ABSTRACT
The scale of international travel and tourism has increased dramat ically during the second half of this century. As Figure 1.1 demonstrates, a sharp increase in the volume of international arrivals and tourist receipts from 1950 to 1980 was followed by a relative plateau in the first half of the 1980s and then by a consis tent year on year rise during the second half of that decade. Substantial changes have also occurred in the patterns of inter national tourism with marked increases in the numbers of tourists travelling to and from South-East Asia and Africa. As Mann and Mantel (1991: 1) note:
The growth of travel, and particularly of tourism, is well docu mented and spectacular. Since 1950, the officially reported number of international tourist arrivals has increased almost 17-fold; by 1987, international tourist arrivals in Africa increased to nearly 9 million, and arrivals from Asia and the Pacific leaped an astounding 137-fold to over 32 million. International tourism is now estimated to account for 6% of total world exports and at least 25% of world trade in services.
This remarkable development has led, in academic circles, to increased theoretical and research interest in the economic, socio cultural and psychological dimensions and consequences for the tourism industry. Increasingly too, the health dimensions of travel and tourism are attracting both study and practical interventions to promote healthy and safer experiences of tourism. The renewed vigour of the traditional perspective of ‘travel medicine’, with its
