Tourism is travel for recreational, leisure, or business purposes, usually of a limited duration. Tourism comprises the activities of persons traveling to, and staying in places outside their usual environment for not more than one consecutive year for leisure, business and other purposes. The World Tourism Organization defines tourists as people "traveling to and staying in places outside their usual environment for not more than one consecutive year for leisure, business and other purposes". Tourism has become a popular global leisure activity. Tourism can be domestic or international,. Today, tourism is major source of income for many countries, and affects the economy of both the source and host countries.
Some of the pointers to nature of tourism as a service industry are:
1) Tourism accounts for nearly 6% of world trade.
2) Bulk of the tourism business is located in Europe and North America, with 1/8 of the market share being shared between the other world regions.
3) The highest growth rate in tourism in recent years has been in the third world.
4) Tourism, like most pure services, because of the characteristic of inseparability, exemplifies a product which cannot be sampled before purchase, the prospective consumers have to travel to a foreign destination. In order to consume the product. Technology today provides the opportunity of some assessment of sorts, through net generated images and rich information. While these do provide some basis for evaluation, only the actual transaction of the service act would lead to realistic assessment of the product.
5) The major players in the tourism market include a number of intermediary companies. Some of them transnational in character, some of them exhibit vertical integration, both backward and forward, acquiring interests in all major sectors in this service industry.
