Introduction

The first part of the book is dedicated to the complex issue of development and the role tourism can play in its achievement. In the first chapter, Fayos-Solà, Fuentes, and Muñoz Mazón set the stage by examining various development theories and approaches from the last 50 years. It becomes evident that the intensely pro-development policies following the end of World War II and the emergence of the United Nations group of organizations were replaced, beginning in the 1970s, with a surge of institutional theory and practice advocating the market as the almost sole purveyor of prosperity, or, supposedly, development. In this context, it was argued, all tourism needs is a free-market environment to create employment, income, modernization, and economic growth, and these all were equated with development.