Tourism geography is the study of

travel Travel is the movement of people between distant geographical locations. Travel can be done by foot, bicycle, automobile, train, boat, bus, airplane, ship or other means, with or without luggage, and can be one way or round trip. Travel c ...

and

tourism Tourism is travel for pleasure or business; also the theory and practice of touring (disambiguation), touring, the business of attracting, accommodating, and entertaining tourists, and the business of operating tour (disambiguation), tours. Th ...

, as an industry and as a

social Social organisms, including human(s), live collectively in interacting populations. This interaction is considered social whether they are aware of it or not, and whether the exchange is voluntary or not. Etymology The word "social" derives from ...

and

cultural Culture () is an umbrella term which encompasses the social behavior, institutions, and norms found in human societies, as well as the knowledge, beliefs, arts, laws, customs, capabilities, and habits of the individuals in these groups.T ...

activity. Tourism geography covers a wide range of interests including the environmental impact of tourism, the geographies of tourism and leisure economies, answering tourism industry and management concerns and the sociology of tourism and locations of tourism. Tourism geography is that branch of

human geography Human geography or anthropogeography is the branch of geography that studies spatial relationships between human communities, cultures, economies, and their interactions with the environment. It analyzes spatial interdependencies between social ...

that deals with the study of travel and its impact on places.

Geography Geography (from Greek: , ''geographia''. Combination of Greek words ‘Geo’ (The Earth) and ‘Graphien’ (to describe), literally "earth description") is a field of science devoted to the study of the lands, features, inhabitants, an ...

is fundamental to the study of tourism, because tourism is geographical in nature. Tourism occurs in places, it involves movement and activities between places and it is an activity in which both place characteristics and personal self-identities are formed, through the relationships that are created among places, landscapes and people. Physical geography provides the essential background, against which tourism places are created and environmental impacts and concerns are major issues, that must be considered in managing the development of tourism places. The approaches to study will differ according to the varying concerns. Much tourism management literature remains

quantitative Quantitative may refer to: * Quantitative research, scientific investigation of quantitative properties * Quantitative analysis (disambiguation) * Quantitative verse, a metrical system in poetry * Statistics, also known as quantitative analysis ...

in methodology and considers tourism as consisting of the places of tourist origin (or tourist generating areas), tourist destinations (or places of tourism supply) and the relationship (connections) between origin and destination places, which includes transportation routes, business relationships and traveler motivations. Recent developments in

have resulted in approaches such as those from

cultural geography Cultural geography is a subfield within human geography. Though the first traces of the study of different nations and cultures on Earth can be dated back to ancient geographers such as Ptolemy or Strabo, cultural geography as academic study first ...

, which take more theoretically diverse approaches to tourism, including a sociology of tourism, which extends beyond tourism as an isolated, exceptional activity and considering how travel fits into the everyday lives and how tourism is not only a consumptive of places, but also produces the

sense of place The term sense of place has been used in many different ways. It is a multidimensional, complex construct used to characterize the relationship between people and spatial settings. It is a characteristic that some geographic places have and some ...

at a destination.Larsen, J, Urry, J and Axhausen, K (2006) ''Mobilities, Networks, Geographies'' Aldershot:Ashgate ''The Tourist'' by Dean MacCannell and ''The Tourist Gaze'' by John Urry are classics in this field.

References

External links

Pioneering China-based Geotourism
(

China Daily ''China Daily'' () is an English-language daily newspaper owned by the Central Propaganda Department of the Chinese Communist Party. Overview ''China Daily'' has the widest print circulation of any English-language newspaper in China. ...

March 31, 2006)
''Tourism Geographies: An International Journal of Tourism Space, Place and Environment''
(Routledge) {{Authority control Human geography Types of tourism

See also

References

External links