Tourism is one of those topics that many people have different interpretations and understandings. It is especially challenging when you live in an area where the defined boundaries of a regional centre and the peripheral communities are blurred. Everyone assumes that they are members of the larger community and, therefore, a part of the regional centre. This is fallacious.
Tourism is not just someone visiting a community as part of a vacation; it is also someone that visits a community that does not reside within its boundaries. This means that whether you are a part of a larger region or live in a peripheral community, you are still a tourist in the regional centre or hub. You may be a tourist but you can be treated or even identified as a member of the community. The fact remains: you are not a resident and, therefore, are a visitor.
Visitation is another confusing aspect of tourism. The majority of the populations believe that visitation as a tourism represents the recreational tourist. This is not the case: a tourist represents anyone visiting a community that they are not resident, even if they feel that they belong to the centre.
Tourism is very dynamic with two distinct aspects: there is the recreation and business tourist. On the one hand, a recreational tourist can be anyone visiting a community to participate in an event, making a brief stopover for travel staples or someone visiting on a more lengthy basis, and someone living out of the community but uses the facilities, participates in events, or actively engages in recreation in the community.
Business tourism is also diversified. It can be someone coming to the community to delivery products and services to other business, a business person dealing with local entrepreneurs, senior management of a company visiting the local site, government officials visiting the community, other related business where there is a temporary stay in the community such as purchasing products at a local shop. This can range from construction workers on a site, railway worker en route, conference participants, and a member of the regional community coming to the community to purchase goods and services.
Tourism is not a static and an easily defined sector of the economy. It is for this reason that whatever we do in a community, those that we meet from outside of our community should be welcomed as visitors. More than this, though, if we can all make those outside of our community feel as if they are members of our municipality, we have achieved success in tourism delivery.
