Harmful Effects of Tourism

There is no doubt that visiting new places, opening interesting corners of the planet and exploring exotic sights are always attractive. But often people forget about main purposes of tourism, by damaging our nature. That is why the quality of environment has become the essential problem for tourism. And although tourism can be very beneficial and useful, it impacts on our nature in a harmful way. So, to be or not to be…a tourist? Tourism is an activity that conceals adverse environmental effects. Such impacts can be caused by the construction of tourism facilities and developing of the infrastructure like hotels, pools, resorts, restaurants, shops or by a “rah-rah” attitude of tourists to “foreign” nature. These all lead to destruction of the primordial nature- touristic sights looks so ugly and frightening with awful industrials skyscrapers, shops and business centers.

For example, the Grand Canyon is now filled with letter – plastic bags, Pepsi cans can be found along the whole length of this wonder of nature; marble of the Parthenon (Greece) has turned from white to grey because of the number of cars and tourist buses. Thousands of similar examples can be cited. People’s behavior is a real problem. We just forget about the proverb “When you are in Rome, do as the Romans do” and do not care about damage we cause to the places of visiting. But bear up! Things are not all that bad. Still, two principal solutions can be arrised: first is introducing a special “tourist tax” for the potential damage to the environment one can cause and the other one is a worldwide campaign on environmental awareness. Such measures will undoubtedly help to preserve the main treasure of our planet – the nature.