Tourism Project

Task 1

In this research I am going to analyze an interviewee based on the questionnaire. Due to his interests and personality shown in the questionnaire I classified him as an Independent mass tourist and action seeker roles of tourists (Page & Connell, 2009), as he is mostly involved in entertaining, socializing activities and exploring to new places.  

Task 2

Based on the questionnaire, the respondent is a mid-centric since he likes exploring places, which are pre-discovered by allocentrics and thus became popular tourists spot. However, the respondent does not like to travel on packaged holidays. As a result, it is concluded that Plog’s model is not flexible enough as; people can arrange their own trip without depending on travel agencies or tour operators. The accessibility of online travel web sites reduces the importance of middleman and travel agencies (Law, Leung, & Wong, 2004). People now are more independent by using the services provided on the internet as accommodations and airplane tickets are now more accessible. Moreover due to his interest of buying well-known brands also shows that he is a mid-centric tourist. Moreover, Plog’s model also fails to explain about how people might change from time to time. People might change from allocentric to psychocentric, vice versa; as there might be accidents or change of perspective.

In relation to Lumsdon’s family lifecycle the interviewee is categorized as a young person with the following characteristics: young, single and not living at home (Page & Connell, 2009). Since more and more students are studying abroad (Dorres, 2007), therefore they can be classified as a young person. As it stated in (Page & Connell, 2009, pp. 88-89) that a young person are limited by their time and buying power, it is not always a fact. To support my statement, the interviewee has the resources that is needed, however time is a liability. A student studying abroad can be classified as a young person as he is not controlled by his parents and have the ability to make own decisions. In addition to this model of a young person, they don’t have to enjoy the pleasure of adventure and backpacking, by means of camping and wilderness. This model does not follow the trend as the trends today shows that young travellers look for experience relating to relaxation-related activities and engage in different kinds of entertainment, also the younger the travellers are, the more they desire to meet other young travellers for exciting experiences (Blaha, 2012). The model’s limitation is that it does not apply to all nationalities because every nationality has different cultures. For example, western people are more independent. However, Asians are more family-orientated (Frances McClelland Institute, n.a).

Lastly the respondent is classified to an action seeker and an independent mass tourist from (Foo, Mcguiggan & Yiannakis, 2004). The respondent is an independent mass tourist, as he likes to go to popular destinations however, he refuses to travel in packaged holidays. This categorization is also applied to (Cohen, 1972) model where he stated that there are two types of tourists, where there are institutional tourist and also the non-institutional tourist. The independent mass tourist belongs to the institutional tourist where it is usually in between familiarity and strangeness (Cohen, 2000). The interviewee is also an action seeker where it usually applies to younger generation.

Task 3

Based on the interviewee typology, he is an action seeker and an independent mass tourist where Koh Samui, Thailand is the most suitable destination because Koh Samui has both interesting parties and beautiful tourist attractions. Plus there’s plentiful of luxury resorts ranging from bungalow to hi-end hotel chains, but as he stated that he doesn’t like hotel chains in this case there’s wide range of selection for him to be made over online sites as he preferred. Moreover, there’s a world famous party where people from allover the world come just for this party located 15minutes away from the island, which is called full moon party. This party held once a month on a date of when the moonshine to it fullest. Where this will give him chances of meeting opposite sex for uncomplicated romantic experience.

Task 4

Traveller’s choice of destination might have environmental impacts on the island as for positive impact, even though the positive impact overweighs the negative impacts. Since there are massive amount of tourist coming to the island, the government is able to use tax revenue to start funding for the campaign as there is a huge campaign supporting the sustainability of tourism. Apart from the government, the locals are influenced to play a part in conserving the natural resources and environment. As a result, “The Green Island Project” began which aimed to sustain the protection of Koh Samui’s natural environment. Which they are now raising financial aids to reduce wastes, reduce the use of natural resources, organize activities to saves sea turtles and release crabs to help conserve the areas (The Green Island Foundation, 2008). Apart from the positive impact, there are unfortunately some negative impacts too. The tourism occurrence that has adversely impacted the fragile environment of the island is the increase use of water, resulting in lack of water during high seasons. This significant insufficiency was brought to light when thirty-nine villages and local communities were unable to gain access to tap water through the summer in period of 2002 and subsequent use (Antaseeda, P., 2002). Moreover, with its negative impact, tourism has also caused some crucial environmental problems such as using too much resource like cutting down forests for construction, excess of waste by the growth number of tourist. Due to diving tourism and other tourism activities concerning the sea had deteriorate fifty per cent of the coral reefs found along the gulf of Thailand; where Koh Samui is located in. Due to the increase of deforestation activities, leads to an increase the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere thus resulting in increase of temperature. Subsequently, coral bleaching occurs, as it cannot stand tremendous pressure of temperature change (Jones & Phillips, 2011).