Che, D. (2010). Tourism. In Encyclopedia of geography. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

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Tourism

From "Encyclopedia of Geography"

Copyright © 2010 by SAGE Publications, Inc.

Tourism is defined as travel to a place outside the usual residential environment, involving a stay of at least
one night but no more than 1 year, with varying motivations, such as business, pleasure, visits to friends and
relatives (VFR), and education. It is one of the world's largest industries. Tourism has long been of interest
to geographers, given its spatial, temporal, and activity patterns and given its major economic and
environmental impacts, ranging from the local to the global.

Tourism in Switzerland: Hotel Wetterhorn

Source: Barbara Peacock.

Geographers have been influential in developing conceptual models for explaining tourism development.
Some of the most important models are resort morphology, the tourist-historic city, and the tourist area
cycle. Douglas Pearce's work on resort morphology has helped explain the resort's particular urban form
and its evolution in response to new recreational demands. Pearce found that many older beach resorts first
developed around a traditional waterfront; later, parallel developments, including a road or highway, high-
end accommodation and retail, and interior residential zones, were built as one moved inland. Given
environmental degradation and traffic hazards with this traditional resort model, newer shore resorts have
increasingly integrated accommodations with the sea via yacht moorings. Likewise, modern integrated ski
resorts similarly physically integrate the snow front (slopes and uphill facilities) with concentrated resort
buildings. As with new urbanist developments, these new resort models allow for greater integration of
accommodations and activities, reduce the amount of land developed, and promote more efficient service
provision (e.g., heating, water, sewage). However, equity issues have arisen since integrated development
generally favors a single developer, often from distant metropolitan areas and having the needed capital and
technical expertise, over smaller local or regional entities.

Another key model in tourism geography is the tourist-historic city model, which represents the fusion of a
tourist city with a historic one. The tourist-historic city has attractions, dining services/restaurants, and
accommodations in the historic core. Tourists’ action spaces and impacts tend to be concentrated within a
small portion of the entire city. This model, which was based on medium-sized, older historic cities in Europe,
has been modified to explain tourism in other parts of the world. In settlements of the American West,
historic and reconstructed tourist attractions and accommodations can be found in the equivalent historic
cores, which are the old central business districts containing train stations. However, with the dominance of
the automobile, a newer, secondary concentration of lodging and dining services for tourists can be found
along interstate highways.

Alpine and lake landscapes for tourism, Switzerland

Source: Barbara Peacock.

The tourist area cycle model developed by the geographer Richard Butler has influenced and spurred much
research, application, and debate. The underlying concept, which is based on the product cycle, is that
tourist areas, their attractions, and the number and type of their tourists evolve over time. Tourist areas
move through the following stages: (a) exploration, in which there are a small number of tourists who are
attracted to unique natural and cultural-historical features, use the local facilities, and have high contact with
the local residents; (b) involvement, with increasing visitation; (c) development, in which the number of
tourists during peak seasons exceeds the local population and locally developed infrastructure and original
attractions are supplemented and increasingly supplanted by human-made attractions and facilities
developed by external entities; (d) consolidation, in which tourism is a major component of the economy
and thus marketing and advertising efforts increase to expand the visitors’ season and market area,
particularly as the rate of increase in visitation is declining (while the total number of visitors continues to
increase); and (e) stagnation, in which the peak number of visitors and carrying capacity levels are
reached, natural and cultural attractions are superseded by created ones, and the less fashionable area
relies on repeat and convention visitors. At this point, tourist areas can continue to stagnate, or they may
move into a stage of decline, with reduced visitation and number of tourist facilities but often with increased
permanent settlement or retirement. Alternately, they may undergo rejuvenation by completely changing
the tourist attractions or by capitalizing on previously untapped resources. While this model has been much
examined and debated regarding its fit to real places, it has important implications for planning, as it
confronts the assumption that tourist areas are unchanging and will always attract an increasing number of
visitors. Butler notes that the competitiveness of tourist areas could be sustained longer if proactive policies
were enacted to maintain development within capacity limits.

