Backpacker Tourism : Concepts and Profiles

The search for new tourism experiences as well as changes in the tourism industry itself has led to new forms of individualised travel and consequentially new forms of backpacker tourism. This volume provides an up to date examination of the behaviour, attitudes and motivations of backpacker tourists as well as the growth of the infrastructure behind backpacker tourism phenomenon throughout the world. Drawing upon insights from geography, sociology, anthropology, management and marketing, Backpacker Tourism provides theoretically informed case studies of individual destinations of backpackers. This book will be of interest to students and researchers of backpacker tourism as well as those involved in the backpacker tourism industry itself.

Kevin Hannam is Professor of Tourism Mobilities at Leeds Metropolitan University, UK. Previously he was Associate Dean for Research at the University of Sunderland, UK. He has particular research interests in heritage and nature based tourism with a geographical focus on South and South-East Asia. He has supervised to completion over 100 master’s theses and 18 doctoral students. He is founding co-editor of the journal Mobilities (Routledge), andco-author of the books Understanding Tourism (Sage) and Tourism and India (Routledge). Most recently he was co-editor of the Routledge Handbook of Mobilities Research and co-editor of Moral Encounters in Tourism (Ashgate). He has a PhD in geography from the University of Portsmouth and is a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society (FRGS).

Dr Irena Ateljevic is based within the Socio-Spatial Analysis Group at Wageningen University in the Netherlands. She is the co-editor of recent books on critical tourism including: Ateljevic, I. Morgan, N. and Pritchard, A. (2007) The Critical Turn in Tourism Studies: Exploring Innovative Methodologies (Elsevier Advanced Series); and Pritchard, A. Morgan, N. Ateljevic, I. and Harris, C. (2007) Tourism, Gender and Embodiment (CAB International). Her most recent research interest lies in analysing the political implications and powers surrounding the production of academic knowledge.