Urban tourism: major trends

Tourism is a comprehensive, highly diversified and strategically important industry that plays a strong driving role in national economic and social development. Cities have become the key nodes of world tourism development. This chapter focuses on the development of tourism in more than 100 cities in Europe and expounds upon the main trends of world tourism development as reported by European Cities Marketing and the World Tourism Cities Federation, the two leading organizations in the field of city tourism. Regarding the pattern of global tourism development, the share of the European international tourism market keeps shrinking, tourism in American cities remains stable and tourism in Asia-Pacific region cities continues to expand under the influence of globalization. For Europe, the underlying causes of the changing nature of city tourism in Europe are analysed in more detail. Greater global mobility, the information boom and increased knowledge-sharing between people of recent years have facilitated the development of urban structures and led to higher levels of city tourism demand. This growth, however, may prove to be a burden for cities and comes at a price if it is not planned properly.