Figure 1 Tourist area cycle model

Source: Drawn by author, based on Butler, R. (1980). The concept of a tourist area cycle of
evolution: Implication for management of resources. Canadian Geographer, 24(1), 5-12.

Geographers have also played an important role in infusing critical perspectives into tourism research. In his
seminal 1991 article integrating critical theory and political economy into the study of tourism, “Tourism,
Capital, and Place: Towards a Critical Geography,” Stephen Britton called attention to the fact that tourism is
an important avenue of capitalist accumulation. Places are symbolically marketed as desirable experiences
that impart status to those visiting or consuming them. As such, Britton argued that geographic theorization
of tourism requires consideration of how social representations and materiality of leisure and touristic
experiences and places are incorporated and commodified in the accumulation process. As part of viewing
tourism as a mechanism for capital accumulation, geographers have looked at power relations and issues
such as social equity, identity, authenticity, and social attachment to space as these are manifested in travel
and tourism. Critical political economy/ecology perspectives on tourism have also been used to examine
topics such as imbalances in consumption, impacts on host communities, environmental justice, and
sustainable development. The political ecology framework is particularly suited to looking at the impacts of
nature protection for economic development and struggles to maintain customary land use, livelihoods, and
access to natural resources.
Rejuvenating the city with tourism and entertainment: Movement 2009, Detroit's electronic
music festival, with GM headquarters in the background

Source: Author.

Given economic restructuring and the recent crises in capitalism, Britton also argued that the geographical
analysis of tourism could contribute to the analysis of territorial competition and the rejuvenation of
depressed regional economies. Britton's call is relevant to the ongoing challenges to reposition
deindustrialized downtown areas for consumptive activities such as leisure and tourism and for corporate
services. Cites worldwide have developed tourist entertainment districts that typically contain an atrium hotel,
a festival mall with restaurants and bars, a convention center, a restored historic neighborhood, a domed
stadium, an aquarium, new office towers, a redeveloped waterfront, and casinos, which attract tourists,
daytime professionals, and suburban evening and weekend visitors. When such tourist entertainment
districts are developed in areas surrounded by high crime, poverty, or urban decay, they may be secured
and isolated “tourist bubbles.” Such tourist entertainment districts and bubbles often are sites for festivals
and spectacles to attract suburban visitors as well as tourists in the ongoing territorial competition. For
instance, Detroit, which has experienced the loss of industrial facilities, jobs, and population since the 1950s,
has developed a downtown tourist entertainment district anchored by two new sports stadia, has landed
mega sporting events, and has hosted festivals (e.g., Movement, Detroit's electronic music festival, which
draws a regional, national, and international audience) to foster its claims of being a world-class city. With
the recent bankruptcies of Chrysler and General Motors, Mayor David Bing stressed the city's culture and
entertainment (sports, gaming, music) as a means of keeping the city competitive for population, jobs,
investment, and industries such as tourism, which are key for its postautomotive future.

Urban festivals and tourism; main stage at Movement 2009, Detroit's electronic music festival

Source: Author.

In addition to flows of capital, tourism can be investigated in terms of its relation to migration tied to broader
economic and social changes. Volatile labor markets since the 1970s in more developed countries, changing
income streams (e.g., pensions, capital accumulation through property), and aging of those societies have
spurred early retirement and retirement migration to rural areas. Rural lands in advanced industrialized
countries have increasingly shifted from a production orientation to a consumption one. The amenity-based,
tourism and housing countryside appeals to those romanticizing nature, the past, and the rural; amenity
seekers; second-home owners; and/or entrepreneurs cognizant of the marketable attributes of the rural
landscape. In addition to rural, domestic migration, others may choose to migrate overseas to retirement
communities or for lifestyle and business prospects (e.g., British immigrants to the Costa del Sol serving
travelers from their country of origin). For others, the globalization of labor markets has opened up doors for
skilled labor/expatriates in developing countries. Other forms of tourism-related migration include VFR and
seasonal labor flows differentiated by ethnicity, race, and gender.

