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part one | |
introducing your companion |
This SAGE Course Companion has been written to help you succeed on your undergraduate travel and tourism course. In fact, it is rather like a travel guide! That is, it is designed to help you find your way around and make sense of the numerous and, perhaps, unfamiliar topics that are included in your course, pointing you towards key issues and concepts as well as directing you towards the most important books and readings. It will also help you undertake and successfully complete coursework assessments, and provide you with essential guidance to revising for exams. In other words, this Companion will help you on your journey towards achieving your degree in travel and tourism.
Of course, a travel guide is, by definition, simply a guide to a place you are visiting; its purpose is to help you make the most of your stay there but it cannot tell you everything you might wish or need to know. Similarly, this Companion is a guide to the study of travel and tourism, not a comprehensive course text. It is not intended to replace your lecture notes, textbooks and wider reading but, rather, to supplement them. Highlighting the important ideas, concepts and issues that you need to know, it will help you organise and structure your thoughts and learning, and it will enable you to make the most of your lecture notes, textbooks and other course materials.
As well as providing a focus for your reading, learning and research in travel and tourism, this book is also intended to guide you in your preparation of coursework and in your revision for exams, helping you to save time and avoid common pitfalls. In particular, it provides guidance and tips on what your examiners will be looking for in terms of key facts, concepts and arguments, enabling you to plan and write assessed coursework or prepare for your exams more effectively.
In addition to the subject specific information in Part Two of this book, you will also find a study, writing and revision skills guide in Part Three. This is designed to help you learn more efficiently, to be a more effective student. Part of the learning process is attending and contributing to lectures and seminars but of equal, if not greater, importance is your use of textbooks and other course materials and your wider reading around the subject. This Companion will help you navigate this learning process, guiding your study of travel and tourism and helping you succeed on your course.
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The overall aim of this book is to help you make the most of your travel and tourism course by establishing a framework for your learning about the subject and by providing essential help in completing coursework and revising for exams. Therefore, it essentially serves two purposes, namely, to support your learning and act as a revision guide.
To make best use of the book, then, you should use it to supplement your course textbooks and lecture notes by, first of all, making sure that you are familiar with the travel and tourism subject areas included in the book and where these are covered in your course syllabus. This means that you can then read about each topic before the relevant lecture or seminar, equipping yourself with knowledge of the important issues or themes and familiarising yourself with key thinkers or writers on the subject. Importantly, this will also help you to understand the relevance or contribution of any particular topic to the overall study of travel and tourism. As we shall see in a moment, one of the challenges of studying travel and tourism is that it is a broad subject that draws on a variety of academic disciplines. As a result, it is sometimes easy to lose sight of how particular topics fit into the overall travel and tourism picture.
Even if you do not wish to use the book to preview your course, you can use it both as a guide to preparing and writing assessed coursework and as an exam revision guide. It indicates the important elements of each topic covered, thereby helping to focus your reading and revision, and suggesting what issues and arguments should be included (or not included!) in assignments or exam answers.
Depending on how you want to use this Companion, therefore, you can dip in and out of it as your course progresses, you can prepare yourself by reading it in its entirety before starting your course, or you can just refer to it as a revision guide. Whatever use you make of it, however, you are strongly recommended to read the first section on studying travel and tourism. This looks at not only why we study travel and tourism but also how we should study it. In other words, at an academic level, travel and tourism is a diverse, fascinating subject that attracts interest from, or is explored within the context of, a variety of disciplines. For example, you will undoubtedly read books that look at travel and tourism from the perspective of business strategy, geography, economics, sociology, development or marketing, to name just a few. Conversely, at a practical level, travel and tourism is a vast and dynamic global industry and one in which many readers of this book may hope to work. It is important, therefore, that you can recognise the collective contribution of the different perspectives on travel and tourism to your knowledge and understanding of travel and tourism in the ‘real world’. In fact, one of the key things that examiners look for is not only your knowledge of basic concepts and issues, but your ability to apply these to contemporary travel and tourism practice.
Part Two of the Companion looks at the travel and tourism curriculum in more detail, providing you with an overview of the key elements of each topic. Where these topics are taught on your course may vary as, currently, there is no standard travel and tourism curriculum. As a result, travel and tourism courses, in terms of the units or modules that are taught, differ considerably in their focus and design. Nevertheless, many, if not all, the topics introduced in this Companion will be covered at some stage in your course. Remember, though, that this section is not a substitute for your course textbooks – it is designed to give you a head start in learning about travel and tourism, and to provide a quick reference guide to coursework and exam revision.
