Rural Tourism Handbook

This Handbook brings together experts from around the world to reflect critically on the relationship between tourism and rural community development. It first orients the reader in the important conceptual and epistemological foundations of the topic, before moving to consider key concepts and the most significant and salient theoretical and methodological developments in the field.

This Handbook offers an up-to-date and comprehensive overview of core themes and concepts in community-based tourism management. Providing interdisciplinary insights from leading international scholars, this is the first book to critically examine the current status of community-based tourism. Organised into five parts, the Handbook provides cutting-edge perspectives on issues such as Indigenous communities, tourism and the environment, sustainability, and the impact of digital communities. Part 1 introduces core concepts and methodologies, and distinguishes community products from other tourism and hospitality goods. Part 2 explores communities’ attitudes towards tourism development and their engagement with and ownership of the process. It also delves into the role of community- based tourism, under the influence of governmental policies, in the economic and social development of a region. In Part 3 various management, marketing, and branding initiatives are identified as a means of expanding the tourism business. Part 4 examines the negative impacts of mass tourism and its threats to culture, tradition, identity, the built environment, and natural heritage. In the final and fifth part, future challenges and opportunities for community-based tourism initiatives are considered, and research-based sustainable solutions are proposed. Overall, the book considers engaging local populations in tourism development as a way of building stronger and more resilient communities. This Handbook fills a void in the current research and thus will appeal to scholars, students, and practitioners interested in tourism management, tourism geography, business studies, development policy and practice, regional development, conservation, and sustainability.

"The strongest overview I have encountered of the scope and the current state of research across all the fields involved in advancing our understanding of tourism. For its range of topics, depth of analyses, and distinction of its contributors, nothing is comparable." - Professor Dean MacCannell, University of California, Davis "The breadth of vision and sweep of accounts is remarkable, and range of topics laudable... a rare combination of the authoritative, the challenging and stimulating." - Professor Mike Crang, Durham University Tourism studies developed as a sub-branch of older disciplines in the social sciences, such as anthropology, sociology and economics, and newer applied fields of study in hospitality management, civil rights and transport studies. This Handbook is a sign of the maturity of the field. It provides an essential resource for teachers and students to determine the roots, key issues and agenda of tourism studies, exploring: The evolution and position of tourism studies The relationship of tourism to culture The ecology and economics of tourism Special events and destination management Methodologies of study Tourism and transport Tourism and heritage Tourism and postcolonialism Global tourist business operations Ranging from local to global issues, and from questions of management to the ethical dilemmas of tourism, this is a comprehensive, critically informed, constructively organized overview of the field. It draws together an inter-disciplinary group of contributors who are among the most celebrated names in the field and will be quickly recognized as a landmark in the new and expanding field of tourism studies.

What is ecotourism? - Working in and with the local environment - Starting and managing a tourist business.

This is a structured, edited book of nineteen Chapters which provides, from an inter-disciplinary perspective, latest thinking on, and practical case study exemplification of rural tourism and sustainable business development from Europe, North America, Australasia, the Middle East and Japan.

Ecotourism is an effective way for businesses in a tourism destination to have a positive impact on their host community. Whether the business in question is an experience provider, a lodging facility, a product-based company, or anything in between, this handbook provides the proper guidelines for sustainable and responsible business practices that promote the preservation of natural resources and wildlife and contribute to the socio-cultural and economic growth of the local community. This handbook is intended to be used by small and medium businesses, including those under development, entrepreneurs, and organizations in the tourism industry as a resource and a guide to adopt specific actions to become more sustainable and successful.