Tourism is now an industry of vital importance to many economies, including the UK and, especially closer to home for this reviewer, here in Scotland. There is big money involved, with high stakes for investment in a lucrative but potentially volatile market. So we must get it right, and not only right, but right first time and every time. This has not always been the case in the UK, but we have learned fast. And part of that learning process is the development of expertise: in‐house training is now increasingly supplemented by courses at various levels available from colleges and universities. For these purposes we need a corpus of case studies, experience, research and analysis, preferably on a global basis since that is where the competition (and the customers) comes from.
On these grounds alone this new title is to be welcomed: in this particular field we are still at the stage of saying the more titles the better. “The goal of this journal is to highlight advances in hospitality, leisure and tourism administrative practice. The journal will be unique in that it crosses two ‘bridges’ simultaneously: multinational, international, and cross‐cultural issues in hospitality applied research and practice; and cross‐disciplinary applied research and practice covering the broad‐ranging but always inter‐related fields of hospitality, lodging, food service, travel, tourism and related topical areas ‐ each part of an over‐arching and global ‘boom’ service industry of the decade”. The contents of the first issue and the list of forthcoming topics indicate that the journal will be well settled within that area, with a gratifying emphasis on practical or practice‐based strategic issues.
I sometimes find it difficult to work out the Haworth subscription policy: this starts at $36.00 per annum for individuals in the USA and Canada, but a subscription for my own library would apparently be $119.00 per year; and come to that, how do we define the difference between an institution and a library? But this is certainly worth consideration for any tourism or hospitality management collection, whether in an academic library or in a general collection likely to be used by practitioners or learners in such an increasingly important service industry.
