Impacts and Strategies of Seasonality in the Tourism Industry Dissertation

Impacts and Strategies of Seasonality in the Tourism Industry - Dissertation Example Seasonality has been mostly found to affect the businesses of the tourist enterprises. It has been obtained that seasonality is mostly caused by the changing climatic conditions depending on different times of the year. Thus while during the summer months, the number of visitors at a particular locations might be recorded to be at its peak; the results might be just the opposite during the other months of the year. This factor has led to significant problems in the industry since business is hampered effectively during those months when visitors are less. This particular study has thus been focused on understanding the primary causes and effects of seasonality on the tourism industry. The study tries to determine that realizing the demands of the tourists; tourist enterprises can plan their maintenance and tourist infrastructures accordingly. Also, there are strategies and models that if followed, can enable the tourist enterprises to reduce the impacts of seasonality on the industry as a whole. Title: Impacts and Strategies of Seasonality in the Tourism Industry Abstract: Seasonality is a highly essential factor as far as the tourism industry across the world is concerned. There are several tourist destinations across the world and in every country the issue of seasonality has become a matter of significant concern. Seasonality has been mostly found to affect the businesses of the tourist enterprises. ... According to Butler (1994) seasonality is defined as the cyclical non - permanent imbalance in tourism which can be quantified in terms of demand of sleeping facilities, number of visitors, employment opportunity variations and expenditure by visitors (Butler, 1994). This concept of seasonality is not peculiar to the tourism industry, but is also experience in many sectors especially the agriculture and manufacturing (Bar On, 1975, Hylleberg, 1992). It is deemed as the main reason why private equity investiture in the tourism sector is very low due to the fluctuating returns on investment over seasons (Hinch and Jackson, 2000). It also leads to the difficulty in obtaining and holding staff on a permanent bases and also leads to overuse of tourist facilities during the in season and underutilization during off peak periods (Butler, 2001). Due to this phenomenon, many industry experts have tried to tackle the problem of seasonality by first trying to understand the causative factors an d how they can be minimized or controlled and also by coming out with both qualitative and quantitative approaches to how this problem can be addressed. There is another school of thought which see some advantages in having seasonality occur, the nature or ecological lovers believe that the off season affords the environment to recover from the masses that visit nature sites during the in season (Cannas, 2012). This school of thought shall however not be included in this research. The concept of seasonality with respect to tourism has been found to of a temporal and spatial concern for the industry. The concept can be focused both in terms of finance as well as the number of visitors to particular tourist destinations. Natural seasonality may result