Cambridge IGCSE Geography (0460): Theme 3.4 – Tourism – Study Guide

This guide covers Topic 3.4 Tourism from the Cambridge IGCSE Geography (0460) syllabus for examination in 2025 and 2026, Version 2 (published November 2022). Topic 3.4 sits in Theme 3, Economic development. Its content is examined in Paper 1 Geographical Themes (1 hour 45 minutes, 75 marks), where you answer three questions, one from each section, and the syllabus says Paper 2 knowledge questions are also based on topics from the three themes. The syllabus also lists tourism among the topics where questionnaires can be used, which matters for Paper 4 Alternative to Coursework.

Use this guide with the tourism revision notes and the tourism practice questions. For the whole course, go to the Cambridge IGCSE Geography hub and tick off topics on the IGCSE Geography checklist.

Coverage table

Syllabus reference	What you must know or be able to do (from the document)	Where assessed
3.4	Describe and explain the growth of tourism in relation to the main attractions of the physical and human landscape	Paper 1; Paper 2 knowledge items
3.4	Evaluate the benefits and disadvantages of tourism to receiving areas	Paper 1
3.4	Demonstrate an understanding that careful management of tourism is required in order for it to be sustainable	Paper 1
3.4 case study	An area where tourism is important	Paper 1
Enquiry skills	Tourism is named as a topic where questionnaires can be used; suggested coursework enquiries ask about the benefits and problems of tourists visiting an area, and where a resort fits in the Butler model	Component 3 or Paper 4

The syllabus gives no further guidance column for 3.4, so the exact examples you use are your teacher’s choice. The syllabus says case studies can come from anywhere in the world, and you may use more than one.

Key terms

Term	Definition
Tourism	Travel away from your usual home area for leisure, business or visiting friends and relatives
Domestic tourism	Tourism within your own country
International tourism	Tourism that crosses a national border
Receiving area	The place that tourists visit (the destination)
Source area	The place tourists come from
Mass tourism	Large numbers of tourists visiting the same place, often on package holidays
Ecotourism	Small-scale tourism to natural areas that aims to conserve the environment and benefit local people
Multiplier effect	Money spent by tourists is re-spent in the local economy, creating further jobs and income
Leakage	The share of tourist spending that leaves the receiving area, for example as profits to foreign owners or payment for imports
Seasonality	Visitor numbers, and so jobs and income, rise and fall at different times of year
Carrying capacity	The number of visitors a place can take before the environment or visitor experience is damaged
Sustainable tourism	Tourism that meets the needs of visitors and hosts today without damaging the environment, economy or culture for the future

1. Why tourism has grown: physical and human attractions

The syllabus asks you to link the growth of tourism to the attractions of the landscape. That means two separate jobs. First, explain why more people travel at all. Second, explain why particular places attract them.

Why more people travel

• Higher incomes in many countries leave more money for holidays.
• Paid holidays and shorter working weeks give people time to travel.
• Cheaper air travel, larger aircraft and budget airlines cut the cost of long journeys.
• Online booking and social media make it easy to find, compare and book trips.
• Package holidays bundle flights, hotel and transfers into one price.
• Better roads, airports and rail links make destinations quicker to reach.
• Governments promote tourism to earn foreign currency and create jobs.

Physical attractions come from the natural landscape: a warm, sunny and dry climate; beaches; coral reefs for diving; mountains for skiing and trekking; lakes, waterfalls and rivers; volcanoes; deserts; and wildlife in national parks.

Human attractions are made by people: historic buildings and heritage sites; museums and galleries; religious sites; cities with shopping and nightlife; theme parks; festivals, food and local culture; sports events; and good hotels, transport and safety.

Most places combine both. A ski resort needs snowy mountain slopes (physical) but also lifts, hotels and road access (human). Without the human side, a physical attraction is hard to sell.

Worked paragraph (Explain question). “Coastal areas in the tropics have grown as destinations because of physical attractions such as reliable sunshine, warm sea and coral reefs for snorkelling (knowledge). In the Maldives, clear lagoons and reefs around small coral islands are the main draw, and a resort on its own island offers privacy (application). These attractions only became accessible when international flights reached the main airport, so growth depended on human investment as well as the natural landscape (analysis). This suggests the physical attraction explains why visitors want to come, but the human factors explain when growth happened (evaluation).”

