Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
to business schools to further their careers, or former students of mine such as David Fennell,
David Weaver, Tom Hinch and Stephen Boyd who have all left geography for other disci-
plines. This is a rather depressing pattern seen closer to home as well, for example with Allan
Williams, Gareth Shaw and Tim Coles all departing Geography at the University of Exeter
(see also Hall and Page, Chapter 2 of this volume).
Tourism
So if geography is in fl ux, what about tourism? Over the more than forty years since I began
to work in tourism it has been clear that it is even worse than geography in terms of insecurity
and inferiority. Perhaps this is partly because, while many universities in numerous countries
offer degrees in tourism, in my opinion tourism is not a discipline. It is an extremely valid
subject for study without question, worthy of attention at the highest degree level, although
perhaps not at the lowest. While studying tourism at the postgraduate, including PhD, level
seems eminently appropriate, I do not feel that tourism is a subject to be studied at the under-
graduate level. The fact that it is a popular subject at this level with universities and students
might well refl ect the present heavy focus on training, job preparation and income generation,
at least in UK universities. It is also, if we are honest, a popular subject with students for several
reasons, including the fact that it is an enjoyable subject to work in, plus it has lower entry
requirements in general and a much lower emphasis on numeracy than medicine, physics or
economics. Universities like it because it does not require expensive equipment; can be seen
to be current and valid in terms of career links with industry; and it attracts overseas students
who pay higher fees. Cynicism apart, returning to the UK after thirty years abroad heightens
one's perception of some things that may not be as obvious to those who have been involved
in them closely for many years or have not experienced situations elsewhere.
Often when arriving in a country, one is asked 'What are you a professor of ?' Most times I
must adm it to saying 'Business', if I am honest, because it sounds more impressive than tour ism,
although increasingly of late I have said 'Tourism', perhaps a little defensibly. That perhaps
explains why many of us working in tourism are somewhat defensive and perhaps display an
inferiority complex at times, or feel we really need to justify studying tourism, so we say
(unconvincingly, I think) 'it is the largest item in world trade' or some other similar generic
statement provided by the World Tourism Organisation, designed to impress the uninformed
listener. Why we feel this or do this, I don't understand. In the Western world, leisure - of
which tourism is a signifi cant segment - plays such a major role in people's lives that clearly it
should be studied at the highest level. Robinson (1976) noted several reasons why it should be
studied three decades ago and the reasons are still valid today, perhaps more so. Cosgrove and
Jackson (1972) even earlier (in a pre-Thatcher era comment) noted: 'If people spend as much
time at leisure as they do at work, then the study of the distribution of recreational behaviour as
an economic activity is as important to the geographer as the study of coal mining' (p. 13).
Nowadays many people spend more time at leisure than at work; it is considerably more
important than coal mining, and it is much more than just another economic activity, so the
above comment is even more valid today. People will go to extremes to preserve their leisure
time, and with that, their leisure mobility. In the oil crises of the early 1970s, people were more
willing to car-share and use public transport for work in order to save petrol for leisure trips than
to continue driving to work, and that was in the USA in the 1970s (Butler and Stankey, 1974).
Governments interfere with people's leisure time and activities at their peril. While it is possible
to change people's minds on certain things - for example the change in UK chicken-purchasing
habits, based on reports in the British media on the horrors of battery farming recently - I doubt
 
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