Article Written By: Billy Edward
Travel these days has become more and more easy and fast. You are able to hop on a plane to practically any destination in the world. With a wide variety of airplanes, daily flights, and bargain deals, travelers can frequently find travel deals to destinations once considered remote and only accessible to the very hardy adventurous traveler or the privileged elite. Actually, with the bargain deals provided by different airlines, many of which overbook their flights, travelers hunting for cheap deals, will frequently discover that it's less expensive to fly to another country than go to their own. With such bargain deals, it's no wonder that the tourist industry is booming in every sector.What does this increased travel worldwide indicate for cultural exchange, assimilation, and national identities? This question remains to be answered. For many, travel opens up unexpected vistas, broadens the mind, tests one's endurance, and expands compassion and awareness of other people and their lifestyles.Countries which are well known for being popular travel destinations, thrive on this expanded tourist industry, offering new hotels, resorts, outdoor pursuits, theater, nightlife, and arts and entertainment, all aimed at increasing and maintaining their status quo as top travel destinations.An array of travel magazines have popped up to support this industry, which range from beach and resort guides, to targeted audiences such as family vacations, hunting or sport vacations, adventure destinations, religious and spiritual retreats, health and wellness spas, business traveler and corporate meeting destinations, and much more. Ads for numerous sight-seeing tours and travel packages offering deals on transportation and accommodations, fill all the back pages of these books. Traveling the 'world in 80 days' as advised by writer Jules Verne, is no longer a distant dream, but a feasible option these days.Smaller, more remote destinations such as the mountain kingdom of Bhutan in the Himalayas, once the destination of only locals and royal families, have currently become more accessible to the general public. This and places such as the steppes of Mongolia and the islands of Vancouver, British Columbia, are areas of exquisite beauty, pristinely left intact by local inhabitants and low human impact. As these areas open up, intensely marketed and advertised by the eco-tourism industry, promoting health, wellness, and travel adventures to 'pristine, untouched areas', they turn out to be at risk of losing these qualities of pristine beauty and remoteness very rapidly.Large real-estate developers looking to purchase land in scenic destinations, have lobbied for the open expansion of these areas, which environmentalists and locals fear tremendously will lead to depleting the area of its resources very fast and also destroying natural habitat that has existed peacefully for many thousands of years.
This Article Has Been Published on Sat, 19 Feb 2011 and Read 266 Times