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As part of its inquiry on the future growth potential of air traffic in South Africa, the National Institute for Transport and Road Research of the C.S.I.R., asked me at the beginning of 1985 to conduct an inquiry on the local tourist market. The main points to investigate were:

‐ One of the consequences of the present long period of economic depression, which has been felt with particular severity by most Third World countries, has been a necessary critical reassessement of many development strategies. Especially in Africa, the balance sheet between efforts and results has not been very encouraging. The massive industrialization programmes and the large projects of the last three decades have neither helped to achieve a more competitive production nor have introduced widespread prosperity, as hoped. Gradually the accent is now shifting toward new “soft options”, one of which is tourism. We remember that only 15–20 years ago many African governments or international development agencies were still considering tourism as a marginal economic activity, to be left to poor nations without much prospects for industrialization. Since then much has changed and ‐ especially in the present post‐industrial economies ‐ tourism and the whole gamut of other leisure industries have become one of the most dynamic fields of expansion, even in the developing world.

Approche générale du problème Peu nombreux sont les parcs qui se prêtent à une visite de plus d'une journée. Une réflexion qui s'attache aux établissements majeurs pourra donc se cantonner aux réalisations conçues en vue d'accueillir le public pendant une journée, c'est‐à‐dire 5 à 7 heures d'activités entrecoupées de pauses et d'un repas pris sur place.

This chapter discusses the main research interests and outputs in the various branches of geography that have influenced the study of tourism from a geographical perspective. It argues that the idiographic tradition has been transversal throughout, leading to the growing interest for tourism within the geography academic community in the last 10 years. There is a focus on the birth of specific research groups, mainly related to a constellation of new university curricula on tourism and—with few exceptions of territorial tradition—to an intermittent availability of public research funds. The chapter concludes with a more general picture of the place of tourism within the geography discipline in Italy and of evolving trends in terms of research results, dissemination, and evaluation.

Travel and tourism have had a long history in the Nordic countries, but research on tourism has a relatively short tradition in the region. Recently, academic interest in the Nordic tourism space has grown and diversified especially as a result of increasing numbers of academics and institutions involved with tourism geographies and studies and education in the region. The Nordic context has provided thematic focus areas for empirical studies that characterize tourism geographies in the region, with topics including nature-based tourism, utilization of wilderness areas, second-home and rural developments, impacts in peripheries, and tourism as a tool for regional development. In addition, there are emerging research themes outside of the traditional core topics, such as urban, events, and heritage tourism.

This chapter aims to familiarize the reader with some of the important aspects of tourism geography in the German-speaking countries. It starts with a primarily historical-genetic perspective on tourism development and the theoretical traditions associated with them. The second section describes the structure of the discipline, with a focus on the institutionalization of the field in the universities including their research specialization. The chapter maintains that tourism geography plays a marginal role compared with other subdisciplines of geography, though this is reflected primarily in its institutionalization and less so in the research undertaken. The last section deals with the current challenges and future prospects in German-speaking geographies of tourism from a problem-centered perspective.

This chapter reflects upon the trajectory of research in the geography of tourism in Spain. It begins with a review, including the evolution of the main topics present in the subdiscipline, with a special focus on developments since the 1990s. This is followed by an analysis of the current role and potential impact of academic tourism geography and a discussion on the recent growth in the publication of research results in international journals. Of importance are the institutional factors that explain the increasing recognition of research on the geography of tourism in Spain. Finally, the chapter discusses the hegemony of positivist approaches pivoting on land use, local and regional development, impact analysis, and landscape transformation, as well as the emerging links between Spanish tourism geography and the international mainstream schools of thought.

Depending on the research approach one uses, the development of particular bodies of knowledge over time is the result of a combination of agency, chance, opportunity, patronage, power, or structure. This particular account of the development of geographies of tourism stresses its place as understood within the context of different approaches, different research behaviors and foci, and its location within the wider research community and society. The chapter charts the development of different epistemological, methodological, and theoretical traditions over time, their rise and fall, and, in some cases, rediscovery. The chapter concludes that the marketization of academic production will have an increasingly important influence on the nature and direction of tourism geographies.

This chapter demonstrates that despite an unfavorable disciplinary climate for new academic subjects in France, tourism found its place in the French geographical scene almost 40 years ago. The first part traces the history of tourism in French geography until the epistemological turn due to the research laboratory MIT in the mid-1990s. It also focuses on the absence of knowledge of the Anglo-American literature and of multidisciplinarity in French research on tourism. The second part focuses on the valorization of tourism geography research in France, emphasizing the development of multidisciplinarity since the early 2000s, including the creation of a multi-disciplinary tourism laboratory and two journals. The chapter concludes reflecting on the possibility of a science of tourism.