Mountaineering Tourism: A Critical Perspective (Routledge Focus on Tourism and Hospitality)

This book offers a critical account of the historical evolution of mountaineering and its relation to the phenomenon of tourism, providing an overview of recent developments linked to the diversification, commodification and commercialisation of mountaineering activity.

Mountaineering, broadly defined as hiking, trekking and climbing, is now a mass phenomenon, with continually growing numbers of trekkers, climbers and religious tourists hiking in mountain regions. Increasing visitor numbers require the current policies to be updated. The environments around high-mountain areas and their local resident communities, until recently cut off from civilisation, are sensitive to outside influences and have been abruptly exposed to the impact of mountaineering and related activities. This is the first book to disentangle overlapping terms and definitions related to mountaineering tourism. It identifies the key terms and turning points in mountaineering tourism and discusses the impacts of mountaineering tourism from an environmental, socio-cultural and personal perspective and identifies current tourism management policies. Finally, this book provides a continuum between the past and future of mountaineering tourism and aims to provide policy suggestions for sustainable management of fragile mountain regions.

This will be of great interest to upper-level students and academics of tourism, as well as industry representatives and policymakers with an interest in adventure tourism and mountaineering.

Michal Apollo is an assistant professor at the Pedagogical University of Krakow, Institute of Geography, Department of Tourism and Regional Studies, a Fellow of Yale University's Global Justice Program, New Haven, USA, a Visiting Scholar at Hainan University-Arizona State University Joint International Tourism College, Haikou, China, and a Visiting Fellow at the Center for Tourism Research, Wakayama University, Japan.

Yana Wengel is an associate professor at Hainan University-Arizona State University Joint International Tourism College, Haikou, China and a Visiting Fellow at the Center for Tourism Research, Wakayama University, Japan.