This book draws on invited contributions to the first conference in the new millennium on Tourism and Hospitality in the 21st Century held at the University of Surrey in Guildford, UK in January 2000.
The book consists of three main parts, corresponding to the conference program. Part one deals with the global view, part two focuses on specific regions in the world and part three focuses more on problems and opportunities in the future.
I read the book with great enthusiasm, as the topic has been increasingly discussed and debated, hoping for some kind of definitive volume on the subject. While I was fascinated by some of the discussions, others seemed to me to be more superficial or less relevant to the topic. This seems to me to be a necessary evil in using conference papers for a book. Some papers are better than others, a topic area that was covered by both Weiler and Olsen in their articles. All in all, however, the book is a good read, with something for everyone.
The basic layout of the book, while logically following the conference layout, could have been better organized by focusing more on specific topics and problems. Alternatively, the problem could have been solved by an indexed summary of the major issues. As it stands now, in order to gather information on a specific problem, for instance, infrastructure, one must use the barely adequate index. While infrastructure is not listed, capacity constraints is listed. However, it is very difficult to get a feel for the problem just looking at several listings in the index. This issue should at least have been summarized in the concluding chapter on problems, challenges and solutions.
Some of the main things that I took away from this book dealt with measurement and definition issues, trends, problems and future directions. By not suggesting solutions (even the final chapter, entitled problems, challenges and solutions, did not have any solutions to offer, preferring to concentrate on problems and challenges), the book makes an excellent resource for discussion, whether in the classroom or among researchers and practioners.
Perhaps one of the biggest problems facing the industry today is the problem of measurement and definitions. Throughout the book, tourism is generally accepted to mean travelers from out of country. While this is convenient as a definition, and easy to measure, it is also not very accurate. Very little was discussed of the existence and impact of internal tourism on the overall hospitality and travel industry. It would seem, however, that most of the current hospitality and travel infrastructure was first established for internal use, and only later was expanded for outside tourism. Certain areas, where tourism is the mainstay of the local economy, would be the exceptions. I will return to the infrastructure problem later. At any rate, it is not just the counting of tourists that is flawed, but also the definition of tourism. Is tourism defined as number of tourists, nights stayed, or total tourism receipts? Which definition should we be trying to maximize? The lack of a clear definition is hampering not only our understanding of the field, but is also hampering our efforts to develop a suitable research base. While several of the articles voiced concerns over this issue, little was suggested as a means of overcoming this problem.
There were several interesting trends mentioned in this book that will have an impact on the future of tourism, for instance, cruises, sustainability, tourists’ need for control, reluctance to invest in infrastructure, more and shorter trips, one stop leisure centers, environmentally friendly and others. These trends seem to be in conflict with one another. For instance, sustainability (Leu), the idea that tourism can only create long term benefits by ensuring that the environment is tolerable by both the tourist and the local community, seems to tie in nicely with the need to be environmentally friendly (Wahab), and may even be partly responsible for the reluctance to invest more in infrastructure (Seekings), which might harm the fragile balance between tourism and local needs. However, they seem to be at odds with other trends such as the need for control, the desire of tourists to go everywhere, more trips (needing a better, more expanded infrastructure) and mammoth one stop leisure centers (Middleton). It would be interesting to examine the conflicting impacts that these trends would have on tourists.
While the Internet allows for a mixing of work and pleasure, it is also changing the role of travel agents. Travelers are better informed today, leading to lower costs, and more opportunities. Travel agents may need to act more as counselors rather than sellers, as one of the articles put it (Affolter). Consumers will be looking more for orientation and guidance, and identifying common values. This will lead to more focus on branding and loyalty, rather than less. It is true that tourists will become more picky, and less willing to put up with below standard conditions. Places that offer consistently high value will become the destinations of choice among a more discerning population. The challenge then becomes deciding how to offer even more value to the tourist. As a result, customer loyalty, while becoming more difficult to achieve, becomes even more critical. Word of mouth will also become more critical to tourism, a fact that was mentioned by a number of articles. Witt and Song contend that it might actually be more important than commercial advertising. This has major implications for tourism, since we do not yet have a complete understanding of how this phenomenon affects consumers’ tendencies to choose their tourist destinations. Cleverdon mentioned the key role played by friends in making the travel decision, and focused attention on the aspect of integrated travel, that is, a local citizen accompanying an outside tourist to local destinations. Since the distinction between work and leisure is becoming blurred, another interesting area to investigate might be home vacations. Consumers get to stay in the familiar confines of their own house, while service providers offer them the luxurious pampering of a vacation. Given the rising influence of timesharing, this may not be so far fetched.
