International tourism has prompted enormous advantages to many places in this world. Nevertheless, there is another concern about its impact on local people and the surrounding environment.
There are some benefits of international tourism for local inhabitant. First of all, it can introduce local culture to international level. The reason is because of uniqueness and there are no other places that have same culture. By allowing foreign people to visit this place, they will know that the specific culture does exists in a country. To illustrate, there are baduy tribes living in Banten Province in Indonesia. The people are special because the area that they live still pristine. There is no internet connection, electricity, gadget, or other technological devices. They always eat anything from plants growing at surrounding area, not buying from outside market. They can live using this manner since there are some beliefs that descend by the ancestors that they don’t allow to damage the nature. If this place is open for international visitors, Indonesia will be famous of its unique culture. Secondly, international tourism can bring traditional cuisine to the world. Therefore, many foreign people will know about plenty of cuisines from a place or a country. For instance, in Indonesia, there is a city called Padang. Padang is famous of rendang, a cuisine made from beef with many kinds of spices as seasoning. If many people know about this food, it is not impossible that local people can export the product to other countries. Then the biggest impact of this tourism is increasing the income of local people. As a result of many foreign visitors go to a tourism place. The local government and the inhabitant usually prepare amenities for the tourists. For instance, accommodation such as hotel, homestay, restaurants, cafes, craft shops and other facilities that make visitors feel more convenience. The more visitors go to this place, the more products that visitors buy. Finally, the local people can get more income from it.
On the other hand, giving opportunity to foreign visitors can give the bad impact to the environment. Firstly, there will be an increasing number of garbage if the waste management is not well-designed. For instance, in some diving spots in Indonesia like Karimun Jawa. Nowadays, some spots in Karimun Jawa are full of garbages either in the beaches or in the sea. This condition will give bad impact for plants or animal species there, such as fishes and anemons. Besides, international tourism also can have negative effect to water resources in the area. There are some water scarcity cases near tourism place. An example, Bali is an island in Indonesia that has the most visitors. Most of the visitors in Bali comes from foreign countries such as Australia, European countries, and many more. For giving amenities to tourists, many building such as five star hotels are built in Bali. These big hotels often need many water resources. Because of the hotel area can be near pedestrian, it can influences water resource for local necessity such as for domestic need and agriculture. However, this bad effect can be solved by good management from private sectors and local governments. For instance, local government make regulation about how to make water well that environmentally friendly.
In conclusion, international tourism can have both benefits and drawbacks to the local people and the environment. The benefits are still more than the drawbacks for its local people. The drawbacks are mostly for the environment. However, if the private sectors and local governments can control this environmental issue, the bad impacts still can be solved.