Through thinking about social and economic impacts of tourism, I could not help but think of Thailand and it’s economic position after the Tsunami hit some of it’s most popular tourist destinations.
Tourism took the common track on the small island vacation spots, the most popular being the Island of Phi Phi and Phuket where lovers take their honeymoons and adventurers stop to peruse its blue waters. These areas before the tsunami saw the growing of its economy due to tourism, the increase of a local tax base and attracting businesses and services to support tourism and the recreation industry. Lavish resorts would line the small coast of the islands. In this same instance, these popular tourist destinations were dealing with everything from higher demands on public services and rising property values to the complexity of tourist-host encounters.
The brutal realization of how important the tourist industry was for the economy of this area was especially seen, as most things are, when it was swept away. Many articles reported on the devastation that the tsunami caused in terms of the loss of the tourist dollar as well as loss of life. The BBC wrote about shopkeepers in the areas that were hit the worse,
“Frances Hill, who owns a clothes shop in the resort of Railay, near Krabi, warned that many small businesses in Thailand might not survive the huge drop in revenue after the tsunami. Some people are definitely going to go bankrupt. I already know a few shops that have closed," she said.
More can be read about the economic impacts of the tourist dollar and the lack of after the tsunami in Thailand at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/4375815.stm
MSNBC also has an article on the tourism impacts at: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6758302/
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