ABSTRACT
Within the literature on recreation and tourism, there is a paucity of conceptual and theoretical research on the supply component of these activities (Sinclair and Stabler 1992). The geographer has traditionally approached the supply of recreation and tourism from a somewhat traditional spatial analysis perspective reflecting the tendency to apply concepts and models from economic geography and, to a lesser degree, from cognate areas of geography where the underlying concern has been with location and the spatial distribution of recreational and tourism resources which shape the activity patterns and spectrum of opportunity for leisure pursuits. However, since the mid-1990s with the advent of more qualitative research, some geographical research on supply issues has also begun to challenge the positivist approach to spatial analysis with reference to leisure supply (e.g. Aitchison 1999). This has resulted in more sophisticated cultural geographies of leisure (as discussed more fully in Chapter 2) that highlight the importance of more theoretically derived explanations of key geographical questions on leisure and tourism provision (i.e. supply). In particular, such research questions the notion of who gets what, where with more emphasis on why? The result is that the geographer needs to consider more challenging perspectives related to the way in which leisure (and tourism) supply is produced by the state and private sector at different scales. This chapter will review some of these new debates together with the evolution of the geographer’s contribution to the analysis of supply issues.