2. The Butler model of tourist resort development

The 3.4 content list does not name any model. However, the syllabus’s list of suitable coursework enquiries includes “Where does a particular tourist resort fit in the Butler model of tourist development?” Your teacher will confirm how far to use it in Paper 1 answers. It is a useful way to describe how a resort grows.

Richard Butler set out the model in 1980 in The Canadian Geographer as the “tourist area cycle of evolution”. The stages are:

1. Exploration – a few adventurous visitors; no tourist facilities.
2. Involvement – local people start to provide accommodation and services.
3. Development – rapid growth; outside companies build large hotels; marketing increases.
4. Consolidation – growth slows; tourism dominates the local economy; some local resentment.
5. Stagnation – visitor numbers peak; facilities age; the resort loses its fashionable image.
6. Decline or rejuvenation – numbers fall unless the resort reinvents itself, for example with new attractions or new markets.

Evaluation. The model is a simple way to compare resorts and to predict problems such as overcrowding. But it is a general pattern, not a law. Real resorts can skip stages, and sudden shocks such as a natural disaster or a pandemic can cause a sharp fall that has nothing to do with the resort ageing. It is also hard to tell exactly when one stage ends.

3. Benefits and disadvantages to receiving areas

The command word is evaluate. You must weigh benefits against disadvantages and reach a judgement, not just list both.

	Benefits	Disadvantages
Economic	Jobs in hotels, transport, guiding and crafts; foreign currency; tax revenue; multiplier effect supports farmers, builders and shops; new infrastructure (airports, roads, water supply) also serves locals	Many jobs are seasonal, low-paid or go to migrant workers; leakage of profits to foreign companies and spending on imports; over-dependence on one industry; rising land and house prices
Social and cultural	Money for schools, health care and services; interest in local crafts and traditions; pride in heritage	Overcrowding and congestion; loss of traditional ways of life; culture turned into a show for visitors; conflict over dress, alcohol or noise
Environmental	Entry fees and taxes can pay for conservation; protected areas may be created because they attract visitors	Damage to reefs, dunes and footpaths; litter, sewage and waste; heavy water and energy use; air pollution and carbon emissions from flights; loss of habitat for hotels

How to reach a judgement. The balance depends on:

• Scale: small numbers of visitors may bring benefits with little damage; mass tourism can exceed carrying capacity.
• Ownership: locally owned businesses keep more of the money; foreign-owned resorts increase leakage.
• Type of tourism: ecotourism usually has smaller impacts than large resort complexes.
• Management: limits, fees and planning can reduce the disadvantages.
• Who you are: a hotel owner, a fisher whose reef is damaged and a young person seeking work may judge the same change differently.

Worked paragraph (Evaluate question). “Tourism brings income to receiving areas, for example jobs in hotels and transport (knowledge). In a small island resort, however, much of the food and fuel is imported and many hotels are foreign-owned, so a large share of each tourist’s spending leaks out (application). This reduces the multiplier effect, so the economic benefit is smaller than the number of visitors suggests (analysis). Tourism is therefore most beneficial where local people own businesses and supply goods, and least beneficial where leakage is high (evaluation).”

4. Managing tourism so it is sustainable

The syllabus wants you to understand that tourism needs careful management to be sustainable. Without it, the attraction that brought visitors can be damaged, and the area can lose its income. This is the link with the Butler model’s stagnation and decline stages.

Management strategies

• Limit visitor numbers with quotas, permits, timed tickets or booking systems.
• Charge entry fees or tourist taxes and spend the money on conservation and services.
• Zone areas: keep sensitive zones protected and concentrate facilities elsewhere.
• Encourage local ownership and local supply chains to cut leakage.
• Train and employ local people, including in skilled and managerial jobs.
• Promote off-season travel to reduce seasonality and crowding.
• Build in environmental controls: sewage treatment, waste recycling, renewable energy, water saving.
• Educate visitors with codes of conduct, for example not touching coral.

Real examples of management

• Bhutan opened to tourism in 1974. It has long followed a “high value, low volume” policy. Visitors pay a Sustainable Development Fee per night: USD 200 from 2022, cut to USD 100 in 2023. The idea is fewer, higher-spending visitors. The cut shows the trade-off: a high fee protects the country but can deter visitors and reduce income.
• Venice, Italy introduced a €5 access fee on 25 April 2024 for day-trippers who do not stay overnight, charged on selected busy days. Since August 2021, ships over 25,000 tonnes have been banned from passing through the Giudecca Canal. These measures target crowding by day visitors and large ships, but a small fee may not change behaviour much.

