Tourism: Human Greed and a ‘Paradise’ Divided

Tourism is now a major global business. According to the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO in https://www.icao.int/annual-report-2019/Pages/the-world-of-air-transport-in-2019.aspx , 2019), an estimated 4.9 billion air passengers visited other lands globally, and the number is expected to increase to 10 billion by 2040. The impact of this volume of human movement on land base and the ecology is huge, but impossible to measure. This chapter offers a critical appraisal of tourism using the divided island of Cyprus as a case study. The chapter benefits from the extensive literature on tourism for a comparative study. In the first section of this chapter a variety of definitions and types of tourism is analyzed, highlighting the Las Vegas Model driven by human greed. This Model has been globalized including in divided Cyprus where two separate tourism markets have emerged. The chapter puts a special emphasis on ecological and environmental aspects of tourism development, critically reviewing free land and other tax incentives offered to tourism investors. The chapter concludes with a brief discussion of sustainable tourism, and an inquiry whether the net social benefits of conventional tourism are positive?