Tourism is travel for recreation, leisure, religious, family or business purposes, usually for a limited duration. Tourism is commonly associated with international travel, but may also refer to travel to another place within the same country. The World Tourism Organization defines tourists as people “traveling to and staying in places outside their usual environment for not more than one consecutive year for leisure, business and other purposes”. Tourism has become a popular global leisure activity. Tourism can be domestic or international, and international tourism has both incoming and outgoing implications on a country’s balance of payments. Today, tourism is a major source of income for many countries, and affects the economy of both the source and host countries, in some cases being vital importance. The World Tourism Organization reports the following ten countries as the most visited in terms of the number of international travellers : France , USA, Spain, China, Italy, Turkey, Germany, United Kingdom, Russia, Thailand. Many leisure-oriented tourists travel to seaside resorts at their nearest coast or further apart. Coastal areas in the tropics are popular both in the summer and winter. Mass tourism developed with improvements in technology, which allowed the transport of large numbers of people in a short space of time to places of leisure interest, so that greater numbers of people could begin to enjoy the benefits of leisure time.