Tourism industry Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Tourism industry - Essay Example It has also helped in better cultural understanding through the interchange of ideas between host and guest communities. Though mass tourism provides different economic and social benefits, it is also associated with different negative impacts on social, economic as well as environment aspects of a community. Tourism can be sustainable only if it is managed carefully (United Nations Environment Programme, 2014; Mirbabayev, n.d.). Taking into concern the various impacts of the mass tourism on environment and economy, there has been an idea of imposing taxes on mass tourism in additional to the already high taxes on various tourism requirements such as hotels, flight charges and other rentals. This idea may help in eliminating certain tourism related issues but it fails to realise the impact that it can cause to the tourism industry. In fact, tourism taxes in some countries have become an easy and a trendy fashion for governments to collect revenue from visitors in order to cover the government expenses. The tourism industry is taxed by methods of direct taxation to the tourists or units associated or involved in tourism (Gooroochurn & Sinclair, 2003; Rinaldi, n.d.). Such hikes in taxes not only force the tourists to go to other cheaper destinations but also have a serious effect on the local residents. For example, the Hawaiian Tourism industry experienced fall in tourism in 2007 owing to effects of various direct along with indirect tax hikes, which affected more than 75% of jobs in the state. The tourist shifted elsewhere taking their spending with them and the taxpayers were left with budget deficit owing to that the state economy was also weakened (Nothdurft, 2009). Similar example can be taken from fact that Caribbean Tourism was impacted negatively due the government aviation taxes in tourism (Caribbean journal, 2013) Tourism taxes are also being levied in the local level, which is creating more tax