ABSTRACT
The aim of this book is to demonstrate the extent to which tourism is susceptible to economic analysis and to provide a review and critical evaluation of the tourism literature emanating from a number of disciplines, also to indicate possible directions for future research. The book is not conceived as simply a text aiming to introduce the application of economics to tourism to non-specialist readers. It attempts to go further by demonstrating the subject’s ability to strengthen the theoretical foundations of the more descriptive, diffuse and pragmatic approaches to the analysis of tourism and by showing the potential of economics to explain and predict tourism phenomena and inform government and business operational policy in the sector. By examining tourism, using concepts, principles and methodologies from mainstream and more specialized fi elds of economic analysis, it also contributes new perspectives on an activity of major and increasing economic importance which until the 1990s was largely neglected in the economics literature. As identifi ed in the preface to this new edition, the book introduces more recent and advanced applications of economic analytical methods of a quantitative nature, so going beyond a simple exposition of principles. It also raises issues of global importance that refl ect rapid changes in the economic, ecological, environmental, political and social systems that tourism, an activity of major importance, both has an impact on and is affected by.
