Box 1.4. Experience: Business or Pleasure? Traveling as a Tourism Geographer

As a geographer, and especially as a tourism geographer, every trip I take and every place I go is work. I was working when I took a vineyard tour in Napa Valley, California. I was working when I attended the lectures of leading experts at the UNWTO’s International Conference on Climate Change and Tourism held in scenic Davos, Switzerland. I was working when I wandered the streets of Paris. I was working when I conducted research at St. Vincent’s botanical gardens. I was working when I spent the night at a cottage perched on the edge of the Zambezi River Gorge in Zimbabwe. I was working when I traveled to rural Guizhou Province, China, to learn about the cultures of ethnic minorities. I was working when I got hopelessly lost hiking in Slovenia. I was working when I presented my research at the International Geographical Congress in Tunis, Tunisia. I was even working when I was in Barbados. (No, really.)

Geographers rarely need an excuse to travel. For us, the world is our classroom. If we are to understand the world, we must experience it, and travel gives us that opportunity. Through travel, we build our knowledge of places other than our own, which finds its way into the classes we teach and shapes the topics we research. As geographers first, we rely on this knowledge of place to provide an important framework for understanding tourism as a place-based activity. For tourism geographers, travel has the added benefit of allowing us to explore the circumstances of tourism in other places. Tourism exists in many forms at dif­ferent scales and across different parts of the world. Through travel, we gain insight into the patterns of this often complex phenomenon. Thus, there is much to be learned from every trip we take, even our own vacations.

Work though it may be, I certainly have no room to complain. Beyond the professional benefits of travel, each trip has had tremendous personal value. I got to know an old family friend as she took me to her favorite vineyards in Napa Valley. I fell in love with the Alps in Switzerland and swore to go back as soon as I could. I checked Paris off of my “bucket list” and swore to never go back. I made a friend on St. Vincent who showed me parts of the island I never would have found on my own. I watched a full moon rise over the Zambezi River from my cottage at the top of the gorge. I successfully used my rudimentary Mandarin to order at a restaurant in a small town in Guizhou where no one spoke a word of English. I never did find the ruins of the twelfth-century casde in Slovenia, but I won’t soon forget the experience of looking for it. For hours. In the rain. I learned how to argue with a taxi driver in Tunis. And yes, I thoroughly enjoyed lying on one of Barbados’s beautiful beaches once my work was done. Travel has given me the opportunity to meet amazing people and to have these incredible experiences that I never would have had at home. Moreover, it has given me new perspectives on my life, and I’ve learned a lot about myself in the process.

So is it business, or pleasure? It is, undoubtedly, both.

Conclusion

Geography has a long tradition based on the fundamental human desire to under­stand the world, and the modern discipline provides us with the tools and concepts to explain the patterns and phenomena that comprise the world. Although geography and tourism may not automatically be associated with one another, the relationship is undeniable. As such, geography is particularly well suited to provide the framework for exploring the massive worldwide phenomenon of tourism. In particular, we will use a topical approach in geography to break this complicated concept down into more manageable pieces.

This textbook is intended to be precisely what it says it is: an introduction. It is not, and cannot be, comprehensive. Any one of the topics discussed in the chapters of this text could very well merit an entire text of its own. In fact, there are many excel­lent examples available that discuss such specific topics in much greater depth than what has been done here. At the same time, there are many other topics that could have just as easily been included. The fact that they were not is more a function of a lack of space than a lack of importance. This text is but a beginning, a starting point.

This first chapter briefly discussed each geography and tourism for the purpose of introducing this idea of a “geography of tourism.” The remaining chapters in Part I continue to develop a basis in tourism that will allow us to subsequently examine key issues through the framework of geography. Specifically, chapter 2 (“Basic Concepts in Tourism”) introduces some of the terminology and ideas in tourism that will provide the foundation for discussions in the remaining chapters, while chapter 3 (“Overview of Tourism Products”) provides a brief overview of the types of tourism experiences (i.e., the “products” of the tourism industry) that are offered by destinations around the world.

Key Terms

• accessibility

• affect

• critical regional geography

• effect

• geotourism

• globalization

• human geography

• leisure time

• physical geography

• place

• region

• regional geography

• relative location

• scale

• space

• spatial distribution

• topical geography

• tourism

• tourism demand

• tourism supply

• tourist-generating regions

• tourist-receiving regions

Notes

1. Geoffrey J. Martin, All Possible Worlds: A History of Geographical Ideas (New York: Ox­ford University Press, 2005).

2. David A. Lanegran and Salvatore J. Natoli, Guidelines for Geographic Education in the El­ementary and Secondary Schools (Washington, DC: Association of American Geographers, 1984).

3. National Geographic Education Foundation, “Survey Results: U.S. Young Adults Are Lagging,” accessed August 22, 2011, http://www.nationalgeographic.com/geosurvey/ highlights.html; John Roach, “Young Americans Geographically Illiterate, Survey Suggests,” National Geographic News, May 2, 2006, accessed August 22, 2011, http://news.national geographic.com/news/2006/05/0502_060502_geography.html.

4. World Tourism Organization, Collection of Tourism Expenditure Statistics, Technical Manual No. 2 (Madrid: World Tourism Organization, 1995), accessed January 22, 2011, http://pub.unwto.org/WebRoot/Store/Shops/Infoshop/Products/1034/1034-l.pdf, 9.

5. Alister Mathieson and Geoffrey Wall, Tourism: Economic, Physical, and Social Impacts (London: Longman, 1982), 1.

6. Stephen L. J. Smith, “Defining Tourism: A Supply Side View,” Annals of Tourism Re­search 15, no. 2 (1988): 183.

7. Jerome L. McElroy and Courtney E. Parry, “The Characteristics of Small Island Tourist Economies,” Tourism and Hospitality Research 10, no. 4 (2010): 319—20.

8. United Nations World Tourism Organization, “International Tourism 2010: Multi- Speed Recovery,” January 17, 2011, accessed January 27, 2011, http://85.62.13.114/media/ news / en/press_det.php?id=7331 &idioma=E.

9. United Nations World Tourism Organization, World Tourism Barometer 8, no. 1 (2010), accessed October 24, 2010, http://www.unwto.org/facts/eng/pdf/barometer/UNWTO_ Baroml0_l_en.pdf, 3.

10. Caribbean Tourism Organization, “About Us,” accessed October 24, 2010, http://www .onecaribbean.org/aboutus/.

11. Chris Gibson, “Locating Geographies of Tourism,” Progress in Human Geography 32, no. 3 (2008).

CHAPTER 2

Basic Concepts in Tourism

The concept of tourism means something different to all of us because we have differ­ent perspectives and experiences. For example, people in significant tourist-generating regions may think of tourism as something that they have done in the past and that they would probably like to do again sometime in the future. This is a demand-side perspective. In contrast, people in significant tourist-receiving regions may associate tourism with all of the tourists who come and go during the course of a season. This is a supply-side perspective. Both are fundamental in understanding tourism.

In this chapter, we will discuss some of the key terms and concepts from the perspective of both the demand side of tourism and the supply side. In particular, we will consider what tourism means from the demand side, who tourists are, and what geographic factors motivate them and affect their demand for travel and tourism. We will also examine what types of tourism are provided on the supply side, what charac­teristics of places create tourism attractions, and what constitutes the tourism industry.