Environmental Impacts of Tourism

Tourism is “the temporary movement of people to destinations outside their normal places of work and residence, the activities undertaken during their stay in those destinations, and the facilities created to cater to their needs” . It is often difficult to distinguish between tourism and recreation, as they are interrelated. Tourism involves traveling a distance from home, while recreation is defined as the activities undertaken during leisure time .Outdoor recreation is even more closely related to tourism. The extent of the overlap depends in part on the length of time of the activity and its location. For example, a boater who uses his or her boat for one day and who stays near his or her home may be considered a recreational boater; while a boater who travels on his or her boat overnight to a destination may be considered a tourist.

The degree of environmental impact varies, depending on the type of tourist and the intensity of site use .There are day tourists, who visit a destination for a day and then leave; summer residents who are in effect tourists for a season; and tourists on bus tours and other trips that may visit a location for a few minutes or a number of days.

Day tourists have an impact on the environment through their transportation to their destination as well as their activities once there. This is true for summer residents, but these tourists also have a cumulative impact, as they are in one place for a longer period of time. For example, nutrients leaching from the septic systems of tourists’ waterfront homes can accelerate eutrophication and contribute to depletion of dissolved oxygen supply of the adjacent water body. On the other hand, summer residents often are an important force in preserving the natural beauty of an area .Tourists who visit an area for longer than a day and choose to stay in hotels contribute to the impacts that the lodging industry has on the environment. In addition to the length of stay, tourist impacts depend on the type of activity undertaken. Passive activities such as bird watching have different impacts than more active pursuits, such as snowmobiling or boating.

There are environmental impacts from the travel to a destination, the tourist activities in and of themselves at that destination, such as hiking or boating, and from the creation, operation, and maintenance of facilities that cater to the tourist, such as hotels .This objective addresses impacts from tourism-related transportation, development, the lodging and cruise industries, and tourist activities including selected forms of recreation.

The environmental impacts of the construction and development of facilities needed to support the industry are both immediate and gradual. Development associated with tourism includes accommodations, roads, retail stores and restaurants, tourist attractions, tourists’ seasonal waterfront homes, water supplies, and waste disposal facilities. Cumulative effects over time are particularly problematic because the developer in question is often out of the picture before impacts become obvious .An example of a gradual impact is the leaching of nutrients from septic systems of tourists’ waterfront homes into the water body, accelerating eutrophication and depleting dissolved oxygen supplies.

Tourist infrastructure can also adversely impact water quality because more wastewater is created in one place and reduced someplace else, putting more pressure on sewage treatment plants or septic systems in the tourist destination. When a sewage treatment plant receives more effluent than it can treat, the excess can flow directly into water bodies untreated, creating a potential health hazard. The sewage problem with tourist facilities is further exacerbated by the seasonal nature of many tourist areas. An area which off-season may have the capacity (either through septic systems or treatment plants) to properly treat sewage may be overburdened during the tourist season.

Sewage effluent can damage coral reefs because it stimulates the growth of algae, which cover the filter-feeding corals, hampering their ability to get food. Furthermore, the algae impede the transmission of sunlight to the plant cells living within the corals’ tissue, hindering their ability to grow and provide the coral with needed nutrition