World Tourism Day -- A Day to Celebrate Travel for Travel's Sake

Today is world tourism day--the 30th commemoration of this day celebrated by The United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) every year since 1980. As a passionate leisure traveler, I dedicate my blog today to the sheer joy of leisure travel. Having just deposited a good deal of my discretionary currency into the world economy on my recent journey, I can personally attest to the economic benefits of tourism.

World Tourism Day, hosted this year in Ghana, coincides with the anniversary of the date (September 27) in 1970 when the UNWTO Statutes were adopted, a milestone in global tourism. According to the UNWTO website the purpose of the day is to raise awareness of the role of tourism within the international community and to show how it affects social, cultural, political and economic values worldwide. This year’s theme "focuses on the world’s cultural wealth and the important role sustainable tourism plays in revitalizing local traditions and making them flourish as they cross other cultures".

England is credited officially as the first country to promote tourism as an activity. With the Industrial Revolution and growth of the economy in England and other parts of Europe, leisure travel became popular among the rich and eventually the middle class began to spend some of their income and leisure time touring. Over time many forms of tourism have evolved including adventure tourism, cultural tourism, heritage or historical tourism, eco-tourism, medical tourism, war tourism, wildlife tourism and sustainable tourism. According to the World Tourism Organization, in 2008, there were over 922 million international tourist arrivals with world tourism receipts reaching $944 billion. By 2020, the number of international tourist arrivals is expected to reach 1.6 billion.

I sometimes think that many people view travel as a necessary burden for business endeavors or as a thing to do for vacation or retirement. Obviously, travel is much more vital to our world than this. Tourists are discovers learning about new places, terrains, and most importantly people. They are jolted from the everydayness of the life they are comfortable with. They see and hear new things, smell new smells, taste unique and sometimes bizarre new foods and meet people very different from those they associate with in their day-to-day life. They come in direct contact with the diversity of their world, and yet in that same foreignness discover the similarities in their universe in a child's play, a mother's smile, a stranger's kindness. As this happens the world becomes a closer place, a better place.

I first witnessed travel through the eyes of a soldier returning from war...despite the hardship of conflict, he came home with stories of adventure and awe at places and things he saw, he gave to me what my mother called my "wanderlust." May it be in the future that more of us wander first as tourists...so that the children of the world will first learn about travel through a tourist's eye.

Happy Tourism Day!