Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
developed world destinations. In the context of the UK, the corporate organisation of
tourism production also exhibits a core-periphery relationship, defined by the location of
corporate headquarters and the higher level posts in the hotel, airline and tour operator
sector which are largely located in London. While some lower level order jobs have been
located in peripheral regions to take advantage of low labour and premises costs (e.g. call
centres), decisions involving capital, the form of production and its spatial distribution
are firmly embedded in London and south-east England. Indeed, the transnational nature
of some tour operators (e.g. Pressaug, the German conglomerate which controlled
Thomson Holidays in the UK) highlights how investment and production decisions also
have a transnational and global dimension. An indication of the global operating budgets
for one international hotel chain (Hilton International) can be seen in Table 3.6. The
Figure 3.4:
An enclave model of
tourism in a peripheral economy
Source:
redrawn from Britton (1980a)
company also owns and operates the Ladbrokes retail betting businesses in the UK, the
eGaming business in fourteen currencies and football pools (the Vernon brand) in the
UK, illustrating diversification in the tourism and leisure sector.
Britton's model of tourism development (Figure 3.4) illustrates the nature of tourism
dependency, where international tourism organisations (in the absence of strong
government control) develop and perpetuate a hierarchical element to tourism
development. While dependency theory is useful in explaining how capitalist production
leads to the resulting patterns of tourism demand and supply, it is evident that this is only
a simplification of the wider geographical dimensions of capital-labour relations in a
global context, where political economy perspectives assist in explaining the processes
leading to the spatial patterns of tourism development that occur. The economic
