Definition: Tourism

Category: Tourism

The activities of persons travelling to and staying in places outside their usual environment for not more than one consecutive year for leisure, business and other purposes.

Tourism is a subset of travel, when travel is understood in a broad sense meaning a movement from one place to another. Tourism covers the worldwide travel market within the general framework of population mobility and the provision of services for visitors. Tourism means the practice of travelling outside a person's usual environment for all purposes. However, some non-voluntary purposes of trips are excluded by convention: non-voluntary stays in hospital and other medical institutions providing clinical/medical treatment, which is prescribed by a doctor, are excluded. Other non-voluntary exclusions include stays in prison and stays in military service (note that vacations from the institutions may be normally included in tourism).

In relation to a given country, three forms of tourism can be distinguished:

 (i) Domestic tourism comprises the activities of residents of a given country travelling to and staying in places only within that country but outside their usual environment.
(ii) Inbound tourism comprises the activities of non-residents of a given country travelling to and staying in places in that country and outside their usual environment.
(iii) Outbound tourism comprises the activities of residents of a given country travelling to and staying in places outside that country and outside their usual environment.

Similar definitions can be used for other areas, regions or group of countries by replacing "country" with the area of reference. The three forms of tourism can be combined in three ways to derive the following categories of tourism:

(i) internal tourism, which comprises "domestic tourism" and "inbound tourism";
(ii) national tourism, which comprises "domestic tourism" and "outbound tourism";
(iii) international tourism, which consists of "inbound tourism" and "outbound tourism". http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=OJ:L:1999:009:0023:0047:EN:PDF