ECOTOURISM Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

ECOTOURISM - Essay Example Thus a new concept of Ecotourism emerged. Ecotourism is focused primarily on exploring the nature and learning from it. Most countries encourage this because it attracts a large number of tourists to the land, which helps improve the economy. It typically occurs in areas that are naturally well-endowed, and it is expected to contribute to the conservation and preservation of such areas. Though all the promotional activities in tourism, especially that of ecotourism, are done in the guise of love for the environment and efforts to protect it, the underlying motive is profit making. Visiting exotic cultures and pristine sceneries of the host land provide the tourists a rare and unique experience, and they readily spend huge sums of money to be able to share it. The local tour operators and government seize this potential and promote the tourist activities. Most of the time the result is that the environment that they proclaim to protect is often exposed to deterioration. Though cultura l exchange is upheld as one of the benefits of ecotourism, the reality is that culture is being sold as brands. The safaris into an African jungle or a visit to the backwaters of Kerala by herds of tourists are not helping the environment improve; instead these only cause trouble to the natural resources of the area. But the stakeholders like tour operators, agents, local administration and government etc are deriving monetary benefits which motivate them to promote such activities instead of discouraging it and saving the environment from harm. Thus one can easily see that profit making is the main objective of all the propaganda about ecotourism. Ecotourism has become a much sought after means for the intensified economic growth and is well illustrated in its rapid expansion worldwide over the past two decades. The fact that more and more nations are waking up to the economic potentialities of ecotourism that has turned almost all pristine places across the world as the