Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
done invaluable work on the fl ows of tourists within that country, but in the UK there is no
research in detail showing where tourists go after they land at Heathrow. I realise that some may
never manage to get out of the airport, but even that would be worth knowing.
Fennell (1996) produced some fascinating time-space maps on visitors to Shetland, but
such papers are few and far between. Brougham's (1982) work on micro-location on a beach
shows clear spatial choice and decision-making amongst visitors, as does other research on
boaters. Lawton's work on the shifting bases of cruise boats in the Caribbean in the 1980s
(Lawton and Butler, 1987) has analogies with the increasing number of destinations of short-
haul budget air carriers, which have changed the face and distribution of tourism in many
parts of Europe, yet there still has been relatively little published on this.
Conclusion
I have not drawn a great picture of tourism geography or the geography of tourism. This
disappoints me greatly, as I feel the topic is of critical importance in the Western world at least,
and probably globally, because tourism is nothing if not global, and for us as geographers, the
world is our oyster or playground. The study of tourism (and leisure and recreation) should be
one of the major foci of relevant research today, given the importance of free time and related
activities to many people. Free time is the great blessing and curse of the modern world. Many
of society's concerns and problems take place in free time: vandalism, binge drinking, crime
of all sorts, gambling, unwanted pregnancies, sporting injuries, and racial/ethnic/religious
violence. One would think the powers that be might realise the way we use our free time has
more signifi cance than just the economic importance of going on holidays or watching televi-
sion. Of key importance is where such activities take place. I listened a long time ago to a
fascinating presentation on deviant behaviour in leisure, and the self-acknowledged only valid
conclusion was that the most important variable was
where
the activity took place. As chairman
of the session, I enjoyed thanking the sociologist presenting the paper for confi rming the
importance of geography in leisure. He did not seem to get the point.
So where might we go from here? I would argue strongly that we must reclaim and
proclaim the spatial aspect of tourism - and hopefully the present volume is a good starting
point. I despair of reading articles by tourism geographers, however we defi ne ourselves,
which contain fewer geographical and tourism references than those from other disciplines.
This is not to say that we should be so introverted and myopic as to not examine and use the
literature from other disciplines, but surely our emphasis should be on tourism and geography,
if the subject is tourism and the author a geographer? Why have we let the spatial focus slip?
Is it because other issues are sexier and space is no longer a postmodern concept? We some-
times appear more interested in those who are not tourists or who are not written about in
tourist articles - the minorities and special interest groups - than we are in the nearly one
billion people who do travel internationally, let alone the additional six to eight billion who
travel domestically on holiday. The key thing is that they travel; they move from place to place
and that surely should be our focus, partly because, as geographers, we should study it, and
partly because no one else does. The eleventh most cited paper in Gibson's (2008) list was that
by Williams and Zelinsky from 1970 - 'On some patterns in international tourist fl ows'. It is
ironic that no one has seen fi t to revisit such a key geographical topic, if only to point out that,
in relative ter ms, little has changed. Geography stil l, in many respects, r ules tour ism, as should
geographers. Wilson's present volume on 'New Perspectives' should open doors in this respect
and should help to underpin tourism geography as a valid and necessary fi eld of enquiry, while
reinstating energies and enthusiasm for new generations of tourism geographers.
