The Geography of Tourism and Recreation

The Geography of Tourism and Recreation presents an accessible, comprehensive introduction to tourism, leisure and recreation and to the relationships between them. Illustrated throughout, this accessible text includes a wealth of international case studies spanning Europe, North America, Australasia and China. Each chapter highlights the methods of analysis used by geographers to analyse recreation and tourism, and highlights the similarities and differences between the way recreation and tourism is analysed. Recent perspectives developed in human geography are introduced (eg. gender studies and postmodernism) and a range of chapters examine the impact of recreation and tourism on key issues including: the demand and supply of recreation and tourism; the role of public policy, planning and management; the impact of tourism and recreation on urban, rural, mountain and coastal environments, and tourism and recreation in wilderness areas and other peripheral regions.
Spanning the spectrum of recreation and tourism in a manner which is both internationally wide-ranging and student focused, this book introduces both landmark studies and the most recent contributions to the geographical analysis of recreation and tourism, and represents an invaluable contribution to those studying in this field.