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This paper focuses upon three basic economic components that through their inherent (economic) behaviour bring about different types of physical marketing distribution arrangements. The producer, the product and the purchaser (consumer) constitute the components, and the marketing arrangements, in the form of different kinds of logistics (transport network and other facilities), are the mechanism that transfers the product from surplus (producing) areas to deficit (demand) areas.

In the past two decades mass tourism has replaced the “old‐fashioned”, more individual ways of travelling especially for vacations. In the course of this development a new travel industry system has established itself. This industry is responsible for the management and coordination of the various inputs that assist the transfers of people on volume levels that would have astounded the world less than a generation ago. This multifunctional, often supranational geographically far flung system serves tourist travelling on two distinct geographic scale levels, each one requiring different input mixes of professional and technical knowhow. (Without this system which meet and manages the needs of the modern traveller, tourist movements either interregionally or internationally, on land and sea, for a few days or weeks would slow down and almost grind to a halt.)

The purpose of this paper is twofold. First, it wants to elaborate on the relationship between tourist generating areas and destinations per se, the principal objective being to make us better grasp the consequences for a tourist destination inherent in its relative positioning within the geographic confines of the travel hierarchy at large. Second, having identified the various types of destinations (through this spatial hierarchal schema), we will look at a case study — the tourist frontier of New Quebec — a wilderness destination environment with the purpose of arriving at a more accurate account of how such a destination has developed, how its present tourist services function, and how they link up with the region. More particularly, we want to look into the very much debated relationship commercial tourist operations — regional resource utilization — economic linkages between a few isolated, small settlements in an otherwise practically uninhabited and fairly inhospitable tourist region.

This paper wants to illustrate a development sequence of a number of interrelated elements into a strongly tied total transport mechanism for individual travelling. The example is drawn from the geographically far‐flung mechanism which serves international tourist travel and especially the relationships, more or less rigid at different periods of the evolution, of the travel system, between travel‐generating and destination areas. The interrelationships which are depicted are in the author's mind quite similar to the economic and structural regional inter‐dependence between developed (metropolitan) and developing parts of the world. Therefore, the various complaints that have been voiced about widening gaps between the haves and have nots, on an international scale, and that are based on comparisons between national incomes etc. seem also to be applicable to the characteristics of the travel structures and systems within which the international tourist flows take place. The notions of center/periphery relationships could, however, also be seen on other geographic scale levels.

The growth of tourism in our society is not a recent phenomenon that came about with the inception of the travel agent. The fact is, that tourism can be traced as far back as to at least Ancient Greece, when, in 776 B.C. visitors from Europe and the Middle East gathered at Mt. Olympus to take part in the very first Olympic Games (Young). Since that time tourism has developed into what today is an industry of major social and economie significance, and its effects range from local to international scales.

Whereas avoidance of hostile northern winters via escaping to balmy tropical shores is a time‐honored pattern of tourist movement in Europe and North America, in the past twenty years or so, this flow has changed significantly. International tourists, largely from industrialized midlatitude countries, are vacationing equatorward in ever‐increasing numbers and dispersing themselves well beyond traditional destination areas into newly emerging tourist centers. The effects of this growing and spreading influx include a blend of economic, social and environmental impacts.

La société nord‐américaine s'est développée suivant la philosophie de “l'American way of Iife” c'est‐à‐dire production — consommation. Nous retrouvons cette philosophie dans le tourisme, perçu comme une industrie, avec bilan financier à l'appui. Le tourisme est une activité économique et est essentiellement perçu comme tel par la majorité des institutions. Le touriste Nord‐Américain en particulier et le touriste occidental en général arrivent à avoir uniquement un comportement de consommateur.

During a relatively brief period of time, the tourist industry has grown to become an important component in the economies of many areas. Recent criticisms of the industry have created concern and confusion among officials. The purposes of this discussion are: 1) to review briefly the historical roots of current problems, and 2) to identify alternative courses of action open to affected areas.

The aim of this paper is to investigate the development of the quality movement in Sweden since the mid-20th century. The authors are convinced that a summary of the Swedish quality journey so far will offer important lessons for further quality improvements in Sweden and elsewhere.

The authors study how the quality movement has been included in the industrial agenda and how it has been adopted in student curricula and in research. The authors have a focus on how business leaders have learnt, adopted, adapted and innovated with respect to quality development. often in collaboration with academia.

Although the quality movement has fit well with the Swedish culture and that successful corporate leaders have successfully used the specific cultural characteristics there is still a lot to be learnt with respect to the public sector, where the ideas from the quality movement have problem to overcome institutional barriers.

The study is limited to the Swedish context.

There is a serious need to revitalize the public sector by getting leaders and politicians to understand the need for systematic quality improvement.

If future Swedish achievements with respect to healthcare and other social welfare elements are to once again become world-class, the public sector needs to be open-minded and collaborate with the industrial sector and academia to find cost-effective strategies for making quality improvements. However, the private sector must also be alert not to be overtaken by some highly active Asian countries.

Swedish large companies have been very successful in applying quality leadership – however, in the public sector, this has not been the case. Suggestions for improvement are made.

The purpose of this study is to explore how critical aspects can be defined in a learning study on welding without conducting any pre-tests.

In this study, the authors focus on empirical examples from a learning study on welding conducted in six iterative cycles, with conversation analysis and variation theory approach (CAVTA) as a theoretical basis. The welding lessons have been video-recorded, and in the study, the authors analyze examples where the teachers try to identify critical aspects of a vocational practical object of learning in interaction. CAVTA permeates the complete process, where the analysis has been part of the iterative cycles and further developed when the six cycles were completed.

The results show how critical aspects can be made visible in the interaction between teacher(s) and student(s) in the enacted learning situation. In the process, the authors work with the three concepts expected critical aspects, displayed critical aspects and targeted critical features in relation to a vocational practical object of learning where conducting a pre-test to define critical aspects is not educationally possible.

Teaching vocational practical objects of learning could be seen as something different from teaching other kinds of objects of learning and the use of the traditional pre-tests in learning studies may be problematic. From that follows, that other ways of finding the critical aspects for the students regarding a vocational practical object of learning might be needed. In this study, such a way is presented.