TOURISMOLOGY, A BIRTH BEFORE CREATION!

By Abdelaziz BENAMI

Tourismology has been recently a hotspot issue which has drawn lots attention from the WTO, WAPTT, NGOs, geographers, scientific researchers and professionals in the world of tourism industry.

Institutional legislators and scientific researchers are still discussing about the problematic of tourismology as a new science which is not yet well defined while it is taught in several countries like Lebanon, Turkey, France, and USA. So, the science of tourism was born before a decision from the WTO and it is, actually, taught in different ways. Some teachers and recognizers mean by tourismology the study of trips and journeys realized by tourists, others define it differently and prefer to say the sciences of tourism because the plural shows the multidisciplinary side of tourism studies. Tourismology in its multidisciplinary aspect needs the integration of different other sciences: Tourism economics, sociology, psychology, cultural anthropology, social sciences, etc.

Tourismology should be a science that can make clear the tourism activity taking into consideration two sides: The tourist and the organizer or the visitor and the visited. All definitions of tourism that were realized by the World Tourism Organization help professionals to have reliable statistics thanks to the studies and determination of the distances, frontiers and the length of stays. In addition, making a difference between inbound tourism, outbound tourism and internal tourism gives a good management of tourism especially regarding the international outbound and inbound influx.

It is always good to give a clear definition of tourismology but the big question which imposes itself is: what’s the job and work which should be done by the tourismologist, or the specialized person in tourismology? If the answer is only to define what tourism activity is, to classify the different kinds of tourist products and make clear what International tourism is, this work is already done by the WTO which is developing nowadays these kinds of work through its conferences and seminars worldwide.

A tourismologist is a well-rounded scientist that is able to realize and criticize studies on International tourism and have a wide and broaden knowledge of tourism. His or her work is to well define the tourism activity, respecting of course all what was defined by WTO, to develop tourism in parallel with a big responsibility and sustainability and finally recommend strategies for tourism development in certain regions or countries. To give an example, a tourismologist is like an anthropologist, he/she chooses a continent then a country and finally a region to do a research. The job of tourismology can be divided into the three following tasks:

1-As tourismology cannot be held responsible alone for the study of tourism, a tourismologist should be able to know all the other sciences that surround tourismology in order to give a main clear vision and definition of tourism. This will serve tourism trainings in the world having specialized teachers of tourism who give the general pathway to follow and within this we also should have other specialized teachers in different subjects. All these subjects will give to students a perfect training enabling them to have a better understanding of tourism.

2-A tourismologist is someone who plans for tourism development and can prepare for a research or a strategy for a country, a region, a hotel or a Travel agency thanks to his or her knowledge of the field.

3-Sustainibility is a very important point. Thus, a tourismologist should always have long term visions respecting the environment, the cultures and the traditions of the visited population. In other words, he or she has to put a chart of responsible tourism for each tourist destination.