Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
However, the extent to which this actually occurs once all capital flows are taken into
account may be highly problematic. Geographers have long noted the manner in which
tourism tends to distribute development away from urban areas towards those regions in a
country which have not been developed (e.g. Christaller 1963), with the core—periphery
nature of tourism being an important component of political-economy approaches
towards tourism (Britton 1980a, 1980b, 1982; Shaw and Williams 2004; Hall 2005a),
particularly with respect to tourism in island microstates (Connell 1988; Lea 1988;
Weaver 1998; Gössling 2003; Duval 2004).
More recently, geographers have begun to critically analyse tourism with reference to
issues of economic restructuring, processes of globalisation and the development of post-
Fordist modes of production, including recognition of 'the cultural turn' in economic
geography (e.g. Britton 1991; Hall 1994; Debbage and Ioannides 1998; Milne 1998;
Williams and Shaw 1998; Debbage and Ioannides 2004; Shaw and Williams 2004).
Tourism is a significant component of these shifts which may be described as 'post-
industrial' or 'post-Fordist', which refers to the shift from an industrial to an information
technology/service base. In addition, tourism is part of the globalisation of the
international economy, in which economic production is transnational, interdependent
and multipolar, with less and less dependence on the nation state as the primary unit of
international economic organisation. As Williams and Shaw (1998) recognise:
The essence of tourism is the way in which the global interacts with the
local. For example, mass tourism emphasises a global scan for
destinations for global (or at least macro-regional) markets, while some
forms of new tourism seek to exploit the individuality of places. These
global-local relationships are not static but are subject to a variety of
restructuring processes.
(Williams and Shaw 1998:59)
The notion of the 'globalisation' of tourism implies its increasing commodification. The
tourist production system simultaneously 'sells' places in order to attract tourists, the
means to the end (travel and accommodation) and the end itself (the tourist experience).
Therefore, tourism finds itself at the forefront of an important recent dynamic within
capitalist accumulation in terms of the creation and marketing of experiences. Tourists
'are purchasing the intangible qualities of restoration, status, life-style signifier, release
from the constraints of everyday life, or conveniently packaged novelty' (Britton
1991:465). Within this setting, place is therefore commodified and reduced to an
experience and images for consumption. However, while place promotion is recognised
as increasingly important for tourism and recreation (see Chapter 5), there have been
insufficient attempts, with the exception of some of the authors noted above, to locate
such issues within the context of mainstream tourism studies or tourism geography.
Related to the economic analysis of tourism has been the study of the forecasting of
visitor demand (e.g. Blake and Sinclair 2003; Durbarry and Sinclair 2003) and the
marketing of the tourist product. Several studies of hallmark events, for example, have
attempted to deal with the problem of forecasting visitor demand (see Ritchie and Aitken
1984; Hall 1992b). Nevertheless, substantial methodological problems still remain, and
'although relatively sophisticated statistical measures have been used, forecasts of
