The Routledge Handbook of Tourism Research

Cathy H.C. Hsu, William C Gartner

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2012
• eBook ISBN: 9781136338151
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Hospitality, Travel & Tourism Industry
• Index: Business

The Routledge Handbook of Tourism Research is a compendium of some of the most relevant issues affecting tourism development today. The topics addressed in this book provide some new thinking for those involved in tourism research. This book takes the reader from the beginnings of tourism research to a discussion of emerging forms of tourism and selected examples of tourism development. The underlying theoretical dimensions are reviewed, analysed and discussed from a number of perspectives. This book brings together leading researchers, many of whom are members of the International Academy for the Study of Tourism, to discuss tourism today and its future.

The works included in this volume are diverse, in terms of geographical context, research methodology, root discipline, and perspective. This book represents studies based in Europe, North America, Oceania, and Asia. Research methodologies include both quantitative and qualitative. Both macro and micro issues are discussed from the economic, psychological, sociological, political science, marketing, and other perspectives, which reflect the interdisciplinary nature of tourism studies.

This book is divided into 6 sections. Section 1 considers the foundations for tourism research. Section 2 discusses the implications for destination management and section 3 discusses planning for tourism development. Section 4 covers human capital for tourism development. And finally, section 5 evaluates emerging forms of tourism and then section 6 offers insights into tourism evolution.

It offers the reader a comprehensive synthesis of this field, conveying the latest thinking and research. The text will provide an invaluable resource for all those with an interest in tourism research. This is essential reading for students, researchers & academics of Tourism as well as those of related studies in particular Leisure, Hospitality & Development Studies.

Part I

Foundations for tourism research

1

An Outline of the History of Tourism Theory

Source Material (for future research)

Boris Vukonić

Introduction

By reflecting on past events, we can gain a better understanding how we have become what we are. Using the tourism terminology, we can say that it is the way for better understanding of the essence of tourism movements and tourism industry. As an area of human activity, tourism has a history extending back to the early eighteenth century. So is the case with tourism knowledge or tourism theory. In this context this chapter covers the period from the initial stages of scientific research on tourism until the end of the twentieth century. Specifically the purpose of this chapter is to provide a series of reflections on aspects of the development of tourism knowledge in order not to avoid or forget the importance of any development stages the tourism theory was going through.

Some Basic Introductory Theoretical Issues

In all the historical texts on tourism, theorists have faced a number of questions at the very beginning of their work. Without resolving at least part of these questions, it is difficult to talk about any topic related to tourism. As a notion, tourism appeared and became a subject of discussion after tourist traffic had already been recorded in many areas and countries, and much after the time that people had started displaying an interest in travelling for hedonistic reasons. In this process, the word ‘tourist’ appeared earlier than ‘tourism’, and this shows that the sequence of events concerning the phenomenon of tourism and its theoretical explanation was different from what we would expect. Naturally, there is also the question about the time period where we should search for the roots of tourism and from when it would be theoretically correct to discuss it, as this will temporally define the period that this chapter deals with. Regardless of which period we choose, it would not be right to exclude the periods and theoretical works which precede the phenomenon of so-called modern tourism. According to recent research and opinion, theorists mainly agree that the period of modern tourism began with Thomas Cook’s first organised journey in 1841, an event which the World Tourism Organisation also used when deciding on 1991 as the 150th anniversary of world tourism. Of course, there are those who disagree. Among them, the majority see the beginning of tourism in the Grand Tour.

It seems reasonable to conclude that the periods that preceded these events can only be considered as the forerunners of tourism, or as phenomena similar to tourism, so the theoretical views and works that appeared in those periods should be seen and accepted in that context too. Because of the number and serious nature of the works published in this period, we simply have to include them in a historical retrospective of tourism theory, and even more so on account of their content. The seriousness of arguments which speak in favour of the first thesis convinced me that the Grand Tour was only one of the phases in which phenomena similar to tourism started to appear, but one which, according to today’s views of the modern tourism phenomenon, cannot be considered as tourism.

