Tourism Geographies, Tourist Studies and the Turn towards Mobilities

Tourism is frequently acclaimed as one of the world’s largest and most pervasive industries. Research into tourism has grown rapidly in recent years with many new books and journals appearing. In particular, this article notes that perhaps three new journals have marked the coming of age of tourism-related research, namely, Tourism Geographies, Tourist Studies and finally Mobilities. While a great deal of other research has been published in books and journals and indeed many other new tourism journals have been started, this article utilises the start of these journals as benchmarks for a theoretical engagement with tourism research. This article thus begins by reviewing research into tourism geographies and focuses on work that has examined destination branding in the face of globalising processes. The article goes on to review research that has been concerned primarily with host–guest interactions in terms of tourist studies. Indeed, both residents and tourist’s performances have been the focus of much contemporary research particularly by researchers who have begun to view tourism as increasingly constitutive of everyday life rather than being simply an escape from it. Finally, it is argued that the concept of mobilities helps us to understand global tourism in the context of other social and spatial travel processes.