Introduction

Some twenty years ago I was fortunate enough to embark upon an enjoyable and, thus far, successful career as a tourism academic. I say ‘fortunate’ because my entry into academia can be described as somewhat serendipitous. Not having previously considered such a career move and being unaware that it was actually possible to study tourism as an academic subject, it was largely as a result of coming across an advertisement in my local library for a postgraduate course in tourism (and perhaps the fact that, at that time, a number of government-funded places were available) that I decided to study for a Master’s degree and, subsequently, take up my first tourism lecturing post.