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TOURISM (French: tourisme, from tour — an outing, trip), travel (trip, tour) during leisure periods is one of the active relaxation types. It is spread in the majority of countries worldwide. Tourism is done, as a rule, by tourist organizations according to tourist routes. Numerous types and forms of tourism exist (domestic, international, amateur, organized, near, distant, informative, water, mountain, automobile, pedestrian, sports etc.). About 130 countries are registered in the World Tourism Organization (WTO; founded in 1975) (1999).
Tourism: The most effective means for satisfying recreational needs, as it combines various kinds of recreational activity — health improvement, knowledge, restoration of productive forces of a person etc. Tourism is a component of the public health service, physical training and means of spiritual, cultural and social development of a person. (According to the estimation of the scale of the tourist movement existing in world, all individuals who temporarily or voluntarily changed their place of residence with any purpose, apart from career, compensated at a place of temporary residence, belong to tourists). Individuals, staying in holiday time at any location for less than 24 hrs, are considered as sightseers (excursionists). Travel within the domicile country is combined with the concept “Domestic (national) tourism”, and beyond the boundaries of the county “Foreign tourism”.
International and national tourism are closely interconnected and interdependent, since by its nature, they are homogeneous, created by one and for the same reasons, to form demand basically on goods and services; in many countries, they have common material and a technical base and a uniform scope of work.
Depending on the purpose of travel, tourism is divided into: educational (excursion) — visiting attractive places, tour of cultural, historical, natural and other places of interest; sports tourism — participation in sports activities; amateur — hunting, fishing and others; so-called local tourism — mass short-term visits of huge collectives of separate groups and persons beyond city limits, including special recreational areas; Tourism with social purposes — participation in public activities; business — the visiting of objects, representing professional interest; religious — the visiting of “sacred” places etc. In international tourism statistics, tourist trips to resorts, country places to relatives, friends, fairs and congresses etc is also considered to be tourism. The tourist, as a rule, pursues several purposes (for example, a trip to a resort and visiting attractive places), in which, the dominating purpose stipulates the tourist route, time of the year, duration of the trip, mode of travel, type of temporary accommodation (hotel, tourist center, tent etc.) and other conditions — with a group or individually, with family, with own tourist equipment, on self-service principles and so forth. Purposes and travel conditions, in turn, are determined by means of the tourist's health condition, age, profession, cultural level etc and also the material and technical basis of tourist.
It is accepted to distinguish tourism into: Organized — travel according to a program, planned by a tourist establishment, by providing a set of services and unorganized, so-called amateur — travel according to the plan worked out by the tourist himself with more or less a considerable share of self service.
The main tourist region of the world is Europe. Europe has a major share in world tourism and almost 50% of foreign tourists travel to Europe and the same number of tourists are Europeans, who, as a rule, travel less beyond the boundaries of the continent. The basic reason is the comparatively higher prices for intercontinental transport and the high cost of service in many non-European countries.
The second largest tourist region is North America (USA and Canada);
Basically, it is a so called mutual tourism between USA, Canada and Mexico.
The absolute growth of international tourism is observed even in countries of Latin America, Africa, Asia, Australia and Oceania; but as usual, a little more than 9% of foreign tourists travel to these places.
Even after having rich recreational resources, the majority of the developing countries do not have the necessary material and technical basis for international tourism.
The tourist exchange between countries, except cultural-educational and political value as means of strengthening mutual understanding between the people and establishing much closer interstate relations, has also an economic value. Earnings from international tourism in foreign currency make, in some countries, make important income and that quickly develops more than the earnings from exports.
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Last Saturday was an annual "World Tourism Day". The day was established in 1980 to promote the international tourism. This year tourism is greatly suffering from the credit crunch, high jet fuel prices, and international country tensions.
