Hosts and guests revisited: tourism issues of the 21st century: Valene L. Smith and Maryann Brent (Eds.); Cognizant Communication Corporation, New York, 2001, 462pp., hardback, US$64.00 paperback, 1-882345-29-0 US$55.00, ISBN 1-882345-28-2
✍ Scribed by Bill Bramwell
- Book ID
- 104314630
- Publisher
- Elsevier Science
- Year
- 2004
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 71 KB
- Volume
- 25
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 0261-5177
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
✦ Synopsis
Ryan's Memories of the beach, Chapter 8, raises many valid questions: is the beach a feature in the industrialization of leisure or not? What are users' motivations? Why is there an ''air of freedom'' on the beach that is absent in many other forms of tourism? He successfully demonstrates that beaches provide a range of experiences, based on geography, expectation, desire and tolerance to name but a few of the factors. As elsewhere in the book, Ryan is careful to relate his points to previous chapters. Keith Hollinshead's chapter Playing with the past: heritage tourism under the tyrannies of postmodern discourse is as thought-provoking as expected. Heritage interpretation, axiomatically, involves an ideological underpinning; Hollinshead addresses this by working with ''given versions of the past' ' (p. 172). Referring to just one other aspect of this chapter, the suggestion that heritage is used for sedative purposes strikes a chord with Dicks' (2000) research on Rhondda Heritage Park visitors.
The final chapter provides an excellent conclusion to the second edition, reviewing, as it does, the relevance of time in holidays-still an under-researched aspect. There are few niggling typographical errors in this collection. Two that do irritate are the reference to Buzzard (sic) on p. 95, repeated in the bibliography, and the suggestion that Ilfracombe is a north Cornish resort (p. 13). The only other criticism concerns the index which seems somewhat slim. However, the book has been well-edited and the significance of every chapter clearly indicated. There is a high degree of consistency in the arguments.
The richness of ideas has certainly been developed. Recommended.