Back in Victorian times, wealthier citizens could sometimes be found wandering among London’s poorer, informal neighbourhoods, distributing charity to the needy. “Slumming” – as it was called – was later dismissed as a morally dubious and voyeuristic pastime. Today, it’s making a comeback; wealthy Westerners are once more making forays into slums – and this time, they’re venturing right across the developing world.
App-based ride company Uber has been battling the “establishment” around the world, from traditional black taxi drivers in London to regulators in Australia. However, Uber is far from the first upstart travel company to rock the status quo.
From the Tower of London to Edinburgh Castle, from Stonehenge to Brighton Pier, tourism is a vital industry for the UK. It is worth £125 billion a year to the economy, constituting 9% of GDP and 10% of total employment.
Space tourism is fast becoming the new frontier in the transportation business. Driven by profit-making private venture capital, the push to offer customers some direct or indirect experience with space travel is no longer the stuff of comic books or science fiction. The worry is that the legal architecture for this nascent industry barely has its foundations in order.
Global spending by Muslim tourists is expected to reach $192 billion a year by 2020, claimed a new study cited by AFP on Monday, with the growing affluence of Muslims in the Middle East set to spark a boom in Muslim travel over the next decade.
Australian mining billionaire Clive Palmer will spend close to $500 million in order to build a 21st century replica of the Titanic in a Chinese shipyard, reported Bloomberg on Monday, and has plans to sail it from England to New York by the end of 2016.
The travel industry caters to recreational, leisure and business travelers. According to the World Tourism Organization, the travel industry generated revenues of US$856 billion in 2007.
The travel sector covers the following services:
