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Antonio Aledo <antonio.aledo@ua.es> is an associate professor of sociology at the University of Alicante (Spain). With Ph.D. in sociology and a master degree in anthropology, he studies relationships among tourism, urbanism, and the environment. He has conducted fieldwork in Brazil and Central America on the development of residential tourism generated by international demand.

Survey respondents are compared on strategic tourism planning issues in Banff, Alberta, and Niagara Falls (Ontario and New York). Findings reveal areas of consensus and disagreement in perceptions of issues and preferences for strategies. Three specific issues are considered: the destination life cycle concept, capacity, and destination image. Conclusions are drawn on how public and private‐sector cooperation on destination planning can be fostered when significant differences in perception and preference occur.

As intricate mental constructions, destination images reflect cultural, intellectual and existential backgrounds of individuals, communities and social groups, as well as marketing strategies. In the case of Banff National Park, for example, marketing strategies have promoted a potential need for wilderness and natural environment related experiences that is expressed in western post‐industrialized societies. However, touristic development often creates places structured to fit suitable images suggested by the market and leads to the co‐existence of multiple images for a single destination. The resulting tourist landscapes very often are divorced from the original setting, atmosphere, and characteristics of the real place.

Marrakech is today the most important tourist destination in Morocco. Marrakech, however, is not only a key reference point for mass international tourism, but also the preferred choice for those hunting for an “authentic” experience in this North African country. The “Red City” is indeed often presented in literature and advertising alike as a place out of modern time where the real “soul” of Morocco can be found and unveiled (Minca, 2006). This chapter investigates how this “soul” was established—and is now, in Marrakech, constantly reenacted—through layers of colonial and postcolonial interactions between Europe and Morocco.

This chapter discusses the main research interests and outputs in the various branches of geography that have influenced the study of tourism from a geographical perspective. It argues that the idiographic tradition has been transversal throughout, leading to the growing interest for tourism within the geography academic community in the last 10 years. There is a focus on the birth of specific research groups, mainly related to a constellation of new university curricula on tourism and—with few exceptions of territorial tradition—to an intermittent availability of public research funds. The chapter concludes with a more general picture of the place of tourism within the geography discipline in Italy and of evolving trends in terms of research results, dissemination, and evaluation.

Tourism studies have conceptualized social media as artifacts and networks of tangible objects based on neat distinctions and categorizations. These neat ontological distinctions and categorizations have been discussed within the academic field of actor-network theory. Several scholars have most significantly investigated the spatialities of messier ways of conceptualizing and approaching societal objects and the trajectories of societal phenomena. Efforts are being made to widen the ontological register that has traditionally dominated social science research, including tourism studies. The purpose of this chapter is to address and problematize the social media pertaining to tourism, focusing on a research project as analytical and methodological lens.

The reflections in this chapter explore the genesis of tourism geography in the Netherlands and Belgium marked by political and linguistic constraints, plus historical, political, and cultural factors, as well as the footprints of some pioneers. The dual language use of French and Dutch/Flemish has often been offered as an excuse for the low profile of the region’s universities in international knowledge networks. However, thanks to the involvement in thematic networks and a growing pressure for researchers to publish internationally in peer-reviewed journals, the research landscape in tourism has definitely changed. Geographical and spatial approaches to tourism have led to a colorful research landscape today.

The study aims to provide an insight into the inherent diversities and ambiguities of Soviet touristic landscapes during the period of late socialism by a means of Estonian biographical sources. Based on written narratives, the study focuses on the embodied ways in which Estonian travellers engaged with and experienced foreign landscapes and people during trips within the Soviet Union.

The study treats tourists’ travel landscapes as meaningful, lived experiences that highlight features and everyday life strategies that were characteristic of the Soviet period. Approaching via the lens of Estonian culture and nationality, the study analyses the meaningful experiences through which the narrators drew boundaries between the self and the other.

The Soviet tourism landscape of the 1960s–1980s was marked by sharp cultural contrasts. The landscapes that unfold in the narratives were full of contradictions, arousing feelings of both admiration and alienation. Whilst the ideological purpose of Soviet tourism was to build a “socialist nation”, the themed narratives, on the other hand, demonstrate the wide spectrum of everyday life practices, which show both the distancing of oneself from the Soviet system as well as conformation with it. Although tourism helped travellers accept the Union, this was achieved not by consenting to socialist ideology, but by becoming familiar with its heterogeneity.

Research on Soviet tourism has largely relied on archival sources and the press, which shed light mainly on the organisation and ideological basis of tourism. Drawing on oral sources, this study contributes to a more comprehensive understanding of the complex nature of Soviet tourist landscapes.

The Banff National Park is the most famous of Canada. The development of the recent years has been considered as to fast and to massive. The author analyses the key factors of success of the park development. He describes the new strategic park policy which takes into account the carrying capacity and the protection of the great nature and landscape.