Each topic covered within the section offers the following features:
- An overview of key concepts and issues, as well as hints and tips on understanding and using them. This will remind you of the main points to include in your coursework and exam answers.
- Running themes. Despite the diverse perspectives on the study of travel and tourism, a number of themes or issues run across the subject as a whole. Frequently, reference can and should be made to these in essays and exam questions.
- The contribution of key thinkers/writers on the subject. The ability to refer to or quote the work of key thinkers/writers in travel and tourism not only conveys a sense of ‘authority’ in your work but is also likely to impress examiners.
- Ideas for assignment questions. These should help you with the structure and content of typical coursework essay questions.
- Sample exam questions and sample answers. These should help you to anticipate and prepare for likely exam questions.
- Taking it Further sections. These introduce a more critical stance on contemporary and, perhaps, controversial questions or debates that are not normally covered in standard texts. Introducing these into your essays or exam questions is likely to have a positive impact on the quality of your work (and your grades!).
- A short list of key sources to focus your reading on the topic.
Students often have some difficulty in making the most of lectures and seminars, while they also need help with specific study skills, such as writing essays or revising for exams. Part Three of this Companion is a study guide which is designed to help you make the most of your lectures and seminars, and to develop your writing and revision skills. Finally, at the back of the book is a glossary of key terms that are used throughout the book and highlighted in bold at the first mention, as well as a comprehensive index.
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2 | |
studying travel and tourism |
Travel and tourism has been the subject of academic interest for well over fifty years. However, it was not until the 1970s, when a number of key academics began to develop a theoretical framework for its study, that it began to achieve more coherence as a recognised academic area. Its popularity as a course of study is even more recent. In fact, it is only ten to fifteen years ago that undergraduate programmes in travel and tourism became more widely available but, since then, the number of courses has, literally, exploded. So too, of course, has the number of students of travel and tourism, both at undergraduate and postgraduate levels, while ever more academics have turned their attention to the subject, either as a specialist area or within their own disciplinary ‘home’.
It is, then, a popular but relatively young subject, and one that remains contentious. The press, for example, often refer to travel and tourism courses in rather disparaging terms while tourism academics themselves often indulge in a form of academic navel-gazing! At the same time, there is disagreement about the reason for studying travel and tourism. On the one hand, it can be seen as a vocational subject, preparing students for a career in tourism – certainly, many travel and tourism graduates secure jobs in the industry once they have completed their degree. On the other hand, there are powerful reasons for studying it as an academic subject in its own right:
- Travel and tourism is often claimed to be the world’s largest industry. Although it is debatable whether the term ‘industry’ is appropriate, there is no doubting the enormous global economic value of travel and tourism.
- It is a major social phenomenon. As ever-increasing numbers of people become tourists it is important to understand why and how people travel.
- Travel and tourism has significant economic, environmental and socio-cultural consequences for destinations. Not only must these be understood and managed, but also they should be considered within broader global change and development.
- More generally, travel and tourism is an integral part of modern life and, therefore, deserving of academic study.
Despite the ongoing debate about the reasons for studying it, there is general consensus about what the study of travel and tourism is all about. Tourism is, essentially, a social activity; it is about people travelling, for whatever reason, to destinations away from the place where they normally live and work, and their activities during their stay in those destinations. In short, tourism is simply about people who are tourists.
Similarly, the starting point for the study of travel and tourism is the tourist, or the social activity of tourism. It is through the process of travelling and staying in destinations that, collectively, tourists spend huge sums of money, making travel and tourism one of the world’s largest economic sectors and, for many countries, a vital industry; it is through that process that tourists interact with local people and impact on the local environment; it is through that process that tourists seek satisfying experiences. Therefore, it is through studying and understanding that process that those who cater for tourists – the travel and tourism industry – can better (and profitably!) meet tourists’ needs, that the widely publicised problems or impacts of tourism can be better managed, and that destinations can optimise the benefits from tourism. In other words, the study of travel and tourism is concerned with exploring how, why and where people travel as tourists, how the travel industry can effectively and profitably cater for tourists, and how destinations can harness and manage tourism to their benefit.
As a subject of study, travel and tourism cannot be described as an academic discipline in the traditional sense of the word; rather, it is a subject area that draws on a variety of disciplines that collectively contribute to the over...
