This is the first major interdisciplinary work to cover the nature of seaside tourism, the history of the British seaside holiday, its expansion and decline, tourism entrepreneurs, and central and local tourist policies.

This detailed academic cultural study looks at the rise and fall of the seaside holiday in Britain. John K. Walton offers a broad interpretation of the holidays and resorts, looking at who went, where they went, what they did, and how they were entertained.

Drawing on examples from a range of economies and environments, this text develops a global perspective on the management issues facing coastal resorts. The main management themes highlighted include the processes of restructuring, and attempts to develop sustainable agendas.

The seaside is the 20th century's pre-eminent global tourism site and this work examines political and power relations in modern seaside resort development. As an historical study of seaside tourism in Devon - England's most popular domestic holiday desitination - it reveals the complex interplay between ideology, class and power and the comsumption of landscape and place.

Marked by a period of massive structural change, the 1970s in Europe saw the collapse of traditional manufacturing. The essays in this collection question aspects of the narrative of decline and radical transformation.

Histories of seaports and coastal resorts have usually been kept in separate compartments. This book brings them together and looks at how resort development affected historic ports during the rise and development of the seaside holiday in Europe from the 18th century to the 20th, and what the attributes of ports (fishing, harbour crafts, the whiff of the exotic, fishermen’s homes and families) contributed to the attractions of resorts. Case-studies drawn from across Europe, from Wales and the Netherlands to Norway, Latvia and Spain, bring original perspectives to bear on these histories and relationships, and consider their influence on seaside heritage and regeneration at a time when coastal settlements are increasingly using their past to secure their future. The book will interest academics in tourism studies, history, geography and cultural studies, as well as provide essential information and analysis for policy-makers in coastal regeneration.

A human and global take on a beloved vacation spot. The crash of surf, smell of salted air, wet whorls of sand underfoot. These are the sensations of the beach, that environment that has drawn humans to its life-sustaining shores for millennia. And while the gull’s cry and the cove’s splendor have remained constant throughout time, our relationship with the beach has been as fluid as the runnels left behind by the tide’s turning. The Lure of the Beach is a chronicle of humanity's history with the coast, taking us from the seaside pleasure palaces of Roman elites and the aquatic rituals of medieval pilgrims, to the venues of modern resort towns and beyond. Robert C. Ritchie traces the contours of the material and social economies of the beach throughout time, covering changes in the social status of beach goers, the technology of transport, and the development of fashion (from nudity to Victorianism and back again), as well as the geographic spread of modern beach-going from England to France, across the Mediterranean, and from nineteenth-century America to the world. And as climate change and rising sea levels erode the familiar faces of our coasts, we are poised for a contemporary reckoning with our relationship—and responsibilities—to our beaches and their ecosystems. The Lure of the Beach demonstrates that whether as a commodified pastoral destination, a site of ecological resplendency, or a flashpoint between private ownership and public access, the history of the beach is a human one that deserves to be told now more than ever before.

With the rise of post-truth and fake news, a thorough examination of authenticity has never been so relevant. This book explores the geography of authenticity, investigating a wide variety of places used by tourists. Not only does it assess what might be described as the more traditional objects for examination – places such as the city, the countryside and the coast – it also includes chapters on art and place, hipster places, gentrification, heritage sites, film locations, photographed places and eventful places. Using a wide-angled lens on places reveals linkages and possibilities, enabling the book to skate across the surface of the geography of authenticity, locating the magically real heritage site, the poignant replica, the authenticated theme park, the unmasked carnival. In focusing on authentic and inauthentic places, this text provides a useful contribution to the understanding of how places are changing, how they are perceived, and how authenticity is embodied and performed within them. Authentic and Inauthentic Places in Tourism is an insightful study and an essential read for those involved in the study of geography, tourism, urban studies, culture and heritage.

This book theorises resorts as distinct kinds of urban milieux, capturing the complexity of destinations famous for ‘sun, sand and sex’ mass tourism. Drawing on qualitative field research (participant observation, interviews and photography), the book discusses examples from six international resort destinations spread across four continents: the Gold Coast, Australia; Phuket and Koh Phangan, Thailand; Cancún, Mexico; Miami, USA; and Ibiza, Spain. The book reviews the material and symbolic production of lived spaces in these resorts, considering the mutually constitutive, mutually transformative relations between their spatial formations, built environments, popular imaginaries, representations, narratives of identity, rhythms, and the experiences and practices of both tourists and locals. In doing so, it argues for more nuanced ways of conceptualising tourism, globalisation and spatiality, reimagining how these phenomena unfold in lived spaces. Taking a cultural studies approach to urban analysis, the book demonstrates the value in embracing complexity, fluidity, partiality and uncertainty. It will be of interest to students and researchers of tourism, geography, cultural studies, development studies, anthropology and sociology.

This book explores the phenomenal resources dedicated to understanding and encouraging passengers to consume travel from 1900 to 1939, analysing how place and travel were presented for sale. Using the Great Western Railway as a chief case study, as well as a range of its competitors both on and off the rails, Alexander Medcalf unravels the complex and ever-changing processes behind corporate sales communications. This volume analyses exactly how the company pictured passengers in the countryside, at the seaside, in the urban landscape and in the company’s vehicles. This thematic approach brings transport and business history thoroughly in line with tourism and leisure history as well as studies in visual culture.