IELTS Academic Writing Task 2 - Tourist Attractions

 

Some people think that foreign visitors should be charged more than locals when they visit cultural and tourist attractions in a country. To what extent do you agree with this view?

 

The idea to charge foreign visitors more than locals to visit cultural and tourist attractions sounds like a good idea to increase revenues while encouraging the indegenous population to benefit from those same attractions.   However, if I was a tourist, I would not be happy to feel discriminated against and it might put me off going or limit the number of places I would otherwise wish to visit.

 

Maintenance of cultural and tourist attractions is costly and it makes economic sense to charge as much as is reasonably practical to attract as many visitors as possible.  Families on holiday do not always have a generous budget and may need to take into account that a single visit to an expensive attraction may not give them good value for money, especially if the children are young and their attention span is short and demands for food and toilets is time consuming.

 

So perhaps the organisations of attractions could tier their charges to suit different scenarios, for example charging a family rate to discount young children, offering locals a season ticket or off peak rate to encourage them to visit multiple times when the footfall is less busy.  This way it would not be obvious that foreign visitors are being charged more than locals but more a range of options to give visitors a choice.  It may also help to increase visitors off season rather than concentrating on a short holiday season.

 

To summarise, I think it makes sense to charge varying fees to encourage maximum revenues but this need not be a flat rate of locals versus foreign visitors which some tourists may find discourages them to visit.  This does not, however, apply to very popular mostly city attractions such as in Rome or Paris which are constantly busy all year round and continue to attract high numbers of visitors despite their high admission fees for everyone whether foreign or local. (320 words)

 

Introduction

The idea to charge foreign visitors more than locals to visit cultural and tourist attractions sounds like a good idea to increase revenues while encouraging the indegenous population to benefit from those same attractions.   However, if I was a tourist, I would not be happy to feel discriminated against and it might put me off going or limit the number of places I would otherwise wish to visit. (68 words)

 

Body Paragraph 1

Maintenance of cultural and tourist attractions is costly and it makes economic sense to charge as much as is reasonably practical to attract as many visitors as possible.  Families on holiday do not always have a generous budget and may need to take into account that a single visit to an expensive attraction may not give them good value for money, especially if the children are young and their attention span is short and demands for food and toilets is time consuming. (82 words)

 

Body Paragraph 2

So perhaps the organisations of attractions could tier their charges to suit different scenarios, for example charging a family rate to discount young children, offering locals a season ticket or off peak rate to encourage them to visit multiple times when the footfall is less busy.  This way it would not be obvious that foreign visitors are being charged more than locals but more a range of options to give visitors a choice.  It may also help to increase visitors off season rather than concentrating on a short holiday season. (90 words)

 

Conclusion

To summarise, I think it makes sense to charge varying fees to encourage maximum revenues but this need not be a flat rate of locals versus foreign visitors which some tourists may find discourages them to visit.  This does not, however, apply to very popular mostly city attractions such as in Rome or Paris which are constantly busy all year round and continue to attract high numbers of visitors despite their high admission fees for everyone whether foreign or local. (80 words)