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Debates over the meaning of eco-tourism, nature tourism, and other similar phrases suggest that unnecessary and wasteful word-wars are on the horizon. I suggest that even though "tourism" is itself a large, ascientific, and overly inclusive word (but unnecessarily exclusive of some activities), it nevertheless connotes a realm of knowledge and work. Within this paper we wish to present a particular, fairly inclusive view of tourism but one having the characteristics of a general system. The concept is one that includes recreational and educational outings distant from home that may be to wildernesses, theme parks, examples of past or present cultures, wildlife watching areas, camping areas, and visits to urban and university centers.
We tend to work with and suggest general systems theory (Von Bertalanffy 1968) (Fig. 1) for its utility. It is easy and useful to conceive of a tourism system composed of four major subsystems with strong relationships and overlapping interest and work.
These four subsystems are depicted in Fig. 2 and are called ecologic, economic, esthetic, and energetic. They are believed to be inclusive of a modem, progressive, adaptive tourism system for a state or country and the basis for planning and coordination within centers for tourism research, modeling, consulting and development. The union of the four is a tetrahedron, a volume symbolic of the conceptual space where there may be found any singular, pair, triad, or tetrad topics and their relations. The tetrahedron may be a teaching or conceptual aid but it merely suggests the large, complex highly-related domain which is modern tourism. Each of the subsystems will be discussed.
Ecological - Easily noted as "eco-tourism" the ecological dimensions of this subsystem include visits, observations, work experience, challenge hikes, and other participation in all aspects of the outdoors from a day on a fishing boat, camel rides in the desert, hikes to deep forest glades, and rides into coal mines. These are natural resource-based human experiences that may be exciting, stressful, restful, educational, liberating, and re-creational. Visits to camps, to parks, or extended tours or activities are all potentially related to natural resource based experience -- from farm plats to goats; trail rides in wilderness; river rapids, boat rides; or educational lectures in special places such as agroforestry research areas. In some cases participation may be as a cerebral receiver of stimuli; in others people are actively engaged in environmental clean-up, research, trail development, and other work.
Ecological or nature tourism in all of its dimensions is encompassed within this subsystem and includes microsite development (campsite design and layout, signs, trails, scenery analyses, and a range of nature watching from African safaris to Central American bird watching trips. It includes the new sport of bird watching, Avi.
It is likely to be highly related to economic development through purchase of equipment, supplies and services and as contacts for later purchases such as of pet birds, aquarium stock, and property rentals or sales.
Economic - Hailed as a major "industry" in some states and nations, tourism is noted for its monetary importance. Rarely are full benefits and costs of the industry (or any industry) fully or properly accounted. Nevertheless, tourism is seen as having real or potential monetary importance in many areas. As we consider the economic subsystem it is easy to list the major categories:
The other monetary categories less easily listed suggest a large and fertile field for creative work on health costs foregone (resulting from recreational tours), returns from new enterprises, sales enhancement, value added to local products, land value changes, and land "protection" gained by awareness of its contribution to viewscapes and watersheds that are vital to the tourism industry.
Where economics deals with the allocation of scarce resources, the tetradic tourism system is conceived as including models and systems that allow appropriate investments to be made by agents in developing countries as well as at the microscale of local or private investors.
Esthetic - "Native to pretty", but that is not sufficient to capture the domain of this subsystem. On a recent visit to a world-class park in Senegal I had to drive a long distance over a poor road. I was absorbed by the changes in the vegetative types, but I doubted if other visitors (a majority) would have found the trip interesting. An alternative to my trip to a wildlife area (perhaps eco-tourism) would have to have for a profitable and repeatable experience occasional strips for observing cultural features, people, battlefields, experimental plots, notable geology, etc. The wildlife finally experienced, while very significant, was not enough to sustain a large, diverse group of return-oriented tourists, profitably, over many years.
There was a need for interpretation, for education before the trip was undertaken (e.g., a videotape), and for cultural involvement along with the trip to a major destination. (Conversely, a trip to a palace might be enhanced by stops along the way to participate in forest or wildlife dimensions of the land and its people.)
Viewscapes are a good example of one possible meaning of the line in Fig. 2 connecting ecological and esthetic. The tetradic tourism system involves both subsystems as well as high technology geographic information systems that allow landscapes (specifically seen-areas) to be analyzed, demarked, and managed to assure the quality of sites. Management of land within and around a site, however, is not sufficient. The tetradic tourism system that is needed is global, starting with education of children, who may become tourists, videotapes before departure, quality infrastructure including convenience and hospitality at parts-of-entry (not extortion as I experienced in northern Nigeria), travel accommodations, translation services, and safety and medical support.
It is hard to achieve high quality tourism-related esthetic experiences among pitiful beggars (although this may be a lasting, important experience at another end of an esthetic spectrum).
Energetics - Ahead of its time, A. Moen's Wildlife Ecology and H. T. Odum's Systems Ecology lay out the fundamentals of energy budgeting. They display the awesome second law of thermodynamics, the continual loss of energy; the loss with each transformation in form (e.g., grain-to-livestock), and the conservation naturally achieved by animals.
The world is already energy-short by at least one of several criteria. Shortages or difficulties of access are now present or likely. At the most fundamental level it is the amount and flow of energy, the value of energy, and its conservation that determines the success of any enterprise, any agency, any program, virtually any culture. For years, it has been obvious that if there is no water in an area, people do not live there. The parallel now exists for energy, though less conspicuously because of extensive subsidy and local surpluses.
The emphasis to be made herein is that a tetradic tourism system is grounded a knowledge of energy and its profound role in all parts of the system. It is taken as a topic of study, as the theoretical basis for all of the other three major components of the system, and as a practical constraint on the realistic future development of tourism.
The energetic subsystem is concerned with comprehensive computer models of the tetradic system; with stability of fuel for heating, cooling, and travel; with the energetics (energy-budgets) of wildlife and primitive societies (Diamond, 19 ), and with system adaptations to meet projected shortages in available energy (the feedforward role).
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Last revision January 17, 2000.