You should spend about 40 minutes on this task.
Tourism is one of the fastest growing industries and contributes a great deal to economies around the world. However, the damage tourism can cause to local cultures and the environment is often ignored. To what extent do you agree or disagree?
Give reasons for your answer and include any relevant examples from your own knowledge or experience.
You should write at least 250 words.
Sample Answer 1:
Recently, there is an ongoing debate about the significant impacts on the economy by thriving tourism industry create further severe problems in local cultures and environment. This essay, as my notion leads to, tries to elaborate this issue as I believe that problems created are inevitable.
Firstly, the tourists, whether they are foreigners or local ones, tend to disobey the cultural background of the tourism places. Even though they are well known about the surroundings habit, they consider themselves as guests who are supposed to be served by the local society paying no attentions to the native motives.
Secondly, they care less about the environment such as evergreens, rivers, beaches, etc. because they are aware of the government’s existence who has an obligation to maintain a quality environment. To be exact, they just throw the garbage away into inappropriate places. The local people get influenced by the way tourists dress and talk and they also adopt other foreign cultures that are threatening to the local culture. It is often observed that people in tourist area engage their children in work instead of sending them to school and that has a huge impact on the overall growth of the economy and future of a country, especially a third world country.
Lastly, they together with stakeholders who are taking an interest, in this case, argue that this industry can lift the nation from economy problem through opening job opportunities or increasing the income of local citizens as well as the government revenue at the same time, but it seems to be irrelevant. The experts revealed that tourism may cause more expenditure in preserving the unique local cultures and also more expenses in taking care of the environment surrounding tourism places, and it costs more than how much a nation can afford from the industry.
Having considered all views above, it is fact that tourism sector has positive effects on the economy but the negative impacts are much higher to overcome by money gotten from this particular sector. Hopefully, governments and councils can regulate the industry by taking more concern in all aspects (economy, culture, and environment) to result in the maximum outcome.
[ Written by – Angga Cool ]
Sample Answer 2:
These days, many of us believe that tourism can be regarded as one of the most contributive aspects for economic growth of the country. However, some of us still find some drawbacks of tourism because it can dilute our indigenous traditions and make people do not care about their environment. I agree with the notion that tourism can harm the local culture and its environment. In this essay, I will support my opinion with some reasons.
To begin with, we should open our eyes to the fact that tourism has lead to the great transformation of economic growth in our country. Many people around the world try to visit our country in order to know our cultures and enjoy the beautiful views of our country. This fact shows a number of advantages to our economic growth such as the growth of industrial aspects. However, this development can harm our indigenous cultures and environment.
Nowadays, the growth of tourism transformed our life to the different style of life. Compare to the past time, these days, a majority of the people have been influenced by the western culture. In the past time, the youth and elderly respected each other and still preserved the value of culture, and morality. Today, westernisation of culture happened and tried to interfere our lifestyle. The high values of culture and morality almost erased from the dictionary of society. People tend to forget their indigenous cultures and traditions, moreover, their offspring following the same. They no longer care about the upkeep of their cultures inheritance and trapped in the western cultures which identical with the nightclub, drinks, and party. Take Bangladesh as an example, in the past time, Bangladesh was very well-known with its traditional cultures. Presently, this country is changing and no longer known for their cultures.
To sum up, I think that although tourism can drive to a better economic growth but still, we should not lose our sight that tourism also can harm our local cultures and environment.
[ Written by – Nurul Imansari ]
Sample Answer 3:
It is true that tourism has become a significant source of the national budget for several countries over the world. Those countries concern and allocate more money to develop the tourism industry in achieving the bigger income as well as the satisfaction of tourists. However, some people show such kind of disagreements to this affirmative action by considering the effect of tourism to the local society culturally and environmentally. I personally believe that this agreement is not truly correct in because of several reasons. This essay aims to show my stance to support the development of tourism and provides several convincing arguments regarding this controversial issue.
The first reason is that tourism sector contributes such big income to the country through economic activities run by societies around the tourism places. It is clear that tourism is now becoming an industry that creates thousands of jobs for the citizen in terms of its management, protection as well as promotion. People who have skill in English probably would build a tour and travel business and become a guide. For those who have certain creativity or arts may sell their products of arts in a shop, or people might sell some soft drinks and snack to the tourists. These all economic activities crucially contribute to achieving the goal of government to provide job fields and to give the prosperity of society.
The second reason is that developing and promoting tourism object is the most effective way to broadcast the positive-country-image to the global society in order to attract them to come to those countries as tourists or even as investors. Moreover, going to beautiful tourism places has inevitably been a demand for people over the world and it is a kind of “golden chance” for every country to promote the best places in their regions. Let us take Bali Island as an example, which has been successfully promoted and being promoted as the image of a piece of paradise in Indonesia.
On the other hand, some local people tend to refuse the policy of the government in developing tourism. The reason is so simple because they consider the harms of tourism development that cause cultural loss and environmental damage. However, I believe that both cultural and environmental protection are the parts of tourism development on how government allocate the budget to tourism sector for creating a clean environment or ecotourism and promoting cultural tourism in which environment and culture are the basis of tourism.
All in all, tourism development does not harm the cultural values and environmental parts. Moreover, it supports the existence of local values as well as keeps the environment clean and green.
[ Written by – Soni Ariawan ]