Tourisms around the world bring both positive and negative impacts to the local community. These impacts can be classified as economic, environmental, and sociocultural. Positive economic impacts include job opportunities, income obtained from tourisms and improvements in the transport infrastructure. Negative economic impacts refer to low salaries often associated with non-managerial jobs and through financial speculation, which can cause the price of land and homes to rise well beyond the capacity of local people. The environmental impacts can be legendary with the presence of the large number of tourists in fragile natural areas, which inevitably produces pollution and degradation. As for the effects of tourism in sociocultural aspect, in response to tourist demand, local arts and crafts are often heavily commercialized. In addition, it is also common to see traditional dances and ceremonies being performed purely for a tourist audience and on dates that bear no relationship with the ceremonies’ true meaning.
Accommodation is known as the heart of tourism, and hotels are the hub of accommodation. The hotel industry is both complex and highly competitive. Hotels can be categorized into either chains or independent ones. The former refers to major chains such as Sheraton, Hilton, and Accor. The major chains use different brands as a strategy to gain access to different segments of the accommodation market. Accor, for example, is an European leader and worldwide group which owns various brands from the very high-end Sofitel and Pullman to mid-market Mercure to the budget and economy Etap and Formule 1.
Consumers who are attracted to such brands know exactly what they want and get: hotels within a given brand cost more or less the same and look and feel very similar no matter where they are located. Whether you are a hardened business executive or timorous first-timer, they can be expected and comforting.
Independent hotels are privately owned and managed as a small/family business. They feature a sense of uniqueness, in contrast to the sometimes “identikit air” of the chain hotels. Independents can also offer the client a more personal experience and their staff turnover is generally lower.