Global Business Environment Portfolio Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Global Business Environment Portfolio - Essay Example It is a market that is very important for any economy and is capable of creating more jobs per million currency investments than any other market or industry. This report will investigate the various changes in the travel and tourism market in the last five years (2007-2011) and analyse how economic and technological factors have contributed to these changes. Tourism industry continued its strong growth in 2007 like the previous 3 years. 2008 started on a positive note with a 5% increase in the first half but started to decline as the graph of the number of international arrivals started moving in the negative curve. The year ended with an overall growth of only 2% in complete contrast to the 7% growth in 2007 (UNWTO, 2009). The trend continued as there as a 4.2% decline in 2009. Tourism and travel industry hit an all time low in 2009 (UNWTO, 2010). 2010 saw exceptional recovery with a 7% increase in the number of international tourist arrivals (935 million). Even though there was a speedy recovery, it was not consistent and was at varied speeds. It was the emerging economies that mainly contributed to the recover. The recovery was lower in the advanced economies and this reflected the global economic situation at the time (UNWTO, 2011). But an exception to this is the US. 2010 saw a record-setting 60 million international tourist (Office of Travel and Tourism Industries, 2010). International tourism consolidated for the losses and saw tremendous recovery. 2011 was a great year as there was healthy growth registered. There was 5% increase in international tourism in first half of 2011 this in spite of many challenges. The fact that has been very promising is that the advanced economies have grown faster than expected. The number of international arrivals was a record 440 million. European countries have done exceedingly well with strong growth even though the economic situation has been very gloomy. During the same time, as international tourism has been swingi ng both ways, domestic tourism saw a steady growth in majority of the markets. Source: UNWTO, IMaCS analysis There were also other important changes in the travel and tourism industry in the last five years. Internet was heavily used by users to assist in the travel plans. Following are some of the important statistics with respect to travel and technology: Search engines were used for gathering travelling information by 62% of personal travellers (Trent, 2011) Mobile devices were extensively used by business travellers (51%) (Trent, 2011) Flash sales have become very popular in the travel and tourism industry. Unexpected emails have resulted in a 25% booking of travel services (Trent, 2011) Online booking of travel destinations and services has increases tremendously (Trent, 2011). Economic factors have been a major contributor to the changes in the travel and tourism industry in the last five years. The global economic crisis has been the contributor to the decline in the growth o f the travel and tourism industry in the 2008 and 2009. The various economic factors that lead to the downfall of the travel and tourism industry were the global financial crisis, fluctuations in exchange rate (massive fluctuations), credit crunch, increase in the prices of the commodities and oil prices. The consumers as well as the business had lost their confidence in the economic conditions. This affected the spending behaviours of