While tourism has been a way to address the challenges resulting from the shift from Fordism to post-
Fordism and from production to consumption, tourism production itself has remained remarkably varied. The
travel industry has provided post-Fordist, individually tailored experiences (e.g., specialized luxury
ecotourism excursions). However, in neo-Fordist tourism, which is marked by industrial concentration of
airlines, transnational hotels, cruise companies, tour operators, and computerized booking systems and by
high sales volume, standardized vacation packages appealing to a mass audience continue to be provided.
Neo-Fordist tourism employment consists of both highly skilled, well-paid permanent professionals and
flexible, low-wage seasonal labor. At the same time, the travel and tourism industry also includes pre-Fordist
or artisanal businesses such as bed and breakfasts. Thus, given the coexistence of different production
systems in both time and space, there has not been a clear shift from Fordism to post-Fordism in the
tourism industry.

Tourism can benefit the discipline of geography. Tourism geography education can increase course
enrollments and majors in departments that develop tourism majors or concentrations. It can raise the
discipline's visibility as geographers bring content on sustainability, cultures, heritage, and geospatial
analysis to interdisciplinary tourism and hospitality programs. Research on tourism can contribute to applied
and theoretical developments in geography. For instance, tourism provides an ideal lens for investigating
transnational spaces, as it highlights multiple ties and interactions linking people or institutions across
borders of nation-states (i.e., migration of tourism workers, transnational business structures, and tourists
and local residents reshaping identity, landscape, and social networks). Tourism can aid in conceptualizing
the flexibility and fluidity of capital, complex ownership, and globalization. Likewise, tourism can help in the
theorization of border spaces, which can be deterrents or attractions but also can be “non-places” or “in-
between spaces.” Cross-border cooperation, which ties into geopolitics, peace, and international treaties, is
important to tourism and can be investigated in terms of how it varies by scale (i.e., being greater at the
interlocal and international scales than at the larger global, regional, and bilateral scales). One major
research outlet has been the journal Tourism Geographies. Given the geographical aspects of tourism,
including how it transforms the environments of destinations, entails movement over space, and provides a
distinctive way for people to relate to the world, Tourism Geographies would incorporate these aspects
through geography's unique synthesis of the social and physical sciences in understanding places, regions,
and the world. Geographers continue to contribute to research on topics as varied as indigenous tourism,
amenity/retirement migration, mountain tourism, mobilities, protected areas, tourism and climate change,
heritage tourism, tourism landscapes, and tourism planning. Geography and tourism will continue to be
mutually enhancing in the future.

See also

Consumption, Geographies of, Globalization, Mobility, Place Promotion, Travel Writing, Geography
and

Further Readings
Ashworth, G., & Tunbridge, J. (2000). The tourist-historic city: Retrospect and prospect of
managing the heritage city. Amsterdam: Pergammon Elsevier.
Britton, S. Tourism, capital and place: Towards a critical geography of tourism. Environment and
Planning D 9 : 451-478., 1991.
Butler, R. The concept of a tourist area cycle of evolution: Implication for management of
resources. Canadian Geographer 24 (1) : 5-12., 1980.
Ioannides, D., & Debbage, K. (Eds.). (1998). The economic geography of the tourist industry: A
supply-side analysis. London: Routledge.
Judd, D., & Fainstein, S. (Eds.). (1999). The tourist city. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Pearce, D. Form and function in French resorts. Annals of Tourism Research 5 : 143-156., 1978.
Timothy, D. (2001). Tourism and political boundaries. London: Routledge.
Torres, R.; Momsen, J. Gringolandia: The construction of a new tourist space in Mexico. Annals of
the Association of American Geographers 95 (2) : 314-335., 2005.
Williams, A.; Hall, C. Tourism and migration: New relationships between production and
consumption. Tourism Geographies 2 (1) : 5-27., 2000.
Che, Deborah