Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
3 1
CHANGING GEOGRAPHIES OF
COASTAL RESORTS
Development processes and tourism spaces
Introduction
The study of coastal resorts has been a long and enduring topic in tourism geographies,
starting with the early works on British resorts by Doughill (1935), Gilbert (1939, 1949) and
Pimlott (1947). As a consequence, coastal resorts have been viewed through an increasing
variety of lenses from urban morphology (Pigram, 1977; Smith, 1992), historical develop-
ment (Britton, 1982; Gormsen, 1981; Stansfi eld, 1993; Turner and Ash, 1975; Walton, 1983),
resort planning (Dredge, 1999; Goodey, 2003), sustainability (Bramwell, 2004a; Priestley
et al.
, 1996) and economic restructuring (Agarwal, 2002, 2005; Beatty and Fothergill, 2004;
Beatty
et al.
, 2008; Rickey and Houghton, 2009), through to a growing number of more
cultural perspectives (Crouch and Desforges, 2003; Gale, 2005, 2007; Webb, 2005).
More recently, increasing attention has been given to the resort setting in a global context
which has started to focus research efforts into understanding the consumption and produc-
tion trends that operate on these pleasure landscapes. Such processes involve the internation-
alisation of tourism demand which began with the development of mass tourism, but which
has been carried forward by changes in tourism consumption patterns and increased competi-
tion (Shaw and Agarwal, 2007). In terms of the latter, globalisation has been driven by tour
operators and international investment companies. Indeed, it has resulted in what Boers and
Bosch (1994) term the 'resortisation' of the world, a view that is reinforced by a growing
number of geographers who have also commented on the globalisation of the coastal resort
into every type of beach environment (Boers and Bosch, 1994; King, 1997, 2001; Meyer-
Arendt, 1990; Pearce, 1995). However, analyses of the detailed geographies of such a phenom-
enon have been neglected, particularly in terms of their impact on the tourism industry
generally (Hjalager, 2007), and on coastal resorts specifi cally (Shaw and Williams, 2004).
This of course is hardly surprising since, relative to other tourism environments, some key
aspects of the coastal resort have received rather inadequate attention (Shaw and Agarwal,
2007).
As a result, little is known about the consequences of globalisation for coastal resorts. In
the light of this shortcoming, the aim of this chapter is to highlight some of the key emerging
research trends in the changing geographies of resorts, and to explore the ways in which such
trends shape and reshape these tourism spaces. Thus, the fi rst part of this chapter provides
