Critical Tourism Theory

Question: Critically discuss The positive economic, sociocultural or environmental benefits that tourism can achieve for the host community far outweigh any negative impacts brought about by tourism. Answer: Introduction: In the resent years, development of casino have made huge amount of contribution to the tourism industry. From the beginning of casino invention, it has able to grab the attention of tourist. Therefore, capacities and number of casinos have grown rapidly. Particularly in the countries like Singapore and China has become almost the major attraction for the tourist development. Therefore, casino development has become highly profitable for the economy in this region. Especially in Macau, after the liberalization of the casino licensing, it has able to create a huge amount of positive impact on the economy. Many studies also established the fact that casino gambling has been economically accepted by those locations as well which are struggling to develop a proper economical structure for the society. Casino gambling accepted in these regions as a strategy to enhance the present economical condition of the society. However, the development of casino tourism also has certain negative impa cts that society has to deal with. The essay will elaborate both positive and negative impact of casino tourism. Discussion: Firstly, the positive economical impact of casino tourism in Macau is reflected on the number of job opportunities created. Since, the casino does not require personnel with huge amount knowledge and skill; it provided the job opportunities to the all level of the Macau. Casino tourism in Macau is hugely popular among the foreign tourist. Many people come from abroad to visit gambling casinos of Macau. It induces Foreign investor to invest huge amount of money, which plays a critical role in the economical development of the society. In 2015, gambling revenue of Macau has able to reach $54 billion (Tam, Tsai and Chen McCain 2013). This also increases the government income from collection of tax revenues, which is critical for economical development of the society. Year No. of Casinos No. of Gaming Tables No. of Slot Machines Revenues ($USD) 2005 17 1,388 3,421 $5,755 2006 24 2,762 6,546 $7,077 2007 28 4,375 13,267 $10,377 2008 31 4,017 11,856 $13,596 2009 33 4,770 14,363 $14,921 2010 33 4,791 14,450 $23,542 2011 34 5,302 16,056 $33,483 2012 35 5,485 16,585 $38,017 2013 35 5,750 13,106 $45,093 2014 35 5,711 13,018 $43,940 2015 35 5,957 14,578 $28,855 Table 1: Revenues from casino gambling in Macau (Source: McCartney 2015) However, casino tourism development also created certain negative impact on the economy of Macau. The main negative impact it made of the Macau is the consumption of the public services. In other word, it related to the economic carrying capacity of a particular region. Since, increase in the number of casino induces the increase of number of tourists in the destination like Macau (Fong, Fong and Law 2015). Therefore, the local people have to deal with the factor like inflation. Since, casino gambling increases the chances of foreign money transaction. Furthermore, gambling philosophy and gambling activities of casinos negatively correlated with the economic development and business principles. The casino industrys economical impact on the Singapore is immense. In fact the positive economical impact of casino industry set to surplus the revenues of the Las Vegas in the coming two three years. The positive economical impact of the casinos is so huge that it increases the number of tourist 14.6 million in 2014 whereas the number before the introduction of casinos was below the 10 million mark (Vlcek 2015). Therefore, it obviously increases the job opportunity and per-capita income of the Singapore society. It also induces the GDP of Singapore to rise at the rate of 15%, which helps Singapore to become the Asias fastest growing economy. Year No. of Casinos No. of Gaming Tables No. of Slot Machines Revenues ($USD) 2011 56 12302 20,056 $483000 2012 75 16485 26,585 $563000 2013 90 21750 33,106 $640000 2014 115 27711 37,018 $712500 2015 125 33957 44,578 $772300 Table 2: Revenues from casino gambling in Singapore (Source: Li, Wong and Kim 2016) However, the casino gambling also does have some amount of negative economical impact associated with it. Since, major portion of the tourist in Singapore are foreigners, it reflects a huge amount of chance by which foreigners can actually take the currency of Singapore outside the country (Moufakkir and Timothy 2014). It can actually damage the overall income of the country. The negative economical impact of casinos also reflects the competition of local against foreign tourist gambling. However, in case of Singapore, the positive impact of gambling is so much that it does not really consider to look into the negative aspect of the casino. In Macau, the development of casino has also huge amount positive impact on the society. Since, tourist development in Macau increases the government