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Adio Addie Tee Dinika
MARCO POLO, Christopher Columbus, David Livingstone, Neil Armstrong, James Cook, Erik the Red, Vasco da Gama, Ferdinand Magellan, George Mallory, Mungo Park, all these are famous names we I’m sure are familiar with. But what do these names have in common? Tourism . . . yes they are all great explorers dating back to as early as the eighth century. These men shared one common element – they loved travelling.

Columbus was reportedly the first European to reach America, Cook the first European in Australia and Armstrong went all the way to the moon. All these activities boil to one common topic – tourism. So what is tourism and where did it come from? Teens shared with us what they understand tourism to mean.

“Tourism is moving around and having fun,” were the sentiments of Munashe Chifunda, a Form Three student in Harare.
Hazel Kandeya, a student at Chinhoyi University of Technology, defined it as travelling by people for sightseeing and relaxation purposes.
Both answers are correct, indeed tourism involves travelling and seeing new places and meeting new people and learning new cultures. Tourism is defined in most dictionaries as travel for recreational, leisure or business purposes.

The United Nations World Trade Organisation defines it as the activity in which people travel to and stay in places outside their usual environment for not more than one consecutive year for leisure, business and other purposes.

In ancient times travel was motivated by the search for food. People would travel from jungle to jungle, hunting and gathering; the mode of transport was mainly walking.

Tourism has come from a long way changing in dimension with the developments in technology. The most notable development which revolutionised travelling, was when Galileo proved that the Earth was not flat and people would not fall over if they continued moving beyond the horizon.

People became adventurous and would move around discovering places unknown to their communities and conquering new lands. The most important technological move was the invention of the wheel.

The wheel meant that people could now fashion chariots and other coaches drawn by animals which meant they could carry more food and other provisions as well as cover longer distances.

In response to the growing number of travellers people began to build inns; these would provide travellers with meals and places to sleep, from the inns, there where motels, these where roadside hotels with space for parking wagons, these are still in existence.

The ancient Romans are credited for the best roads, some of which exist even to this day; because they were the most civilised they had the largest share of the travel cake.

In the early centuries as part of their education children from royal families would be sent on journeys around the world so that they could learn the “ways of the world” here they could pick up new customs, languages as well as new skills.

Although they would be accompanied by several royal servants, these journeys were fraught with danger and upon completion of such a journey the princes and princesses would be honoured and given titles. Explorers like Vasco da Gama and Christopher Columbus were often commissioned by their kings to conquer new lands and new territories for their countries.

Some would return but others like James Cook would start new states in the new lands. These travels were often spurred by the search for riches and other exotic goodies, of course with curiosity being a very important element.

Today with airplanes, bullet trains, tourism has become a household activity supporting the economies of several countries and responsible for the movement of over two billion people annually.