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Potential for Tourism - cities, mountains and coastal environments
Think about it
There is huge potential for tourism worldwide and within the UK, and tourism covers a range of types and locations.  People are all different, and seek different things from their vacation or leisure time.  Tourism also varies by timescale; some people go for a day (day trippers), weekends and city breaks, whilst most people go for a week or 2.  Some people are lucky enough to go on huge round the world adventures or take long breaks of 3 months or longer in a destination of their choice - a gap year working holiday is an example of this (you can get a working visa for Australia for 1 year as a UK citizen for example).

In addition, people can go abroad on a package deal as a mass tourist (e.g. Jamaica), or to extreme environments (e.g. Antarctica) as an extreme tourist, or as a more sustainable tourist to ecological tourist areas (e.g. the Galapagos Islands).

The most popular types of tourism include beach tourism, mountain tourism and city breaks.  All three of these offer the tourist different activities and entertainments.  Beach resort tourism will often occur in regions of high sunlight and low precipitation levels, be based around a picturesque beach and associated entertainments.  Beach resorts often have water parks, a raft of bars and restaurants and marine based activities (e.g. banana boat!). 

Above - Koh Samet Island, and example of Beach tourism in Thailand
 Mountain tourism offers skiing in the winter and a range of summer activities such as hiking, camping, white water rafting and paragliding.  Cities offer a different experience again.  Here you have the usual hotels, bars, restaurants etc. associated with tourism but you also get museums, monuments, theatres, concert venues, galleries and other cultural or historical features. 

The Southern Alps in New Zealand, an example of mountain tourism.  Skiing and hiking and the most popular activities here

It is no surprise then that the most visited country in the world is France. This is because it has the summer climate to support beach tourism along its Atlantic and Mediterranean coastlines, whilst it has year round tourism in the Alps, Pyrenees and Massive Central mountain ranges.  It also has major cities such as Paris to visit (one of the most visited cities in the world).  A huge range then, in a very accessible country with lots of International airports and which is surrounded by heavily populated countries such as Germany, Holland, Italy and the UK. France also has other Global attractions such as Euro Disney, further boosting tourist numbers. 
The Eiffel Tower in Paris
 
     
Why might people want to visit the UK?  
 

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