The Oxford dictionary defines the word "phenomenon" as:  

 1. A fact or situation that is observed to exist or happen, especially one whose cause or explanation is in question; 

  And the word "industry" as: 

 1.  A particular form or branch of economic or commercial activity.

​ 2. An activity or domain in which a great deal of effort is expended.​

 Since the firsts stories told by the human being, the Men* has the need to move from a place to another, always looking for places to accommodate. And these are the human travel histories, which in the future turned into tourism.

 From its beginnings, tourism is studied through varied looks, and one of those first looks was the administrative one.

 Despite having deep roots in the history of mankind, tourism only gained real space after the Industrial Revolution, with the popularization of capitalism and leisure. 

 As the study - in a really in-depth way - of tourism also developed in the post Industrial Revolution period, the professionals of the area, and of administration, were very influenced by the capitalist look and defined tourism as an industry. It was defined like that since it's a ramification that generates a great movement of money, involves companies and workers, is a manufacture of goods and is, also, considered as an industrial complex.

 And to this day, although the vast majority of tourism professionals agree on the definition of tourism as a phenomenon, many still see it as an industry. An example of that is the president of the EMBRATUR (Brazilian Intitution of Tourism), Vinicius Lummertz, who, just after assuming the presidency of the institute in 2015, said that "we need to look at tourism as an industry".

 This definition of tourism took a while to be refuted, because the anthropologists - who defined tourism as a phenomenon - took time to study the tourist activity. Because, in that time, the commercialization of tourism didn't value the tourism hosts, which are the communities, and they are the objects of the study of anthropology. And that's why the anthropologists almost refused to study tourism.

 However, when they developed interest in the subject, anthropologists refuted this industrial view of tourism and defined it as a social phenomenon. 

 Nash (1981, page 461) used to say that "tourism is a legitimate subject for anthropological research" because the definition of tourism as phenomenon becomes from the argument that the tourist activity is a human interaction act, of interrelation and sharing of cultures. Macleod and Selwyn (2002, page 27) defined tourism as:

  "(...) A phenomenon that initiates and provokes an extremely diversified range of human experiences and produces profound socio-cultural transformations".

 Miguel Acerenza (1999) understood the industrial vision of tourism, but didn't agree with it, because the root of this activity is not in the economy, but in the Men, which is the fundamental element of tourism.

  Sérgio Molina (1991, page 106) believed that the economic vision of tourism in insufficient to define it as a whole:

  "The industrial ideal of tourism is not tourism: it is a tangible economic conceptual elaboration whose essence is outlined by a materialistic, mechanistic and reductionist worldview of human experience".

 We conclude, then, that tourism - which in essence is the human and cultural interaction - can't be seen just by its economic view, because this diminishes it as a science and activity. 

 Just to clarify everything, this text is a summary of a long discussion that lasts for years and it's completely influenced by my personal vision of tourism - based on books and abstracts that I've read and studies that I've made - and it can't be seen as an absolut truth.

 

*The word Men used on the text, with a capital 'M', means humanity or human being. 

 

 Bibliography: *All in Portuguese *

BARRETO, Margarita. Manual de iniciação ao estudo do turismo: 17.ed. São Paulo: Papirus, 2003. 

https://dspace.uevora.pt/rdpc/bitstream/10174/16726/1/No%C3%A9mi%202015%20-%20Antropologia%20e%20Turismo.pdf - accessed in 30/04/18 (April 30th of 2018)

https://www.revistas.usp.br/rta/article/viewFile/63684/66447 - accessed in 30/04/18 (April 30th of 2018)