Chapter 1: Introduction

Since the era of mass tourism that began in the mid-1960s, the major strategy that appears to have been applied on a large scale by the tourism industry, almost everywhere across the world, can be summarised as ‘pile 'em high, sell 'em cheap’ (Mason, 2015; Mowforth & Munt, 1998). In this approach, it is clearly quantity not quality that matters. Initially it brought great benefits in terms of low-cost travel, meaning much greater access to cheap holidays for millions of people. However, this form of mass tourism has been challenged since at least the beginning of the millennium, in relation to the damaging effects it can have on local environments and socio-economic conditions in destinations. This has led to not only changes in conceptualisations of tourism, but importantly, in relation to this book, at applied levels in terms of strategic approaches in tourism planning and marketing of destinations (Morgan, Pritchard, & Pride, 2010).