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However, in practice, this dichotomy between pure and applied knowledge has been and
remains extensively laboured, particularly to question the academic value of applied research.
As Johnston (2000a: 696) observed, 'Workers in the various fragments of Geography seek to
establish their relevance in very different ways, which occasionally stimulates debates over
what should be privileged in disciplinary promotional activities: for too long, the concept of
relevance has been narrowly construed.'
Yet the debate of applied versus theoretical knowledge has now been elevated beyond the
level of geography as discipline and is becoming signifi cant for tourism as a whole (Ruhanen
and Cooper, 2004; Shaw and Williams 2009) as many universities embrace government
objectives and funding for increasing knowledge transfer as part of the knowledge manage-
ment agenda to improve the skill base and research available to the wider economy. Perhaps,
as Harvey (1984: 7) commented, 'geography is far too important to be left to generals, politi-
cians and corporate chiefs. Notions of applied and relevant geography pose questions of
objectives and interests served . . . There is more to geography than the production of knowl-
edge.' By engaging with the public and private organisations outside of the academy, applied
geography has a contribution to make to society, even if there are questions about the values
and objectives of applied research and its potential uses (Smith, 2007). Examples of such
applied research are as diverse as tour guiding (Black and Weiler, 2005), crime (Barker and
Page, 2002; Walker and Page, 2007), crisis management for avian infl uenza and pandemic fl u
(Page et al. , 2006), distribution channels (Pearce and Schott, 2005; Stuart et al. , 2005), second
homes (Müller and Hall, 2003) and disability (Packer et al. , 2007; Shaw and Coles, 2004;
Shaw et al. , 2005). Indeed many consultancy or 'third stream' research projects, also referred
to as mode 2 knowledge (Coles et al. , 2006; Gibbons et al. , 1994) (in comparison with mode
1 knowledge that originates within centres of higher education) have resulted in often highly
cited academic outputs in addition to the reports required by the sponsoring organisation.
One recent area of useful development for applied geographical research has been in the
use of GIS (see Hall, Chapter 22 of this volume). GIS, developed by advances in computer
hardware and software (such as ArcInfo), incorporates more sophisticated systems to search,
query, present and analyse data in a spatial context. This enables geographers to assist
decision-makers in making planning decisions. Butler (1992) outlined some of the possible
problem-solving roles of GIS in tourism, as did Elliott-White and Finn (1998), but the utili-
sation has been dependent upon the skill base of the geographer and often securing industry
or research council funding in order to collect the large amounts of data to meet the require-
ments of creating a representative sample to derive meaningful results from the GIS-related
mapping outputs (e.g. Becken et al. , 2007; Forer, 2002b). Interestingly, this represents a major
opportunity area for those more applied tourism researchers to try to understand probably the
most problematic area of tourism research: how the dynamic of time is built into models of
tourist activity so that the interactions of time, space and tourist activity can be more properly
understood so that the fi nite resource base which visitors utilise can be managed in relation
to the timing of demand and the availability of supply (e.g. Boers and Cottrell, 2007; Chhetri
and Arrowsmith, 2008; Connell and Page, 2008; Shoval and Isaacson, 2007a). While the
tourism industry has been adept at developing research tools to understand the spatially
contingent demand for tourism products by using yield management epitomised by the low-
cost airlines at a macro or destination level, it is the micro-level impacts of tourism within and
at destinations that will continue to offer fruitful research agendas for tourism geographers for
the foreseeable future. However, there is a danger that many of the spatially analytical tools
of the geographer will be usurped by other applied researchers such as economists, who are
showing interest in GIS as a tool to assist them in bringing a greater realism into the demand
 
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