Tourism, Public Transport and Sustainable Mobility

C. Michael Hall, Diem-Trinh Le-Klähn, Yael Ram

• Verlag: Channel View Publications
• Jahr: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781845416003
• Thema: Business
• Thema: Hospitality, Travel & Tourism Industry

This book offers a comprehensive global examination of the relationship between public transport and tourism as well as exploring other sustainable transport modes. It offers a unique view by analysing tourism through the public transport lens and vice versa. The volume provides an account of how the public transport experience can be improved for tourists so that its value can be maximised and a greater number of people can be encouraged to shift modes. It features a wide range of case studies and examples showing how the tourism industry, as well as regional economies, communities and the environment, benefit when public transport is widely used by tourists. The book will be of interest to researchers and students in the fields of tourism and transport as well as destination marketing organisations and tourism, transport and urban planners.

1Introduction

Introduction

Transportation, in general, refers to the movement of people, goods, information and/or energy. In this book we are focused on the transportation of people and, in particular, those who are participating in tourism activities. Transport is essential for tourism as, quite clearly, unless an individual is able to move between their home environment and another destination they are unable to be a tourist. Although there is a substantial body of literature on tourism transport (see Duval, 2007; Page & Connell, 2014, for an overview), much of this has been focused on aviation, cruise ships and cars. In contrast, there is much less literature on public transport and tourism despite the important role it plays in moving tourists around and within destinations and its value in moving tourists between destinations (Kagermeier & Gronau, 2015; Le-Klahn, 2015; Le-Klahn & Hall, 2015; Orsi, 2015). This book therefore seeks to address the critical role that public transport plays in tourism with respect to movement, as well as its part in the tourist experience and its significance for destination and tourism sustainability.

Those readers from a tourism studies background will be familiar with the definitional difficulties of ‘tourism’. Yet, as discussed below, the concept of public transport is also surrounded by significant definitional issues. This first chapter seeks to outline some of the different ways in which public transport is understood and how this particular volume will use the concept. It also outlines the importance of public transport for tourism and the role that tourism can play in supporting the provision of public transport services. As will be stressed throughout the book, public transport is also important not only for regional sustainability and individual accessibility, but is also increasingly recognised as being significant for developing more sustainable tourism products as well. However, before discussing the role of public transport in the provision of tourism services and products, the chapter will provide an overview of how tourism and public transport are defined.

Defining Tourism

The term ‘tourist’ is the concept used to describe those consumers who are engaged in voluntary temporary mobility away from their home environment (Hall, 2005). The key conceptual points here are ‘voluntary’, ‘temporary’ and mobility (Coles et al., 2004). If involuntarily movement is involved, the individual mobility may be...