Key Question 1: How has the global tourist industry grown?
Key Idea 1 – Tourism has become an increasingly varied and global industry.
- Trends in the growth of tourist destinations around the world.
- Explore how different places and environments provide different opportunities for tourist activities, including investigations of two places at different stages of economic development.
- The development of mass commercial tourism and specialist tourism. Use examples to investigate the development of package holiday and short break destinations and the growth of exotic and long-haul locations, including ecotourism and fair trade tourism.
Key Idea 2 – There are a number of reasons for the expansion of the tourist industry.
- Explore the range of social and economic factors, including greater wealth, mobility and leisure time and changes in lifestyles.
- The role of technology.
- Use examples to investigate the growth of global tourism companies.
Key Question 2: What opportunities does the growth of the tourism industry create?
Key Ideas 1 – The tourism industry is important in many parts of the developed world.
- Investigate the range of economic, social, cultural and environmental benefits tourism brings to established tourist locations. Include a study of at least one established tourist location in a more developed country.
Key Idea 2 – Tourism can be an important way to address the development gap.
- Understand that countries vary in their levels of development.
- Use a range of economic and social indicators of development and evaluate the effectiveness of different indicators including GNI, Life Expectancy and the HDI.
- Investigate tourism as a way of promoting development, including the possible economic, social, cultural and environmental benefits in a developing long-haul location.
Key Question 3: How does tourism create challenges and conflicts?
Key Idea 1 – Tourism can create challenges for people and communities.
- Investigate the range of social and cultural challenges caused by the development of tourism, including the study of two places at different stages of economic development.
- The impacts of the decline of tourism in one named location.
- Disadvantages of tourism as a way of closing the development gap, including the economic challenges in a developing long-haul location.
- Investigate examples of how different tourist activities can conflict with each other and local communities.
- An investigation of the conflicts in one tourist honey pot.
Key Idea 2 – Tourism can create environmental challenges at different scales.
- Explore the local environmental impacts of tourist development, including studies of two places at different stages of economic development.
- Impacts on the global environment through increased international travel.
Key Question 4: How can the tourist industry promote sustainable development?
Key Idea 1 – Planning and management can help ensure that tourism is more sustainable.
- Use examples to investigate different strategies to manage the impacts of tourism in a sustainable way, including one ecotourism development in a developing country.
- The use of management and planning to resolve land use conflicts, including one tourist honey pot.
- Use examples to investigate the effectiveness of management strategies.
