Travel news and a discussion of how social scientists vies tourist attractions. Show notes: http://travelgeography.blogspot.com

Travel and Tourism News & Comments, and an Intro to the Geography of Sub-Saharan Africa. See Show Notes at htt-://travelgeography.blogspot.com

My New Promo (45 seconds long)

Travel and Tourism News, Geography of the Middle East (defined as Central Asia, Southwest Asia, and North Africa). See full show notes at http://travelgeography.blogspot.com

Today's podcast focuses on the natural environment: how tourists relate to the natural environment, the impacts of tourism on the natural environment, and closing with a few words on ecotourism.

Ecotourism -- Personally, I prefer to pronounce ecotourism as 'ee-co-tourism' - with a long 'e', which I derive from the world "ecology." Some people (maybe the majority?) prefer to say 'e-co-tourism' - with a short 'e', as in 'elephant'. I assume they are basing this on the word 'ecosystem', which is sometimes (often?) pronounced with a short 'e'. Dictionary.com uses the long 'e' pronunciation, so perhaps I am in the majority.

Total Length: 30 minutes, 19 seconds.  If you have any thoughts on this feel free to leave a comment, or email me at travelgeographer@msn.com

Here are the links to items mentioned in today's podcast:

* Australia Garners Friendliest Nation in the World Award - Travel News Wire
<http://www.travelwirenews.com/cgi-script/csArticles/articles/000063/006311.htm>
* Grand Canyon to Get Glass Bridge - National Geographic News
<http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/08/0826_050826_grandcanyon.html>
* City OKs Subsidies for Downtown Hotel - Los Angeles Times
<http://www.knowledgeplex.org/news/118690.html>
* Cruise Ship Repels Somali Pirates - BBC News (also has a link to a video news clip)
<http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/4409662.stm>
* The Amateur Traveler Podcast
<http://amateurtraveler.com/>

Please visit my show notes at http://travelgeography.blogspot.com/2005/10/tourist-travel-motivations.html

Tourist Motivation is the maint topic of this week's discussion, although I only spend the last 10 minutes on it. These news items were presented to show the importance of people's desire to travel (or perceived inability to not to). The travel public is a major source of income for destinations, and spawns entire sub-industries that employ large numbers of people. Understanding why people travel is important to a tourism destination's success...
* Firm Expects outbound Chinese tourists to top 115m [Travel News Wire]
* New era in Indian leisure crusing begins [Travel News Wire]
* TIA’s Overall Traveler Sentiment Index Remains Weak: Consumers Lack Time not Money for Travel [Travel Industry Association, 27 Sept 05]

World Tourism Day was September 27th -- I think it was an easy one to miss, unless you were in Quatar where the World Tourism Organization celebrated the event. Some, however, question whether or not tourism is really something that we should be celebrating...

* WTO, Qatar celebrate World Tourism Day [Travel News Wire]
* Speechby Francesco Frangialli, Secretary General of the World Tourism Organization, on the occasion of the celebration of World Tourism Day 2005 Doha, Qatar - 27 Sept 2005 [World Tourism Organization]
* Tourism: a Challenge for the 21st Century (Ecumenical Coalition On Tourism - ECOT, 27 Sept 2005) [Travel News Wire]
* Sun, sea and saving the world: Travel snobs have turned holidaymaking into a moral dilemma [Spiked Online, 11 Aug 2005]

This podcast is a remix from a longer podcast originally posted on 2 October 2005.  The remix was done for educational purposes (for my classes).

My Thanks to the group Turban Jones for the use of their song in my podcast. I hope you enjoy their song, Crazy Ways, which I play in its entirety at the end of the podcast.

I discuss the Bali Bombing because this is the biggest tourism-related news item of this past week. The potential implications for tourism in Bali, Indonesia, and all of Southeast Asia are enormous...
* Tourists Flee Terror-stricken Bali [Travel News Wire] - The number of deaths was up to 26 as of 2 Oct 2005
* Police hunt for Bali bombing masterminds [Reuters, 3 Oct 2005]

This podcast is a remix from a longer podcast originally posted on 2 October 2005.  The remix was done for educational purposes (for my classes).