Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
2 8
RETHINKING MASS TOURISM,
SPACE AND PLACE
This chapter discusses the role of mass tourism coastal destinations as spaces where both social
innovation and competitiveness are fostered. It seeks to highlight the effects of residential
mobility associated with tourism fl ows on the competitiveness of destinations, to analyse the
role of policy intervention on the development/redevelopment of such destinations and to
illustrate some of the responses that they generate when faced with the challenges of global
change. The implicit hypothesis of the chapter assumes that the increasing multiplication of
leisure and lifestyle-related mobility has spurred the development of a new form of complex
urban structure - mass coastal destinations. I will also focus on the emergence of new demo-
graphic and economic processes that have led to the development of new social, territorial and
environmental challenges and confl icts. In this context, mass coastal destinations acquire new
functionalities, generate new opportunities for the regions where they are located and face
new risks derived from the dynamics of global change. From this point of view then, mass
coastal destinations are the geographical product of one of the most unique cultural phenomena
of our consumer society.
Consequently and in an innovative way, this chapter links the analysis of mass tourism
with studies on the creation and development of urban space. It proposes that we consider
mass coastal destinations in the context of consolidating new forms of mobility and placing
the analysis of tourism destinations at the core of debate on globalisation effects and their
limitations at different scales. It is, to some extent, an approach that evokes the critical
perspective of Britton (1991: 466) about geographers of tourism when he stated that 'by
treating tourism almost solely as a discrete economic subsystem, many revealing links have
been missed between tourism and other politically and theoretically important geographic
issues which demonstrate the wider role and position of tourism in capitalist accumulation';
and he gave as an example the fact that tourism and, in my view, in particular mass tourism,
can be regarded as a central element of inter-place competition.
Traditionally associated with the democratisation of leisure, the development of econo-
mies of scale and the creation of specifi c fantasy places in which to play, relax and be enter-
tained, the analysis of development processes in mass tourism and their social, economic
and territorial effects has been an important subject of interest for tourism geographers
(Brey
et al.
, 2007; Hall and Page, 2002; Vera Rebollo
et al.
, 2011). Nevertheless, despite its
considerable interest, literature on mass tourism is scarce - not only in geography but also
