Tourism is an intensely geographic phenomenon. It stimulates large-scale movement of people on an increasingly globalised scale and forges distinctive relationships between people – as tourists – and the spaces and places that they visit. It has significant implications for processes of physical development and resource exploitation, whilst the presence of visitors will frequently exert a range of economic, social, cultural and environmental impacts that have important implications for local geographies.

This second edition of Tourism Geography: A New Synthesis aims to develop a critical understanding of how many different geographies of tourism are created and maintained. Drawing on a range of social science disciplines, and adopting both an historical and a contemporary perspective, the discussion strives to connect tourism to key geographical concepts relating to globalisation, mobility, new geographies of production and consumption, and post-industrial change. The work is arranged in three main parts. In Part I the discussion is focused on how spatial patterns of tourism are formed and how they evolve through time. Part II offers an extended discussion of how tourism relates to places that are toured through an examination of physical and economic development, socio-cultural and environmental relations and the role of planning for tourism as a mechanism for the spatial regulation of the activity. Part III develops a range of material that is new for this second edition and which considers some of the newer influences upon geographies of tourism, including place promotion, the development of new forms of urban tourism, heritage, identity and embodied forms of tourism.

Drawing on an extended set of new case studies from across the world and supported by up-to-date statistical information, the text offers a concise yet comprehensive review of geographies of tourism and the ways in which geographers can interpret this important contemporary process. Written primarily as an introductory text for students, the book includes guidance for further study in each chapter, summary bibliographies and useful Internet sites that can form the basis for independent work.

Stephen Williams is Professor of Human Geography and Head of Applied Sciences at Staffordshire University, UK. He is also the Director of the University’s Institute for Environment, Sustainability and Regeneration. His publications include Outdoor Recreation and the Urban Environment (Routledge), and Tourism and Recreation (Prentice Hall).