In this context, an overview of the phenomena related to tourism and the theory on tourism would be presented in two basic chapters: the first one deals with the phenomena similar to tourism and their accompanying theoretical works, while the second treats the unique tourism phenomenon, from the first instances of organised travel until the end of the twentieth century. In both cases, the development of tourism and tourism theory underwent different phases in these long periods, which, although not the focus of this work, will be included as a general framework for the particular works and the theses they proposed. In fact, without briefly looking at the phenomena and events in their social, political, economic and other relevant contexts, it is difficult to talk about the topics that tourism theory is interested in, and it is especially difficult to understand the true meaning of the theoretical views from different periods and different parts of the world.

However, the following has to be said too. An obsession of almost everybody in today’s world is to be the first, the biggest, the best. This seems to be true of the entire world and all human activities, including science. When it comes to human sciences the situation is somewhat more complicated, as it is usually difficult to be certain when and where a scientific opinion first appeared or when and where a scientific paper of some kind was published. The large-scale production, or more precisely, the hyper production of scientific and quasi-scientific works on world tourism makes the search for truth even more complicated. But, it is important to make a record of the people who were among the first, if not the very first, to discuss and write about tourism. All the work that followed is only the deepening, supplementing and correcting of the same subject matter. That work is equally valuable and original, and can bring the same kind of fame to those involved in it, and who search for arguments in order to correct other people’s views. This overview will deal only with the works published in the form of expert books. It is not the intention to underestimate the value of papers published in professional journals, but they are so numerous that it was impossible to cover them fully, especially in this initial historical analysis of tourism theory. There were a large number of such papers published over the last decades of the twentieth century that were particularly significant for the development of scientific research and for the theory of tourism. However, their most important ideas were later published in book form, and it was through that medium that they have found their way into the list of works and authors relevant to this chapter.

It is the whole truth that science does not tolerate alibis. Referring to ‘certain’ or ‘unforeseen’ circumstances means searching for an alibi for one’s work, and suggests an inability to explore a phenomenon objectively or fully. However, consciously not accepting such a risk, it would mean something even less acceptable: scientific arrogance. We are referring to the period entitled ‘the period of scientific flourishing’ in this historical overview, from the 1980s to the beginning of the twenty-first century. It has become impossible to follow present-day mass scientific production, when several thousand titles are published every calendar year worldwide. Still, it is certainly possible to discover the pioneers of tourism theory and give them their rightful place in the history of scientific thought on tourism. Also, while it is easier to follow the events in one’s own geographical vicinity, that too is becoming increasingly difficult, if not impossible. So, the scientists listed here are not a complete overview of present-day world tourism theory. I chose to follow my own subjective criteria and I mention only those authors and works which I believe have created a milestone in world tourism theory, without intending to belittle the scientific efforts and results of thousands of other scientists who deal with and explore different aspects of world tourism.

Periodisation

The aim of this chapter is not to discuss the periodisation of tourism and tourism science. However, in a historical overview such as this, where some kind of periodisation of the phenomenon in question is required, it is essential to touch upon the basic assumptions from which the sequence of relevant events is to be analysed. In their writing about different periods in the development of tourism and scientific tourism thought, different authors have used various starting points. Periodisation has consequently always been based on the independent and subjective attitudes of particular authors, and this initial attitude was usually different for each of them, especially as the conditions in which they lived and worked were not the same everywhere. They often had a different scientific background as well. This explains the differences in the attempts to come up with a single, universally accepted and well-argumented overview of the entire era of world tourism.

However, the chronology of events itself is not as important for the understanding of tourism as the explanations of the chronology and the events themselves, including their geographical, political or economic context. The periodisation of tourism becomes meaningful only when we look at the development of tourism in its context, and explore the interaction of different interconnected factors. This then allows us to determine both our own level of development and the level of tourism development. This overview of the history of tourism theory was based on some main criteria where two groups prevailed: the chronology of events; and, for the last period (because of the large-scale scientific production), different authors’ topics of interest.

