Some aspects of tourist spending in Malta

Abstract

The limited means of adequate transport facilities hindered the free movement of people far and wide. Technological progress in this field, half-way through the twentieth century opened new horizons and fostered a free exchange of persons beyond regional boundaries. Transport is a necessary precondition of tourism as tourism is a matter of being elsewhere to one's habitat. Consequently tourism is a recent phenomenon. The readily accessible transport service and the increasing wealth available in developed countries mean that tourism is to be no longer the preserve of the wealthy and the leisured but that it can now be reached by a mass market. The populations of the developed countries receive an education and possess the disposable income to regard a holiday away from their daily environment as an essential feature of their life. The annual holiday is thus established as a reality for a considerable part of the population and as a realisable goal for all. As a mass commodity tourism is the end product of industrialisation; emanating from a highly developed industrialisation where work-time and leisure-time are divorced, leisure is equated with pleasure and pleasure with consumption. Moreover, mass tourism must entail the socialisation and institutionalisation of leisure time. These essentially economic conditions generate a whole range of industries devoted to producing consumables defined as, or rather embodying, pleasure and relaxation.