Pinghsi, and the Lotus Festival in Paiho are booming.
But the drive for large crowds and fast profits cannot but limit the imaginativeness of tourism development. If the methods used are too crude, there could be many ill side-effects. For example, let us ask: Is a given search for pleasure destructive of the environment, or supportive of it? In the last couple of years, Pingtung has strongly promoted the Fresh Tuna Season at Tungkang fishing harbor. But if there is no overall management of bluefin tuna populations, are we sure they can be a sustainable tourism resource?
Or take for example the various lotus festivals in recent years. They got started in Paiho in Tainan County, where lotus flowers are an agricultural product. Southern Taiwan has many lotus ponds and a suitable climate, making the lotus a special feature of the local culture, so it is definitely worth investing time in improving quality and ensuring sustainability there. But now many villages in northern and eastern Taiwan are deliberately trying to create lotus festivals out of nothing at all, in direct conflict with the local climate, and, in the case of Aboriginal villages in eastern Taiwan, the indigenous culture. You can't help but think there is a lack of authenticity and durability about these schemes, and they also raise fears that overlapping of local industries will lead to vicious competition that will drag down the legitimate sites along with the copycats.
Maybe drawing large crowds with deliberately staged events is a necessary measure to develop the tourism industry. But what if they are "full of sound and fury, but lacking in soul" (in the words of Wang Chen-hua, director of a private school). Thus, for example, Pinghsi's Sky Lanterns originally expressed respect for deities and spirits, but who can tell that these days, when any otherworldly atmosphere is smothered by the raging sounds of the pop bands doing outdoor shows during the event?
Today, globalization is making the world ever smaller, and homogenizing it as well. Between chain stores, characterless hotels, designer brands, and indistinguishable tourists lining the beaches, one gets the feeling-from the metropolitan center sto small towns in southern Taiwan-that it is all one big street, or all one long beach.
Will the growth of tourism leave a single spot undeveloped? Will there be any human culture than is not deliberately skewed to cater to travelers' tastes? Will we ever be able to "discover" anything for ourselves again, or feel the thrill of seeing the world in a completely different way? Will there come a day when this world is nothing but one big amusement park? When we will see and understand nothing of other lands except what comes in travel guides?
Who knows? But as global travel burgeons, should there not be an item in the development of the tourism industry that calls for more attention to problems of the changes wrought in the natural environment, the psychological impact on society, and the effects on human character?
