The reasons why UK (based in the borough of Ealing) residents travel Dissertation

The reasons why UK (based in the borough of Ealing) residents travel domestically versus internationally - Dissertation Example Whenever a person decides to leave his home to go on a journey somewhere for the sake of experiencing a change of scene, to explore a new environment, experience new cultures or on a religious pilgrimage, then that person is a tourist (Cooper, 2005, 4). From the foregoing, it is quite obvious that the idea of going on a tour is a conscious decision that goes together with planning before one embarks on the actual journey. It is interesting to find out what influences such a decision. Among the options open to any prospective tourist is whether to travel locally within one’s country or internationally. Knowledge of the factors that influence this decision is important to players in the tourism industry because they can influence these decisions during their tourism promotion (Cooper, 2005, 4). The importance of international tourism as an income generating activity for countries cannot be gainsaid. In 2008 international tourism worldwide garnered a colossal â‚ ¬ 642 billion raised by 922 million tourist arrivals. This was despite a drop of 2% in tourist travel worldwide in June 2008 due to the recession that hit the world at the time. This shows that this is quite an important sector that any particular country can only take for granted at its own peril (WTO, 2009, 14). Moreover, countries such as Egypt, Greece, Lebanon, Spain and Thailand depend to a great extent for their income on tourism. These countries have great long running histories with the pyramids and mummies in Egypt and the historical edifices and culture in Greece as examples. As for little island states like The Maldives, Bahamas, Fiji, Seychelles and Philippines, tourism is simply their lifeline (WTO, 2009, 15). In Borough of Ealing, in London Britain, just like in other places, tourism plays an important role in provision of Employment. If one takes the wider national setting, by 2010 the tourism industry in Britain had already employed 2.65 million persons in 200,000 different compan ies. 80% of these companies were Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) which were either directly owned by youths under 35 years or mostly employed the youth in that category (Tourism Alliance, 2011). Borough of Ealing is an administrative division to the west of the city of London. Though it has its own administrative system, it is still part of the larger London. Boroughs are administrative divisions within major cities so formed to make the administration of the wider city manageable and efficient (Heritage Dictionary, 2000, 142). Like other Boroughs, Ealing struggles to raise part of the revenue it uses for administrative, social welfare and development purposes. One of the sources of such revenue is of course local and incoming tourists. For the purposes of this paper, the focus is on tourism in Borough of Ealing in Britain in particular and the wider London and Britain in general. In Britain tourism is a very important sector with 14.1 million visitors arriving in 2009 alone and raising over â‚ ¬ 21 billion in revenue (WTO, 2009, 15). On average tourism generates â‚ ¬ 19 billion annually out of which â‚ ¬ 3.5 billion goes directly to the exchequer. In fact in 2009 Britain was the 7th most visited tourism destination. It was also the 3rd largest source of tourists in the world after Germany and the United States. Moreover, London was the second most visited city in the world coming second only to Paris, France (WTO,