Nowadays, travelling has become more accessible for everyone by offering cheaper options and numerous countries have welcomed more foreigner visitors. This is advantageous for those who wish to travel abroad on a limited budget, however, with most people travelling to other countries it will affect local tourism and cause a serious financial loss to the small local businesses. For this reason, I believe that the disadvantages do outnumber the advantages.
It is already proven that affordable flights, cheap accommodations, and tourist attractions ticket discounts will definitely attract more foreigners. In this way, people still can enjoy and explore other countries with manageable expenses. For instance, Japan has successfully increased the number of its international tourists by ten-fold by offering seasonal discounts and price deductions of the flight tickets. This explains why this strategy is effective in attracting more tourists.
However, this initiative will make people prefer international tourism over local tourism. Offering price reductions will certainly intrigued visitors, especially foreigners to travel abroad. This might be one of the affecting factors that made some local tourist sites become unattractive and eventually abandoned or closed permanently due to the decreasing number of visitors. Additionally, this idea is less likely to support local business, especially the small ones. Local shops are starting to close down their businesses due to the low number of visitors. In fact, in Jakarta alone, local shops that sell traditional products are rarely seen.
In conclusion, I firmly believe that the drawbacks outweigh the benefit. While cheaper travelling costs will enable more people to explore the other countries, most small local shops will suffer a great loss and this will reduce the interest in visiting local attraction sites.