International Tourism Creates Tension Rather Than Understanding Between People from Different Cultures - IELTS Task 2 Band 9 Sample Essays

Achieve your dream score with our detailed IELTS eBooks - your complete guide!

Sample Essay 1

The rise of global tourism has transformed economies, yet its social impact is far more contentious. Critics argue that rather than fostering mutual appreciation, international tourism often intensifies cultural divides and misunderstanding. I fully agree with this perspective. This essay will argue that tourism frequently reinforces stereotypes and fuels resentment by examining how superficial cultural encounters distort perceptions, and how economic inequality between visitors and hosts aggravates tensions.

Tourism tends to encourage shallow engagement that strengthens caricatures rather than promoting deep understanding. Most travellers encounter culture through commodified performances or heavily curated attractions designed to appeal to foreign tastes. As a result, local traditions are stripped of nuance, presented as exotic spectacles rather than authentic practices. Tourists may leave with a sense of novelty, yet their impressions are oversimplified and sometimes patronising. For example, indigenous rituals are often re-enacted for tourists without their spiritual essence, leading outsiders to treat them as entertainment rather than sacred practices. This one-dimensional exposure fuels stereotypes instead of fostering respect, as visitors rarely experience the everyday realities of the host community. Thus, the very act of packaging culture for external consumption undermines its integrity and deepens the gap between visitor and resident.

A more damaging source of hostility lies in the stark economic imbalance between hosts and guests. Tourists often display wealth and privilege through luxury accommodation, conspicuous consumption, or casual spending power that far exceeds local standards. Such contrasts can trigger resentment, especially in regions where residents struggle with poverty or limited opportunity. Moreover, profits from international tourism frequently flow to multinational corporations—airlines, hotel chains, and booking platforms—rather than local communities. This creates a dynamic where residents must tolerate disruption to their environment without reaping proportional rewards. In cities overwhelmed by overtourism, rising rents and overcrowding breed frustration, making tourists symbols of inequality rather than friendship. Consequently, instead of nurturing solidarity, tourism magnifies socio-economic divides and stirs antagonism.

In conclusion, international tourism is far from a universal force of goodwill. By commodifying traditions into spectacles and widening economic inequalities between hosts and visitors, it too often fuels cultural distortion and local resentment. Rather than dissolving boundaries, tourism can entrench them, leaving both sides with heightened suspicion rather than genuine understanding.

Achieve your dream score with our detailed IELTS eBooks - your complete guide!

Sample Essay 2

Global tourism has become a titan of the world economy, yet its social effects are disputed. I largely disagree that international tourism breeds more tension than understanding. Poorly regulated mass travel can strain communities and sharpen cultural frictions, but well-designed, community-centred models tend to cultivate empathy and respect. This essay contrasts the harms of unmanaged overtourism with designs that engineer meaningful intercultural contact.

Unmanaged tourism undeniably seeds friction. When visitor numbers outpace local capacity, housing is diverted to short-let platforms, prices surge, and residents feel displaced in their own neighbourhoods. Cruise day-trippers crowd historic centres without contributing proportionately to public services. Cultural norms—modesty in dress, quiet in sacred spaces, rules on photography—are sometimes ignored, creating a sense of insult rather than exchange. Economic benefits, meanwhile, frequently leak to foreign intermediaries, while local workers absorb seasonal precarity and low wages. These asymmetries are amplified by social media “hotspot” dynamics that funnel bodies into the same alleys, beaches and temples at the same hours. In this context, tourists become symbols of commodification and environmental strain, and residents rationally defend their dignity and habitat—hence protests, visitor caps and resentment.

Yet tourism, when structured around reciprocity, is one of the surest antidotes to prejudice. Allport’s contact hypothesis shows that sustained interaction reduces stereotyping when four conditions hold: perceived equal status, shared goals, cooperation, and institutional support. Thoughtful tourism can engineer precisely these terms. Community-owned homestays and co-operatives shift narrative control to residents; licensed guides frame custom with context rather than spectacle; heritage fees finance schools, conservation and water systems that locals can point to with pride. Itineraries that disperse flows beyond city centres, codes of conduct co-written with community leaders, and revenue-sharing agreements make exchange feel fair. Travellers leave with richer, less exoticised stories; hosts meet guests as partners rather than targets. Where these design choices are normalised, misunderstandings recede and curiosity matures into informed respect.

Ultimately, it is mismanagement—not mobility—that generates tension. Overtourism corrodes trust, but participatory governance, equitable economics and curated interpretation convert contact into understanding. With such safeguards, international tourism is more bridge than battleground, turning encounters into shared learning rather than zero-sum strain.

Achieve your dream score with our detailed IELTS eBooks - your complete guide!