This unique book examines the vital and contested connections between colonialism and tourism, which are as lively and charged today as ever before. Demonstrating how much of the marketing of these destinations represents the constant renewal of colonialism in the tourism business, this book illustrates how actors in the worldwide tourism industry continue to benefit from the colonial roots of globalisation.

"The strongest overview I have encountered of the scope and the current state of research across all the fields involved in advancing our understanding of tourism. For its range of topics, depth of analyses, and distinction of its contributors, nothing is comparable." - Professor Dean MacCannell, University of California, Davis "The breadth of vision and sweep of accounts is remarkable, and range of topics laudable... a rare combination of the authoritative, the challenging and stimulating." - Professor Mike Crang, Durham University Tourism studies developed as a sub-branch of older disciplines in the social sciences, such as anthropology, sociology and economics, and newer applied fields of study in hospitality management, civil rights and transport studies. This Handbook is a sign of the maturity of the field. It provides an essential resource for teachers and students to determine the roots, key issues and agenda of tourism studies, exploring: The evolution and position of tourism studies The relationship of tourism to culture The ecology and economics of tourism Special events and destination management Methodologies of study Tourism and transport Tourism and heritage Tourism and postcolonialism Global tourist business operations Ranging from local to global issues, and from questions of management to the ethical dilemmas of tourism, this is a comprehensive, critically informed, constructively organized overview of the field. It draws together an inter-disciplinary group of contributors who are among the most celebrated names in the field and will be quickly recognized as a landmark in the new and expanding field of tourism studies.

This groundbreaking Companion offers readers an opportunity to reassess key themes in contemporary tourism studies in the light of recent theoretical developments in tourism studies and the social sciences, as well as dramatic changes in the operating environment for tourism. A critical overview of current research in tourism studies. Offers readers an opportunity to reassess key themes in tourism studies in the light of recent developments, such as terrorist attacks, SARS and the financial failure of airlines. Comprises 48 specially commissioned essays, written by more than 50 acknowledged experts from around the world. Covers cutting-edge perspectives and topics, including tourism’s role in globalization, sustainable tourism, and the state’s role in tourism development. Sets an agenda for future tourism research. Includes a wealth of bibliographic references.

Illustrated by revealing interviews with women and men in the tourist resorts in the Sinai, Egypt, this book is ostensibly about western women who sleep with 'native' men while on holiday. Broadening the scope of issues involved, it examines the link between these holiday romances and a much wider romanticism of place and people - of the landscapes of paradise, deserts and the lure of the Bedouin sheikh - that are used to sell these destinations. It argues that the romantic stereotyping and deliberate positioning of 'Third World' resorts as places that somehow exist outside of the modernities the women come from is inextricably bound up in the relationships. Similarly, for the local man the tourist resort is perceived as a place other than his own cultural space and time and represents a modernity that is otherwise only found in the 'West'. The relationships that ensue can therefore only occur because the tourist resort acts as an intermediate space. In analyzing the interaction of these men and women within the context of modernity, the book provides insights into gender issues to do with globalization, travel and sexuality, as well as opening up the debate on sex tourism and showing this to be a lot more ambiguous and complicated than it might at first appear.

For more than 500 years, the Portuguese built or adapted fortifications along the coasts of Africa, Asia and South America. At a macro scale, mapping this network of power reveals a gigantic territorial and colonial project. Forts articulated the colonial and the metropolitan, and functioned as nodes in a mercantile empire, shaping early forms of capitalism, transforming the global political economy, and generating a flood of images and ideas on an unprecedented scale. Today, they can be understood as active material legacies of empire that represent promises, dangers and possibilities. Forts are marks and wounds of the history of human violence, but also timely reminders that buildings never last forever, testimonies of the fluidity of the material world. Illustrated by case studies in Morocco, Cape Verde, São Tomé and Príncipe and Kenya, this book examines how this global but chameleonic network of forts can offer valuable insights into both the geopolitics of Empire and their postcolonial legacies, and into the intersection of colonialism, memory, power and space in the postcolonial Lusophone world and beyond.

Clearly written and fascinatingly illustrated, Tourists at the Taj describes the conflicting narratives which surround the site. For some the Taj is an evocative symbol of the colonial past. For others it is a symbolic centre of Islamic power. For many of the thousands of tourists that visit it each year it is simply a monument of love. The author shows how tourism can be seen as a performance and the tourist site as a stage on which tourists are directed and rehearsed but also able to improvise their own cultural rituals.

This volume studies females who practice or interact with gender norms of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam in relation to the geography of place. The book focuses on attempts by religious and secular authorities to control women’s access to distinct spaces to show how religious women navigate harsh terrain and attain mobility within established institutions. The writings are grouped under three sections: “Women and Colonial Regimes,” “Religion and Women’s Mobility,” and “New Spaces for Religious Women.” Secular, critical, and comparative viewpoints are explored, with much of the scholarship steeped in fieldwork, i.e., an orthodox district in Jerusalem, a shopping mall in Istanbul, women travelers in Pakistan, and Korean immigrant women in Los Angeles. Contributors broaden notions of space to extend beyond architecture, national borders, external and internal boundaries, and assorted identifying markers, such as race or clothing. In examining a “new” aspect of space/geography these essays promote challenge, irony, and unexpected avenues of thought. Multi-cultural and international in scope, this work makes a significant, groundbreaking contribution to the field of geography.

The Themed Space: Locating Culture, Nation and Self is the first edited collection focused on the subject of the themed space. Twelve authors address a range of themed spaces, including restaurants, casinos, theme parks and other spaces like airports and virtual reality ones. The text is organized into four sections-theming as authenticity, theming as nation, theming as person and theming as mind.

Formerly a largely Western practice, leisure travel is today the most dynamic industry in the world in terms of growth. Developments in transport and communication systems mean tourism is now an integral part of our understanding of the world, and involved in the exponential increase of links between societies and different cultures. The Tourist Places of the World has comprehensive data on the number of international visitors annually. It also includes an original map ? not dictated by country, but by major tourist areas and places. The hierarchy of destinations drawn is highlighted by the different levels of popularity and passenger flows; from the universal places where all societies meet to the still unfrequented places. Beyond the recognition of global tourism, the challenge is to understand how and why societies can achieve a better life through sustainable development, which encompasses social, economic and environmental dimensions.

Providing a unique analysis of current multidisciplinary research on the complex relationships between tourism and the imaginaries of tourist destinations, this book traces the links between tourism imaginaries and their religious (heaven) and political (utopia) antecedents. The substantive chapters are organised into three main thematic sections, the first explores the touristic production and consumption of place imaginaries, the second analyses the way places are practiced through imaginaries and the role imaginaries play in the tourist experience and the final section explores the way images and the media participate in the creation of tourism imaginaries.