Tourism: Looking for a Definition
According to Towner (1995) the definition of tourism has its origin on a small history that took place in the town of Oxfordshire in 1887. Year in which a girl with only an age of eleven years, joined by her brother, went on a journey, by feet, of approximately 12 kilometers in order to spend some weeks at their uncle’s house. This journey, nowadays, is considered to be insignificant, but back in those days it was the start of a new culture. Towner (1995) adds that the day the kids arrived at the parish, it was considered to be something rare and special as nobody was prepared to so called strangers to their parish. A simple walk through the town or a visit to the local church turned into something exacting and new.
According to World Tourism Organization (2015), tourism is considered to be a cultural, social and economic phenomenon, which generates a flow between people from different countries and places, outside from their normal environment, mainly due to leisure or work purposes. The WTO also mentions that each and every person that practices tourism, based on the reason to do so and the role practiced at the destination, defines themselves as tourists, hiker, resident or nonresident.
Towner (1995, p. 2) still gives a very limited vision of tourism in terms of geography when he mentions that it is seen as “dispersing geographically ever outwards from its origins in Britain and Western Europe, creating a series of 'pleasure peripheries “.
Throughout history, the reasons that made people leave their usual place of living developed and diversified, coming to a point, nowadays, in which almost everybody travels. In a certain way the authors can state that tourism, and its concept of travelling, is part of our everyday live and doing it, is almost normal. On the other hand, we can also define tourism as an activity that represents all individuals, that travel outside of their usual place to live and staying, at those places, for leisure and business reasons, for a period less than one year.