The Context, Meaning And Scope Of Tourism — IELTS Reading Answers

Paragraph B

“Tourism in the mass form as we know it today is a distinctly twentieth-century phenomenon.”

Paragraph B dates mass tourism to the twentieth century, calling it a distinctly twentieth-century phenomenon, so the heading about tourism's emergence as a mass activity (ii) matches.

Paragraph C

“Tourism today has grown significantly in both economic and social importance.”

Paragraph C reports growth in tourism's economic and social importance, the two-part importance that heading i describes.

Paragraph D

“However, the major problems of the travel and tourism industry that have hidden, or obscured, its economic impact are the diversity and fragmentation of the industry itself.”

Paragraph D blames the industry's diversity and fragmentation for obscuring its economic impact, the difficulty of measuring tourism's contribution that heading v captures.

Paragraph E

“In fact, McIntosh and Goeldner (1990) suggest that tourism has become the largest commodity in international trade for many nations and, for a significant number of other countries, it ranks second or third.”

Paragraph E ranks tourism as the largest commodity in international trade for many nations, and second or third for others, which is the trade-ranking claim in heading vii.

The largest employment figures in the world are found in the travel and tourism industry.

“According to the World Travel and Tourism Council (1992), Travel and tourism is the largest industry in the world on virtually any economic measure including value-added capital investment, employment and tax contributions.”

The World Travel and Tourism Council calls travel and tourism the largest industry in the world on virtually any economic measure including employment, supporting the claim about employment figures.

Tourism contributes over six per cent of the Australian gross national product.

“This industry is the world’s leading industrial contributor, producing over 6 per cent of the world’s national product and accounting for capital investment in excess of $422 billion in direct, indirect and personal taxes each year.”

The six per cent figure refers to the world's national product, not Australia's gross national product, so nothing is said about the Australian share.

Tourism has a social impact because it promotes recreation.

“Thus, tourism has a profound impact both on the world economy and, because of the educative effect of travel and the effects on employment, on society itself.”

The passage attributes tourism's social impact to travel's educative effect and to employment, never to the promotion of recreation, so the causal claim is unaddressed.

Two main features of the travel and tourism industry make its economic significance difficult to ascertain.

“However, the major problems of the travel and tourism industry that have hidden, or obscured, its economic impact are the diversity and fragmentation of the industry itself.”

Diversity and fragmentation are exactly two features, and the passage says they have hidden or obscured tourism's economic impact, matching the question.

Visitor spending is always greater than the spending of residents in tourist areas.

“Since many of these businesses also serve local residents, the impact of spending by visitors can easily be overlooked or underestimated.”

The text notes that businesses serve local residents too and that visitor spending is easily underestimated; it never compares the two totals, let alone says visitors always outspend residents.

It is easy to show statistically how tourism affects individual economies.

“However, because of problems of definition, which directly affect statistical measurement, it is not possible with any degree of certainty to provide precise, valid or reliable data about the extent of world-wide tourism participation or its economic impact.”

Problems of definition mean it is not possible to provide precise, valid or reliable data, so showing tourism's effect on economies statistically is difficult, not easy.

“For example, tourism is the major source of income in Bermuda, Greece, Italy, Spain, Switzerland and most Caribbean countries.”

The gap needs a noun phrase naming tourism's role in these countries; the passage calls it the major source of income in Bermuda, Greece, Spain and elsewhere.

“suggest that the travel and tourism industry is the number one ranked employer in the Bahamas, Brazil, Canada, France, (the former) West Germany, Hong Kong, Italy, Jamaica, Japan, Singapore, the United Kingdom and the United States.”

The gap needs a noun for what the industry ranks first as; the text says it is the number one ranked employer in countries such as Brazil, Canada and Japan.

“In many cases, similar difficulties arise when attempts are made to measure domestic tourism.”

The gap names what is hard to measure; the passage says similar difficulties arise when attempts are made to measure domestic tourism, as opposed to international tourism.