Optional theme: Leisure, tourism and sport practice questions.

A resident of Lyon, France travels to Marseille and stays four nights with relatives, paying nothing for accommodation. Under the UNWTO definition used in IB Geography, how is this trip classified?

• Domestic tourism
• International tourism
• Same-day recreation, not tourism
• Visiting friends and relatives, which is excluded from tourism statistics

Answer: Domestic tourism

Under UNWTO definitions a visitor who travels outside the usual environment and stays at least one night is a tourist; paying for accommodation is irrelevant and visiting friends and relatives counts as a tourism purpose like any other, so a stay that never leaves France is domestic rather than international tourism.

Which change did most to make long-haul package holidays affordable for middle-income European households from the early 1970s onwards?

• The extension of national inter-city railway networks
• The spread of colour television advertising
• The introduction of wide-bodied jet aircraft
• The growth of private caravan ownership

Answer: The introduction of wide-bodied jet aircraft

Wide-bodied jets cut the cost per passenger-kilometre sharply, so tour operators could sell distant destinations at mass-market prices; the other changes affected demand or domestic travel but not the real cost of crossing continents.

A tourist board classifies the features of a coastal resort as primary or secondary tourist resources. Which feature is a secondary tourist resource?

• A limestone gorge on the edge of the town
• A twelfth-century cathedral in the old quarter
• A 200-bed hotel built beside the promenade
• A sheltered sandy bay with warm summer seas

Answer: A 200-bed hotel built beside the promenade

Primary resources are the attractions that draw visitors in the first place, whether physical or cultural; secondary resources are the facilities built to serve them, so accommodation is secondary even when it is the largest investment in the resort.

In Barcelona (Spain) a formerly industrial waterfront was cleared and reopened as public beaches and marinas, and the city afterwards promoted a new image of itself to visitors; the 1992 Olympic Games supplied the deadline and the funding. Which process at the local scale does this best illustrate?

• Counter-urbanisation of the coastal fringe
• Tourism-led regeneration and place rebranding
• Suburbanisation driven by transport improvement
• Rural-urban migration into the city centre

Answer: Tourism-led regeneration and place rebranding

Regeneration reuses derelict land for new functions while rebranding changes how the place is perceived by outsiders; neither counter-urbanisation nor suburbanisation is involved because the change is in land use and image, not in where residents live.

In the Lake District National Park (England), the park authority resurfaces one heavily used fell path with stone slabs and temporarily closes a parallel path so that vegetation can recover. Which visitor management approach at the local scale is this?

• Zoning of the whole park into wilderness and visitor areas
• Raising the perceptual carrying capacity of the site
• Diverting visitors to a different national park
• Site hardening combined with resting the damaged route

Answer: Site hardening combined with resting the damaged route

Hardening raises the physical carrying capacity of the route that visitors will use anyway, while resting allows the damaged surface to recover; neither measure changes how crowded the site feels, which is what perceptual capacity describes.

Which development did most to lower the real cost of short-haul international air travel within Europe after 1995?

• Deregulation of air transport and low-cost carriers
• The construction of high-speed rail links
• The introduction of the euro as a single European currency
• The growth of all-inclusive resort complexes

Answer: Deregulation of air transport and low-cost carriers

Opening routes to competition allowed point-to-point airlines with high aircraft use and no-frills pricing to enter, which cut fares directly; a shared currency and better rail made travel easier but did not change the cost of flying.