Tourism: The benefits and drawbacks of tourism
Situation
Tourism is a fast growing industry in the global economy. Every year millions of people travel for different reasons. And they choose very different forms of travelling. You are going to take part in a group discussion about the benefits and drawbacks of modern tourism.
Materials
You are going to read several texts that deal with the topic „travelling“. Read the texts and do the exercises on vocabulary to improve your word power.
Tasks:
1 Make a list of the most important reasons why people travel. Why do you travel? What kind of travelling do you prefer? Why? What are the benefits and drawbacks of tourism?
2 In the end you are going to exchange ideas in a group discussion.
Text: The benefits and drawbacks of tourism
The art of traveling
A The hilltop village of Montefalco is a sleepy Umbrian hamlet with characteristic views of olive groves, vineyards and crumbling old villas. Villagers sip their morning cappuccino standing at a counter, and the scent of garlic wafts through the air. There aren’t many unspoiled scenes like this in Italy’s tourist hot spots, where visitors sometimes seem to outnumber the locals. In Montefalco, the few tourists are mostly out of sight – in the basement of an old villa, learning the difference between „al dente“ and „overcooked.“ Everyone knows you can eat well in Italy. Why not stopping there to learn the fine art of making Italian cuisine? Instead of tramping through churches, museums and shops, increasing numbers of visitors to Italy are enjoying culinary tourism: chopping and stirring, pressing olives, learning how to produce wine.
B The cooking-and-travel trend got started in Italy in the early 1990s when the Italian government began to license tourist farms called „agriturismi“. Anyone who owned a plot of land and a farmhouse could turn it into an upscale bed-and-breakfast. The government stipulated that the farms had to teach something to their guests and had to actually produce something. The most popular products are olive oil, wine, truffle paste and wild-boar sausage, much of which is sold to guests. Most of the agritourism farms produce only a few hundred bottles of wine or olive oil in a season, which makes it feasible for them to include onlookers in the process. Guests help to harvest grapes and even stamp on a few – long enough to get their pictures taken. Or they pick olives and help with the pressing. Then, after tasting the wine or the oil, many of them attend the cooking classes that have been added to the agenda over the years.
C If cooking is not your bag, how about painting, photography or quilting? For people whose passions lie somewhere in the broad field of arts and crafts, a growing number of trips gives a vacationer hands-on lessons, often with exposure to another culture. Lili Matsuda took time off from her high-powered job running a start-up in London to shoot pictures and write fiction in Guatemala. Porter Smith, a graphic designer in Richmond, Virginia, flew to Italy for lessons in lamp work, the craft of making intricate glass beads. Retirees Virginia and Harold Shuster from Bozman, Maryland, lived in a lodge in Nepal, learning to make pottery and studying local customs. „We walked home with water buffaloes,“ Virginia recalls. „We saw how the water jugs were made and then saw them in use by the villagers.“
D Jane Sinauer, whose company, „Horizons to Go“, arranged the lamp work-making trip to Italy, says her philosophy is simple: „Art is a way to understand the culture you are in.“ A firm called „Remote River Expeditions“ offers a floating art class on the largest river in western Madagascar, with a wildlife watercolorist sharing tips on painting the area’s unique animals and plants. Outfitter Eddie David has noticed that, despite the exotic flora and fauna, „people are more interested in the art.“ He says his interests shifted during the water coloring raft trip. „Before, it was just ‚This is pretty‘,“ he says. „Now it’s ‚Wow! What are the shades? What do I see?'“.
E Sometimes the results are life-changing. Lili Matsuda says several weeks in Guatemala „opened a door“ to her creativity. She quit her job and moved to New York, where she works shorter hours as a consultant. In her new-found free time, she takes pictures. Most arts-and-crafts tourists don’t experience such an epiphany, but they often gain a new perspective. „Many people come down here because they need a shock of creativity,“ says Fowler, who arranged the trips to Guatemala. „They need to make a living, but they’ve always wanted to be a photographer or writer.“ For a week or two, they can be.
Adapted from an article in Newsweek, August 2001
Exercises on vocabulary 1: Pastimes
Exercises on vocabulary 2: Odd man out
Task: Which of the words is the „odd man“? Tick the word which does not match the others.