Economic Impacts of Tourism


After watching The Impossible and Tsunami, I realized what it was like to watch areas built off tourism fall apart in an instant. I think that there are a lot of times we don’t really think about how much some economies depend on tourists for their main source of income.

Aside from dealing with the horrific disaster and death, there is much more to think about in regards of what to do now. Once a tourist depending destination gets wiped away and has to be rebuilt, there isn’t much of anything driving the economy. We got to witness this in the movies. It becomes hard to make the call on what should be done to get these destinations rebuilt to what they once were. Often times, the small businesses and family only businesses can’t make a comeback after natural disasters. They just simply do not have the monetary capacity to do so. It’s also not easy to plan for these disasters because you may never really know how much damage will be done. What they might feel is adequate savings may really only be a drop in the bucket. These communities may need the help of big businesses to come in to save the destinations, even if that means buying up land.

The other struggle is in understanding what to do is properly documenting the situation. We saw in Tsunami the importance of this. Especially when the photographers were faced with watching the bodies being burned. To them, it seemed wrong. To the people who come from that culture, it was a holy and respected way of releasing the persons soul from their body. Without knowledge of this, a lot may be taken out of context.

Being on a disaster recovery team would be tough. It’s hard being the one who has to make so many calls on what should happen next. There needs to be a lot of care and consideration taken into place before making decisions. This is something that should be done with community leaders, figureheads, and respected members of these communities. In order to properly rebuild from such a devastating situation, you have to understand the roots and realistic demands from the community impacted.


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