This case study is part of the Contemporary Cases Online series. The series provides critical case studies that are original, flexible, challenging, controversial and research-informed, driven by the needs of teaching and learning.

Contemporary Cases in Tourism: Volume 1 presents 11 international case studies, collected under the headings of marketing tourism, sustainable tourism and niche tourism.

Critical animal studies is increasingly interfacing with tourism research in an effort to shed light on the various ways animals are incorporated into touristic experience. Exploring non-human work in tourism: From beasts of burden to animal ambassadors builds upon the theoretical connections of animal ethics, agency, and welfare as it foregrounds specifically the work that animals perform in the industry. While some types of animal labor are more readily identified, readers of this volume may be surprised by how many forms of animal labor are overlooked. Taking a widely international perspective, with cases from the Arctic, China, Costa Rica, China, Finland, Greece, Mexico, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom, this volume offers readers diverse scenarios of animals working. The book is arranged along three themes of work. Performative work focuses on the animals whose performances are front and center of tourists’ motivations and experiences. Value-added work turns attention to the co-working relationships of animals, while the political work of animals as ambassadors and icons is examined within the chapters on hidden labor. Additionally, the book makes theoretical considerations of the implications of positioning animals as workers and offers reflections on ways this focus on working animals extends current scholarship in the field.

Timely and accessible, this Handbook offers a thorough account of the growth, development, and changes in the field of tourism planning over recent decades. With contributions from an interdisciplinary and international range of top scholars, it examines critical issues and challenges facing contemporary tourism planning. Covering research at local, national, and global levels, chapters unpack and frame planning strategies in various destinations, expanding the definition of tourism planning to encompass a range of successful case studies.

This book reviews the theory and practice of tourism and recreation in rural areas in Europe. Including numerous case studies , 9 chapters cover: the changing nature of recreation and tourism provision in rural areas; the emergence of sustainability in the development debate; the different levels of policy influencing recreation and tourism development, and emphasizing the connectedness between local and global processes; the role and influence of the local community in recreation and tourism; changing patterns of tourism consumption; the changing nature of tourism supply; and the processes relating to the convergence of supply and demand.

To meet the rising demand for scientific evidence in the context of rural tourism research, this book explores tourism and tourism-related diversification activities performed by farming households and entrepreneurs in rural communities. To do so it adopts a consistent conceptual and empirical microeconomic approach and employs econometric methodology. Community-based rural tourism (CBRT) is attracting increasing interest in both developed and developing countries, since tourism is considered an effective way to promote rural development in all parts of the globe. Further, because information and communication technologies are developing rapidly, new types of communities are now formed more easily than ever. As such, this book covers not only traditional, closed agrarian communities, but also emerging communities formed by local nonprofit organizations (NPOs) and national networks of farmers who provide educational tourism for consumers. These emerging communities are beyond the range of traditional agrarian communities and complement each other, which helps overcome obstacles to rural tourism for farm operators and urban residents. Those communities also nurture the rural entrepreneurship that eventually will create a sustainable urban–rural relationship. This study—the first of its kind—contributes to the advancement of research on rural tourism from a microeconomic perspective. It presents a conceptual framework for understanding rural tourism from a microeconomic perspective; empirically clarifies the specific issues and constraints for the development of CBRT; and also investigates how to overcome these issues.

Mountain agriculture is a socially and culturally unique system, but also a regionally important economic sector. In a globalising world, it is clear that fertile areas on all continents will always be used to produce large quantities of agricultural products in order to feed the world and, increasingly, provide biomass as a source of energy. It is far less clear, however, how land use in steep and more peripheral regions will evolve. By definition, farmland in mountain areas is more difficult to work because of steep slopes and missing accessibility. Climate conditions and poor soil quality often add to these adverse conditions. Through overcoming limited views from one region only or from one discipline, this book intends to draw a first truly international perspective on the issue of mountain farming.

There has been little research on tourism in those European countries or regions which lie outside the continent’s main centres of production and population, even though tourism may be one of the few economic options open to them. This volume aims to fill a gap by presenting a range of case studies – including northern Sweden, the Orkneys, the tip of Norway and northern Cyprus – on tourism in the peripheral areas of Europe. Taking as a leitmotiv the paradoxes inherent in developing places whose very attraction may lie in their lack of development, the case studies investigate and illustrate both the opportunities and the threats that tourism presents to peripheral areas. Although they share certain similarities, the cases also demonstrate differing approaches to tourism development and varying outcomes over time. They suggest solutions for dealing with, for example, community participation as well as providing practical insights into visitor perceptions of peripheral areas and into ways of marketing such areas in a sensitive manner. Together they provide a picture of the needs of peripheral areas and of how far and how best tourism can fulfil those needs.