Tourism History: People in Motion and at Rest

Abstract

Publications dealing with histories of tourism are proliferating as the importance of the sector is recognised and the long-established diversity of themes and approaches permits advances on a broad interdisciplinary front. Geographically, studies based on Europe and North America continue to dominate, while work on Australasia and Latin America is growing. The balance of publications on tourism in Africa and especially Asia remains overwhelmingly present-minded, ethnographic, or directly policy oriented. Thematically, contributions range from literary investigations of guidebooks and travel writing to economic, demographic, and cultural analyses of the impact of tourism on particular localities. Bibliographies on travel and transport in relation to tourism are expanding, as we should expect. International overviews of tourism history have been published in journals and handbooks where the main interest is in tourism economics and management, indicating increasing awareness of the importance to tourism of a grounded understanding of its past.