Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
dimension by examining tourism as a tradable service from the perspective of the World
Trade Organization, which has a different way of defi ning and treating tourism in contrast to
other organisations like the UNWTO, World Travel and Tourism Council or the World
Economic Forum (see also Coles and Hall, 2008).
Research on international tourism fl ows has also led to greater connectivity between
tourism geography, international business and economic geography. This has included atten-
tion to international trade in services, the relationships between labour mobility and concepts
of citizenship, internationalisation of tourism businesses, and place marketing and the experi-
ence economy (Coles and Hall, 2008; Richards and Wilson, 2007a). Hall and Coles (2008)
described this confl uence as being part of the 'mobilities of commerce' in which tourism is
embedded. However, they also noted that signifi cant disciplinary boundaries exist in seeking
to gain an improved understanding of the different modes of trade in international services,
but that there was signifi cant 'natural ground' between International Business and Tourism
studies, with geographers often having connections to both disciplinary fi elds. Therefore,
tourism geography in general has the potential to expose some of the limitations of extant
work on tourism management in terms of (cross-border) location, the dominant use of
economics-infl uenced understanding of location and the fi rm, and a failure to examine the
internal workings and processes of business.
At the same time as links have been developing between economic geography and tourism
geography (see Debbage and Ioannides,
Chapter 19 o
f this volume), so too has there been
greater interplay with cultural geography and social theory (Cartier and Lew, 2005; Gale,
Chapter 4
of this volume; Minca and Oakes, 2006). Arguably this work has been most
pronounced in the work of Aitchison (2001, 2005), who has provided some signifi cant gender
perspectives on leisure and tourism geographies, as well as a broader text on cultural geogra-
phies of tourism and leisure (Aitchison
et al.
, 2000; see also Tivers,
Chapter 11
of th is volume).
M. Crang (1997) and Crouch (1999, 2000) have focused on everyday tourism and leisure
practices, such as visiting allotments or the translation of hobbies and interests into tourism-
related activities such as visiting gardens as visitor attractions (Connell, 2004, 2005; Connell
and Meyer, 2004) and their embodiment in tourism practices as well as the role of visual
culture in tourism (Crouch and Lübbren, 2003; Edensor and Falconer,
Chapter 9
of this
volume; Page
et al.
, 2006). One interesting development has also been the connection of
social theory to an improved understanding of hospitality and host-guest/local-non-local
encounters as a form of social practice (Barnett, 2005; Bell, 2007; Gibson,
Chapter 6
and
Hottola,
Chapter 18
of this volume), which may provide a new relationship between
geographical studies and hospitality management. Nevertheless, the potential of social theory
and much contemporary cultural geography to more generally inform tourism management,
as opposed to the study of tourism per se, is an area that requires greater investigation.
Intersections between tourism and political geography and the broader political fi eld (see
Bianchi,
Chapter 5)
have taken several directions including issues of borders and political
boundaries (e.g. Church and Reid, 2000; Prokkola, 2007; Timothy, 2001, 2004), governance
and regional institutions (Church, 2004; Church
et al.
, 2000; Timothy, 2003), and a number
of different approaches to the central political issue of power, with the leading contribution
perhaps being a monograph edited by Church and Coles (2007) that demonstrates the connec-
tion of a number of geographers working in tourism to the various theoretical approaches
towards power.
The critique of neoliberalism that has been a signifi cant theme in human geography has
not been addressed to the same extent in tourism geography, although a number of signifi cant
publications exist, especially in a development context (e.g. Desforges, 2000; Hannam, 2002)