income hugely, which induce them to spend a lot of money on the development of the infrastructure. It not only creates a huge amount of positive impact on the tourist development, but also helps the local people to gain advantage to this highly developed infrastructure (Timothy 2014). Increase in the number of casinos also enhances the number of tourists in the society, which induces the government to develop a much more effective strategy for the purpose of providing better public facilities to peoples. The major negative social impact that the casino gambling has is it actually made the people addicted to it. Addiction in gambling actually induces major negative impact on the society. As it increases the chances of crime related to gambling (Mowforth and Munt 2015). Since, addiction induce peoples do to do certain things, which are not right. It also induces the people to spend money in the most unethical way, many people got bankrupted due to the addiction of the casino gambling. Addiction with casino gambling also made lot of students to dropout from the high schools. Since, gambling in casinos is represented in such a glamorous way, it grab the attention the teenagers very easily. Studies identified the fact that with increase the number of casinos in the Macau, number of divorces in the society has also increase proportionately. The positive impact of tourism in Singapore is mainly observed through increasing GDP of the country. The total contribution by tourism in the year 2014 was 10.1% and it further increased by 4.7 % in the year 2015. The total contribution to employment due tourism in Singapore was 8.5% of the total employment among 303,000 jobs. It further increased by 2.4% in the year 2015.The main contribution of tourism is also seen industries related to accommodation services, food and beverages, transportation services, cultural sports and recreational services. Hence Singapore proves itself as a leader in terms of exhibiting the traditional cultures of one of the most important destination of Asia. Tourism is also responsible for promoting and maintaining the cultural relation as well as international cooperation. Tourism brings value to heritage monuments such as Merilon Park at Martina Bay, Clarke Quay, National Museum of Singapore and Chinatown. It adds to cross cultural skills of the local r esidents in terms of communicating with tourists from different places of the world and manage various situations relating to self expression. Due to increase in tourism the Government is of Singapore is working on improving and maintain gardens like gardens by the bay, Singapore waterfront gardens situated at the Marina Bay. Due to this Singapore has also earned its name as the Garden City. The tourism has contributed to large amount in building infrastructure and transportation facilities which aid the tourists in increased accessibility (Board 2015) The negative impact of tourism involves creation of more air pollution. Every year Singapore tourism service has to accommodate more than 17 million visitors coming to visit Singapore. This increases the overall transportation activities and increases the carbon emissions from increased air traffic and land transport. The limited amount of resources in a small country like Singapore adds to problem of depletion of water. A huge amount of water is wasted in the bathtubs of hotels, laundry and housekeeping services for frequently changing of towels add to the problem of water crisis. The country also faces serious issues relating to littering of the city and the Government of Singapore has to spend a considerable amount in order to deploy cleaning services. The casinos in Singapore bring a negative impact on the social aspect of the country. It often leads to loss of authenticity in terms of social norms, culture and traditions of the nation (Katirciolu 2014). Conclusion The impacts of the both positive and negative impacts of the various countries have an direct impact on the revenues generated of both the countries. We can also see the positive impacts of tourism in case of Singapore outweigh the negative impacts. The Singapore Government is more efficient in terms of proper management of the tourism operations and hence it can earn more revenue in the future thereby creating lesser negative impact on the society. The tourism in Macau faces several negative impacts and increased crime rate due to gambling. The Government needs to adopt proper planning of the tourism activities so that it can attract more number of visitors. The Singapore Government should put an augmented effort on maintaining the heritage sites of the country thereby preserving the cultural heritage and attracting more visitors every year. Reference List Board, S.T., 2015. Singapore tourism: Year in review 2014. Fong, L.H.N., Fong, D.K.C. and Law, R., 2015. A Formative Approach to Modeling Residents Perceived Impacts of Casino Development.Journal of Travel Tourism Marketing, pp.1-14. Katirciolu, S.T., 2014. 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