Tourism Destination Evolution

Outlining the need for fresh perspectives on change in tourism, this book offers a theoretical overview and empirical examples of the potential synergies of applying evolutionary economic geography (EEG) concepts in tourism research. EEG has proven to be a powerful explanatory paradigm in other sectors and tourism studies has a track record of embracing, adapting, and enhancing frameworks from cognate fields. EEG approaches to tourism studies complement and further develop studies of established themes such as path dependence and the Tourism Area Life Cycle. The individual chapters draw from a broad geographical framework and address distinct conceptual elements of EEG, using a diverse set of tourism case studies from Europe, North America and Australia. Developing the theoretical cohesion of tourism and EEG, this volume also gives non-specialist tourism scholars a window into the possibilities of using these concepts in their own research. Given the timing of this publication, it has great potential value to the wider tourism community in advancing theory and leading to more effective empirical research.

Patrick Brouder is a Banting Postdoctoral Fellow at the Department of Geography, Brock University, Canada. He is also a Senior Research Fellow at the School of Tourism and Hospitality, University of Johannesburg, South Africa, and a Research Associate at the Department of Tourism Studies and Geography, Mid Sweden University, Sweden.

Salvador Anton Clavé is Full Professor of Regional Geographical Analysis at Rovira i Virgili University, where he serves as Director of the Doctoral Program in Tourism and Leisure. His research concentrates on the analysis of the evolution of tourism destinations, tourism and city design and planning, the globalization of theme parks and attractions, the impact of ICT on tourism, and tourism policies and local development.

Alison Gill is a Professor at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, with a joint appointment in the Department of Geography and the School of Resource and Environmental Management. Her research interests are in the evolution of destinations with respect to issues of growth management, sustainability and governance.

Dimitri Ioannides is Professor of Human Geography at Mid Sweden University, Sweden. He has varied research interests in tourism, including the economic geography of the tourism sector as well as tourism within the context of sustainable development.