Tourism and Spatial Transformations

Book excerpt: While there is a considerable amount of recent literature on recreation and tourism as activities, there is little that provides a comprehensive review and analysis of intervention or planning in this sector. Tourism and recreation include a wide variety of activities occurring within a wide range of environments and spatial scales. The purpose of this book is to examine this transformation of space and draw out the implications for tourism policy and planning. The editors present a general model of transformation as a guide to intervention and this is followed by 18 chapters divided into four parts. The first focuses on the producers and includes case studies from the Spanish coast, French mountains and Northern Thailand. The second considers the management of the tourism product, with examples from the Amsterdam waterfront development and holiday villages in Northern Europe. The third section is concerned with consumers as managers of the transformation process, drawing on information from nature-based tourism, sports tourism and festival events. The final part provides a more holistic model of the planning of recreation and tourism.