The definition of tourism in Great Britain: Does terminological confusion have to rule?

In Lewis Carroll's “Through the Looking Glass”, Humpty Dumpty tells Alice: “When I use a word it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.” Doubtless few academics, practitioners, and administrators connected with tourism would support Humpty Dumpty's approach to the question of definition. In particular, the need for a precise and generally accepted definition of tourism is an axiom that few would dare to challenge. Accurate measurement, so the argument runs, is impossible without a clear idea of what it is that is being measured. If that idea is not a universally held one, then the summation or comparison of data collected from different sources is likely to be misleading. However, despite widespread agreement in principle on the desirability of clarity and universality, in practice a Humpty Dumpty approach to defining tourism exists. Aside from the very basic standpoint that tourism refers to transitory movements of people away from their homes, there is precious little agreement about the nature, scope, and salient characteristics of this movement. The aim of this paper is to clarify the main approaches to definition encountered in the literature on tourism in Great Britain, to set out the approach favoured by the author, and to stress the need for terminological exactitude.