Globalization

Capital consolidation and Internet marketing are the most important factors driving globalization in the hotel, catering and tourism sector. Different from other industries, hotels and restaurants cannot be transferred from one country to the other, but tourist streams move quickly and favour places offering them better conditions even at the detriment of a balanced local development. Social and environmental assets are not always sufficiently protected. Moreover, the benefits from tourism do not all accrue to the place of consumption. Developing countries complain of too high a share for the operating countries of tour operators and hotel chains. On the other hand, forms of new tourism such as eco-tourism, which have been increasing recently favour independent and small scale tourism service providers. The Internet is creating a potential for those enterprises to market their product and use e-commerce to attract customers directly. At present, however, such tools are not yet used on any considerable scale.