Environment and tourism

What are the consequences of tourism in the physical and cultural environments people visit?

For many people 'Going on holiday' is an increasingly central feature of contemporary western society.

The tourism industry has expanded rapidly since 1950, but are environments being benefited or damaged, by the tourist who visit them?

Environment and Tourism is an introductory text about the relationship that exists between tourism, society and the environment.

The book examines the meanings of 'tourism' and 'environment' and gives an historical overview of the growth of tourism.

It discusses how the tourism industry markets physical and cultural environments, to be consumed by the tourist.

Inevitably there have been consequences from the growth of tourism on physical and cultural environments and the use of environmental management and planning techniques are described.

The book suggests ways in which the economics of tourism can be adopted in a positive way to aid conservation, in light of the failure of conventional economics to deal with problems of resource usage and pollution. Environment and Tourism goes on to look at whether the concept of sustainability can be applied to tourism and provides a critique of the 'new' forms of tourism, that developed towards the end of the twentieth-century.

An extensive range of international case-studies are used to illustrate the theoretical ideas presented.

To aid the student there are chapter outlines, end-of-chapter summaries and futher reading sections.