The contributions to this volume cohere around the theme of leisure and tourism resource management.
This, arguably, receives less attention in the study and practice of leisure and tourism than business management, which is problematic as these activities have the potential to degrade or even destroy the very environments that sustain them (to the cost of the enterprises and organisations that exist to meet the needs of participants), unless they are managed appropriately.
Even 'new' forms of production and consumption such as ecotourism are not inherently sustainable, despite the hype, and rely on appropriate policy, planning and management interventions in order to be perceived as such.
The volume opens with two chapters that focus on the measurement/modelling of natural and built environmental factors that affect tourism development in (peripheral) destination areas.In Chapter One, Antonio Fernandez-Morales and Maria Cruz Mayorga-Toledano analyse the seasonality of rural tourism in AndalucIa, Spain. Their estimates of seasonal factors and Gini Indexes, based on occupancy data for rural lodging establishments in the region, reveal that demand for tourism during the summer months is more concentrated in the interior than in some of the intensely developed coastal resorts located along the adjacent Costa del Sol.
This finding runs counter to popular belief, and is all the more significant on account of the fragile ecosystems and water shortages that have come to characterise this part of Southern Spain.In Chapter Two, Boopen Seetanah and Jameel Khadaroo investigate transport infrastructure as a determinant of destination development, vis-a-vis other factors such as the Gross Domestic Product and population of a tourist generating country, the cost of living and accommodation base of a receiving country, the distance between a given pair of generating and receiving countries and the existence or otherwise of a shared border and language. They apply an extended gravity model of trade to analyse tourist flows between selected countries, using data for the period 1990-2000, in an attempt to isolate the role and significance of transport infrastructure in the 'tourism development equation'.
The next two chapters consider aspects of visitor management and interpretation in rural and wilderness settings for leisure and tourism.In Chapter Three, Lysiane den Breejen offers an overview of research in outdoor recreation.
She highlights, and problematises, the lack of integration between the three major areas of interest in the academic literature on this topic (i.e. the visitor experience, the environment and resource management), and helpfully 'signposts' the few works that exist as exceptions to this particular rule and which, therefore, offer the potential for in-depth under-standing of the most popular form of outdoor recreation (and the focus of a research project that is related to this chapter), namely the phenomenon of long-distance walking. Following this, Jennifer Hill, Georgina Gough and Wendy Woodland report the findings of a large-sample survey of visitors to Crocodylus Rainforest Village in Daintree, Australia in Chapter Four, which provides insights into interpretation provision as a tool for educating the travelling public about biodiversity (including pertinent threats and conservation issues).This, in turn, is shown to engender, or at the very least consolidate, positive attitudes and behavioural intentions towards ecosystem conservation in particular and the environment in general, as well as enhancing visitor satisfaction.
Chapters Five and Six serve as commentaries on issues pertaining to leisure and tourism policy.
First, Ian Elliott outlines the theoretical case for diverting public funding from the construction and maintenance of additional publicly-owned leisure facilities to the provision of 'opt-out' vouchers, thus enabling use of existing facilities.
He reviews the use of vouchers in other public services (i.e. education, health and housing), which gives some indication of how they might improve access to, and utilisation of, public leisure services in the United Kingdom.Second, Richard Shipway looks at sport tourism development in Southwest England, focusing on the emergence of 'lifestyle sports', or sport libre (footloose sports) as they have been referred to elsewhere, such as surfing. His chapter includes a case study of the London 2012 Olympic Games, which highlights the benefits to tourism in the region that are likely to accrue from the decision to locate the sailing and windsurfing events at the Weymouth and Portland National Sailing Academy.
It also profiles 'It's Adventure', one of ten brand clusters chosen by Southwest Tourism to reflect the region's tourism offer.
This includes a diverse range of lifestyle sports and adventure activities available in the counties that com-prise the Southwest region, and is consistent with the shift in emphasis from marketing destinations to marketing experiences (which, itself, is symbolic of the so-called 'experience economy').If the two remaining chapters have something in common, it is in respect of drawing attention to the importance of cooperation and networking between the various stakeholders in tourist destination regions, in order to present a coherent destination image and overcome the operational challenges facing tourism businesses in peripheral areas, respectively. In Chapter Seven, Luigi Cantone, Marcello Risitano and Pierpaolo Testa use a case study of Campi Flegri to the west of Naples, Italy as a vehicle to examine the role of place-specific resources in helping a destination secure a (more) sustainable competitive advantage over its rivals.They identify a series of experiential clusters that make up the destination product, as a preliminary to configuring a model of destination branding that makes explicit the elements of brand identity projected by senders of messages about the destination, such as Destination Marketing Organisations and the like, and brand knowledge acquired by would-be visitors as receivers of those messages.
Finally, in Chapter Eight Lynne Siemens explores the challenges facing small tourism enterprises in remote rural communities, with reference to a purposive sample of five representative businesses located on Vancouver Island in British Columbia, Canada.She highlights the importance of social, as well as economic, capital to these entrepreneurs, the significance of homeworking in reducing overheads and the challenges posed by the lack of transport (and other) basic infrastructure(s), before concluding with some prescriptions for national/local government, public sector support services and the individual businesses themselves that might form the basis for best practice guidance aimed at reducing business failures and achieving economic growth. It provides a fitting conclusion to a geographically-diverse series of chapters that, it is hoped, convey the potential for new knowledge creation in leisure and tourism resource management.
