Critizine.com

Mass Tourism is a very important issue in our decade and it will even gain in importance in the course of the 21st century. We live in the tourism region and so we can follow the development, when we look out of the window. It is not so easy to come to a conclusion, because there are lots of advantages and disadvantages.

Primarily tourism is very important for an area like ours, because without it, more and more people would move away. The region would lose importance and reputation, also attractiveness to move here – just nature is not enough.

Secondly without mass tourism, in the way we know it nowadays, many people would lose their jobs. Without an income they would have to move into the big cities. For our area that would mean we have a decrease in our population. For example if we think about the inhabitants of Davos, they have a few thousand people during the summer, but more than double of it during the winter season, because of the tourists. More or less everyone there is dependant on the visitors.

On the other side there are also cons, for example the increase of the pollution, also because in my opinion most of the tourists do not care about the nature. Now there is also the question why tourism is so important for us today, why not another part in the industry? We built up huge ski areas, constructed big hotels and cut big forests. So in fact it is not only the fault of the tourists, but also ours.

In addition we built up our streets and so we have more traffic through our places. If we have a look where they are coming from, then it is stunning how far they travel. Austria, Germany or Netherlands, from everywhere and sometimes they are here just for a couple of days. Travel is not always bad, for example I met an old couple last winter, who was travelling by train. They decided to go to the Alps for one day. We do not have more pollution, because the train rode anyway. Is it not more beautiful to go by train if you would like to enjoy the nature?

If we summarise the issue then it is clear that we cannot do away with mass tourism, because it is our foundation. But at least we could stop building highways to mountains and try to ban the desire to make more profit all the time. In fact we should set a limit, because it is simply not possible to use the nature more and more in the way of profit, one day the balance does not exist anymore. If that happens, there will be no way to reverse. We should use the nature in a smart way – we should work with the nature and not against it.