Evaluation. Management works best when it has local support, is enforced, and when money raised is spent visibly on the place. It can fail if it simply pushes visitors to another site, or if a government depends on tourism income so much that it will not cap numbers.

5. Case study: the Maldives – an area where tourism is important

Location and setting. The Maldives is an island country in the Indian Ocean, south-west of India and Sri Lanka. It is made up of 1,192 coral islands grouped in 26 atolls. Its highest natural point is only 2.4 metres above sea level. The capital is Malé.

Growth. Tourism began in 1972, when the first resort, Kurumba, opened. World Bank data show international arrivals of about 1.7 million in 2019, falling to about 555,000 in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic. The World Bank puts tourism at about 21% of GDP, and in 2019 international tourism receipts made up about 85% of the country’s export earnings.

Attractions. Physical: coral reefs, white sand beaches, clear lagoons, warm sea, marine life for diving and snorkelling, and a tropical climate. Human: luxury resorts, each occupying its own island (“one island, one resort”), water villas, seaplane transfers and an international airport, Velana International Airport, near Malé.

Benefits. Tourism is the largest industry. It brings foreign currency, which the country needs because it is import-dependent. Tourist taxes support government income. Guesthouses on inhabited local islands have spread (the green tax was extended to them in 2016), so more tourist spending reaches local communities rather than only resort islands.

Disadvantages. Food, fuel and building materials are largely imported, which increases leakage. Waste is a major problem: since the early 1990s, rubbish from Malé and nearby resorts has been shipped to Thilafushi, an artificial island used as a landfill. Coral bleaching and sea-level rise threaten the very reefs and beaches that attract visitors. Heavy dependence on one industry makes the economy vulnerable to shocks: after the 2004 tsunami, World Bank data show GDP shrinking by about 11% in 2005, and arrivals fell by about two-thirds in 2020 during the pandemic.

Management. A green tax has been charged on tourists since 1 November 2015. From 1 January 2025 it is USD 12 per night at resorts and larger establishments, and USD 6 at small hotels and guesthouses on inhabited islands. The one-island, one-resort pattern concentrates impacts, and some resorts sponsor coral-restoration projects that grow coral fragments on frames and replant them on damaged reefs.

Evaluation. The Maldives shows tourism can bring large economic benefits to a country with few other resources. But high leakage, waste and climate risk mean its future depends on management. A tax raises money, but it cannot by itself stop global sea-level rise, which is outside the country’s control.

Worked case-study paragraph. “Tourism is important in the Maldives because it makes up about 21% of GDP and most of the country’s export earnings (knowledge). Growth has been driven by physical attractions such as coral reefs and lagoons around its 1,192 islands, and by luxury one-island resorts reached through Velana International Airport (application). However, because so much food and fuel is imported, leakage reduces the benefit, and waste has had to be shipped to the landfill island of Thilafushi (analysis). The green tax, raised to USD 12 a night at resorts in 2025, shows an attempt to make visitors pay for impacts, but whether tourism is sustainable depends on how the money is used (evaluation).”

Common errors

• Listing attractions without saying whether each is physical or human when the question asks for both.
• Explaining why one place is popular but not why tourism in general has grown, or the reverse.
• Writing “tourism creates jobs” with no detail. Say what kind of job, and whether it is seasonal, skilled or local.
• Treating leakage and the multiplier effect as the same thing. They work in opposite directions.
• Giving only benefits or only disadvantages when the command word is evaluate.
• Describing management strategies without explaining how each makes tourism more sustainable.
• Using a case study with no place-specific detail. Names, dates and figures earn the higher levels.
• Presenting the Butler model as a fixed rule; real resorts do not always follow it.

Where next

• Coral reef conditions are covered in coasts, which helps you explain reef damage from tourism.
• Tourism to volcanic landscapes appears in earthquakes and volcanoes.
• Tourism is a tertiary-sector activity; see development for employment sectors and globalisation.
• Migration of workers into tourist areas links to population and settlement.
• Condense this guide with the tourism revision notes, then test yourself with the practice questions.

Official syllabus

This guide follows the Cambridge IGCSE Geography (0460) syllabus for examination in 2025 and 2026, Version 2 (published November 2022), Topic 3.4 Tourism. Always check the current syllabus on the Cambridge International website, and your teacher will confirm which case studies your class uses.