The importance of space tourism

Experiencing microgravity, relaxing in a space hotel, looking at the Earth floating in space - travelling to space for recreational or leisure purposes really does sound like a unique adventure. But why would anybody want to create a space tourism industry in the first place and how does society benefit from it?

There are a lot of assumptions about the potential importance of space tourism:

1. Space tourism might become a very lucrative and quickly growing business industry which would generate millions and millions of dollars. 
2. The commercialization of space tourism would significantly decrease the high costs for travelling to space and would not only allow rich, but also ordinary people to travel to space. 
3. Achieving the technological and operational advances required to serve the market of space tourism would allow creating new activities and programs, such as space solar power, space sports, human solar system exploration and settlement.
4. Space tourism is a large industry that would create numerous new job opportunities. 
5. It would give rise to new ideas about what to do in space and how to go about doing them. 
6. Space tourism might be a profitable market to expand life throughout the solar system. With space tourism falling in price and continuous advancements being made in technology, space migration and colonization would become more and more realistic.

To sum up, space tourism is a potentially very lucrative industry that would generate a lot of money. However, money is not the only reason why people are motivated to create this kind of industry. The technolgy necessary for space tourism would also allow creating new activities and programs and may eventually even allow migrating to space permanently. Society would benefit from space tourism in that a lot of new jobs would be created and the human species might be saved from extinction by expanding throughout the solar system.

(http://www.spacefuture.com/archive/space_tourism_its_importance_its_history_and_a_recent_extraordinary_development.shtml)