What is tourism? A definition of tourism

Last updated: 8 October 2026

Most people have been tourists at some point in their lives, but what exactly is tourism, and how is it defined?

There is no simple answer to this question, and academics and organisations have defined tourism in many different ways.

Tourism is one of the world’s largest industries. According to the World Travel & Tourism Council, travel and tourism contributed around 10% of global GDP in 2024 and supported around 357 million jobs – roughly one in ten jobs worldwide. However, the boundaries of the tourism industry are blurred. Activities that some consider to be tourism, others do not, and some people consider themselves tourists while others do not.

This article explains why there is no simple answer to the question ‘what is tourism?’, the diversity of the tourism industry, and a range of definitions of tourism developed by academics and organisations.

What is tourism?

Tourism is the generic term used to cover both demand and supply that has been adopted in a variety of forms and used throughout the world. 

Tourism essentially refers to the activities undertaken by visitors, also known as the visitor economy. The tourism industry encompasses all activity that takes place within the visitor economy.

This includes activities that are directly related to the tourist, such as staying in a hotel, ordering a meal or visiting a tourist attraction. It also includes indirect activities, such as the transport company which delivers the food to the restaurant in which the tourist eats or the laundry company that has a contract with the hotel for cleaning bed sheets.

It is largely because of these indirect contributions that defining and measuring the tourism industry is so difficult.

Tourism comes in many different shapes and sizes and there are many different types of tourism. There is mass tourism, niche tourism and special interest tourism. There is domestic tourism and international tourism. There is inbound tourism and outbound tourism.

While there is a range of different forms of tourism, they all come under the broad tourism umbrella, because they all revolve around visitors and they all feed the visitor economy in one way or another.

A definition of tourism

Tourism is a phenomenon with no universally accepted definition, owing to the complexity and individualism of the travellers themselves and the activities that they choose to undertake.

The most widely used definition of tourism comes from the World Tourism Organization (now UN Tourism) and the United Nations Statistics Division. Their recommendations, first published in 1994 and updated in the International Recommendations for Tourism Statistics (2008), state that tourism comprises the activities of visitors travelling to a main destination outside their usual environment, for less than a year, for any main purpose (business, leisure or other personal purpose) other than to be employed by a resident entity in the place visited.

UN Tourism also describes tourism more broadly as ‘a social, cultural and economic phenomenon which entails the movement of people to countries or places outside their usual environment for personal or business/professional purposes’.

Mathieson and Wall (1982) on the other hand, do not impose a timeframe, simply stating that one must travel to a destination temporarily.

Leiper (1979) believed that defining tourism is more complex than this, proposing that there are three approaches that can be taken. The economic stance focuses on tourism as a business, the technical stance focusses on the tourist in order to provide a common basis by which to collect data and the holistic stance attempts to include the entire essence of the subject.

The Cambridge Dictionary defines tourism quite simply as; ‘the business of providing services such as transport, places to stay or entertainment for people who are on holiday’.

Whilst such attempts to define the concept of tourism may be useful from a generic perspective, the practical application of such definitions is difficult when applied to specific tourism types, such as those outlined in the types of tourism glossary.

In fact, Robinson and Novelli (2007), in their introduction to the niche tourism phenomenon, postulate that tourists have developed as consumers, becoming increasingly sophisticated in their needs and preferences as a result of an emergent culture of tourism.

Despite such acknowledgements of the progressive and adaptive nature of tourism, particularly evident through the limitless introduction of new and niche tourism forms, there appear to have been no attempts to develop the commonly accepted definitions of tourism in parallel.

Many argue that the definition of tourism needs to be revisited by academics and industry practitioners to ensure that it represents the tourism industry as it operates today, including new forms such as virtual tourism, digital nomadism and workations.

Video: What is tourism? A definition of tourism

What is tourism? To conclude

Tourism is a complex and diverse phenomenon. While official definitions provide a useful basis for measurement and comparison, the variety of tourists, purposes and types of tourism means that no single definition captures everything that tourism involves.

Definition of tourism: FAQs

Below are answers to some of the most common questions about tourism.

Further reading

A key text on the tourism industry is Tourism: Principles and Practice by John Fletcher, Alan Fyall, David Gilbert and Stephen Wanhill. If you found this article helpful, the following posts may also be of interest:

• What is a tourist?
• Types of tourism glossary
• Components of tourism
• The importance of tourism
• The history of tourism
• Leiper’s tourism system

About the author

Dr Hayley Stainton is a tourism academic, examiner and the founder of Tourism Teacher. She has a PhD in tourism and more than 20 years’ experience teaching travel and tourism at school and university level. Read more about Hayley