The Period of the Phenomena which Preceded the Emergence of Tourism

Tourism and travel are interdependent notions. Since tourism cannot exist without travel, some theorists – placing greater importance on travel – have referred to tourism in, for example, Ancient Egypt, Greece, the Roman Empire and the Middle Ages. However, travel in these historical periods did not and could not have the character of tourism. Tourism as a new social phenomenon did not appear until the conditions were right, and this did not happen until the middle of the nineteenth century. The thesis which wrongly defines travel as tourism partly comes from the interesting notion of the traveller which was created in the period of European Humanism, and whose motive for travelling was similar to that of the modern tourist. Driven by cultural and scientific impulses, these travellers visited cultural and scientific centres around the world. This is probably why world travellers such as Montaigne (1533–92) or Marco Polo (c. 1254–1324) are often mentioned as the first tourists. An attempt has even been made to present Montaigne’s travel book Journal de voyage (published in 1774) as the first scientific tourism book. Today’s theoretical attitudes are very clear when they say that neither these nor similar travellers or explorers from the past can be considered tourists, and neither can the later explorers on Kon-Tiki, or the conquerors of the Himalayas.

The sixteenth century is also interesting because of the work of Thomas Mun (1571–1641). Mun, who was a mercantilist by orientation, was considered by later theorists (such as F.W. Ogilvie, Kurt Krapf, P.W. Titzhoff) to have created the first theory in which tourism was an invisible export. Mun’s book was written in 1630 as a petition of the East India Company to the British Parliament, and was published posthumously in 1664. The only German copy of Thomas Mun’s book is kept in the Library of the University in Kiel; one of several copies of the book in Great Britain is in the British Museum Library. It is true that Mun wrote about services and their influence on the balance of payments, mentioning for the first time the ‘expences of travailers’ as a form of service which should be taken into consideration when working out the balance of payments. In order to consistently develop his theory on their influence on the balance of payments, in both its assets and liabilities sections, Mun juxtaposes the expenses of travellers in England with the expenses of English nationals abroad. He named these expenses ‘petty things’. This research rectified the previous belief that it had been G.J. Göschen who had in 1861 first presented the theoretical assumption of tourism being an invisible export in his book Theory of Foreign Exchange. Extensive research on Thomas Mun’s work was carried out by the German theorist Peter W. Titzhoff (1964).

However, all this is not enough to ascribe scientific status to the research of tourism in the sixteenth century. In his foreword to G. Carone’s (1959) book Il Turismo nell’Economia Internazionale, Kurt Krapf pointed out that the visits of individual foreigners to England at that time were in essence the same as those of modern foreign tourists, with the obvious difference in the size of the traffic, and, consequently, the significance of that traffic.

The seventeenth century is also sometimes mentioned because of another phenomenon, the Grand Tour, suggested by some to have been the beginning of world tourism. The Grand Tour mainly involved young British and other European upper-class young men. It was interrupted by the 30 Years War (1618–48), which ravaged almost the entire European continent, and again by the Napoleonic Wars in the late-eighteenth century, but it continued until the middle of the nineteenth century. Texts on the Grand Tour not only contained a wealth of information and rich detail, but their serious content made them resemble scientific works on tourism. The names of authors who wrote about the Grand Tour in that period make the thesis that it is the beginning of tourism development even more appealing. One of these famous texts is the dia...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of figures
• List of tables
• Notes on the editors
• Notes on the contributors
• Introduction
• Part I: Foundations for tourism research
• Part II: Implications for destination management
• Part III: Planning for tourism development
• Part IV: Human capital for tourism development
• Part V: Emerging forms of tourism
• Part VI: Insights into tourism evolution
• Index