Making Sense of Tourism

Tourism is big business, worldwide. Most people regard it as a purely leisure industry. Some have criticised it as a pastime for the rich at the expense of the poor. They have called it a self-indulgent way of life replacing the 'real' industrial worlds of farms and factories. Yet tourism was actually used to create the commercial and industrial revolutions. Today, it has the potential to bring about international understanding and peaceful progress. This book is the first of a planned series of three. It reassesses the history of tourism and reveals its relationship with the mass media and education. Tourism can bring about a better understanding of the world through its unique potential: to see the world for ourselves, rather than as others see it. And it does so by having fun. Alan Machin brings a wide range of experiences to the task of 'making sense of tourism'. His working life ranged from marketing Shropshire's Ironbridge Gorge Museum to urban regeneration with Calderdale Council, West Yorkshire. He was a senior executive for a leading design company in Leeds. His career rounded out by teaching tourism management at what is now Leeds Beckett University. After retirement in 2009 he began to plan the Making Sense of Tourism series.