One of the more critical areas mentioned in the book is that of capacity constraints. Given the reluctance of governments to invest in transport infrastructure (Seekings), we may be reaching a leveling out of tourism far in advance of that predicted. Despite Affolter’s contention that we are facing substantial excess capacities in air and other transportation areas, there seems to be growing evidence to the contrary. Several of the papers emphasize this point in the book (Todd, Muller, Chamberlain, Cleverdon, and Seekings). Outside corroboration was provided by Jim Goodwin (CEO of United Airlines) in a recent article, where he claimed that over the next ten years the number of airline passengers would increase by 60 percent, overloading an already stretched to capacity system. Air traffic delays and cancellations have been growing exponentially, due in part to the construction of only three new runways at the country’s 28 biggest airports (Hemispheres, 2001). Air capacity constraints will become even more critical as people take more, and shorter trips. Tourists in the future will increasingly look at the overall picture, rather than just the end destination when determining satisfaction. If the effort required to get there is too great, then even if the destination was fine, tourists will be disappointed. Tourists are looking for relaxation and a reduction of stress while on vacation, travel delays and cancellations will only increase the aggravation and stress levels. What can we do about it? More research is necessary in this area, as well as some creative travel design, in order to ensure that the process of getting there is enjoyable as well.
Some of the future directions mentioned looked extremely promising, including the cruise industry (Coulson, Poon), and one stop leisure destinations (Middleton). The common ground is self contained leisure activities, thus guaranteeing a reduction of stress. Guided tours (Weiler and Ham) could also be included in this growing category of stress reducing vacations, but they will need to become more flexible and responsive in order to expand. Butler and Jones mentioned a focus on the “dark side” of travel, an inappropriately named euphemism for handling disabled or challenged travelers. This is a large and growing segment that has certain unfulfilled needs that offer an enormous opportunity for growth, as it is extremely under‐serviced at present.
In addition to the overall trends, problems and opportunities in the world, it is very helpful to look at each specific region more carefully. I found it extremely interesting to compare between the seven regions according to their critical areas, obstacles and future growth potential. This second part of the book not only provides the necessary data sources for information, but also the opportunity to compare and contrast between the various regions. What can the Asia Pacific region learn about cruise ship tourism from the Carribean region? Will the European unity model somehow evolve to resemble the North American tourist picture? Can Africa learn about eco‐tourism and rural tourism from South America? What can the Middle East learn about economic cooperation and a reduction in political instability from Southeast Asia? These questions and others, while not specifically addressed in the book, are implicit in the regional analysis. The opportunity to compare and learn is a major benefit of this book.
Another major contribution of this book is the focus on research and research methods (Weiler, Olsen, Witt and Song). While I previously discussed some of the definitional and methodological problems, the growing gap between tourism research on the one hand, and services and marketing research on the other hand is a cause for major concern. Some of the issues that tourism and hospitality research have been grappling with recently have already been researched to a large degree by colleagues in the services and marketing areas. Another major gap is between the academic researchers and the industry practioners. Increasingly, researchers in academia have to focus on relevance, in addition to rigor. Practioner research must increasingly be rigorous, as well as relevant. Weiler stresses that the two groups must find ways to work together, otherwise we will not be able to develop a well defined research agenda. Weiller stresses the need of research producers and research consumers not only to learn to dance with each other, but also to invite the other side to dance. To a lesser extent, as pointed out by Witt and Song, new research methods need to be explored in order to better develop our forecasting capabilities. While neural nets have already started to make inroads into our forecasting abilities, perhaps more can be done using hierarchical regression, or structural equations modeling, just to name a few approaches.
The idea of loyal travelers, or the importance of focusing on high value customers (Bergsma) also seems to be a critical idea. Let us focus on the customer, and understand what makes them tick. Then we can market better customized programs for our high value customers, leading to higher customer loyalty and more profits. Overall, I would have liked to see more emphasis on the demand side of tourism than was apparent in the book. Most of the book seemed to focus more on the supply side of tourism and hospitality.
In conclusion, I feet that this is an interesting, well written book for academics and practioners, as it focuses on thought provoking questions. It seems to be less suited for classroom use, due to the lack of an integrative framework, a more comprehensive index, or suggested solutions. Furthermore, while it is well suited to develop discussions about the various issues involved, its high cost would make it prohibitive to use as a secondary text. I would definitely recommend using it for suggested optional readings in the classroom. This book would benefit anyone reading it with even a passing interest in the topic. It is easily readable, and a very understandable introduction to the topics that will be consuming us in the years ahead.
