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

Tourism requires travel away from the usual environment with at least one overnight stay; whether accommodation is paid for is irrelevant and visits to friends and relatives are counted like any other purpose, 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.

The table shows weekly leisure participation by age group in one town. Which statement is supported by the data?

• Walking is the least popular activity in every age group
• Cinema attendance rises steadily with age
• Participation in all three activities is lower at 50-64 than at 30-49
• Participation in organised sport falls steadily with age

Answer: Participation in organised sport falls steadily with age

Organised sport falls from 42 % to 8 % across the four age bands, so only that statement holds. Walking rises from 45 % to 52 % between the 30-49 and 50-64 groups, which is what breaks the other options; physically demanding activities decline with age while low-intensity ones do not.

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.