Conceptualising tourism transport: inequality and externality issues

Abstract

This paper raises several conceptual questions concerning the actual and symbolic representations of inequality and differentiation expressed in leisure and tourism mobility which have significance for members of host communities visited, transport and land-use planning in host areas, tourists and the tourism industry. Within this framework, the paper explores two sets of conceptual issues which are positioned at the interface of transport and tourism. First, transport has the potential to act as a gatekeeper to culture contact, constraining or encouraging host–tourist interaction. Second, the role of tourist mobility at a local level can be critical for issues of inequality and externality effects. The substantial tourism impacts literature has only occasionally addressed social dimensions of leisure transport's external costs, and the transport geography literature has rarely acknowledged the differentiation of tourists and non-tourists competing for transport and transport space. It is concluded that transport and land-use planners need to recognise and respond to tourism's externalities and their implications for inequality and sustainability issues.