ABSTRACT
Changing cultures, consumption patterns and new forms of leisure over the last two centuries have affected tourism profoundly. As a form of consumption, it spread from a small minority of affluent populations to broader social groups, as income and leisure time have increased in Western Europe and the USA. Its types have also diversified and expanded from a small elite to become massive: sun-and-beach tourism, cultural tourism, alpine tourism, and, more recently, eco-tourism and international residential tourism. The latter is still limited, but contributes in a qualitative change in tourism along the European Mediterranean coasts. Here, tourism tends to combine with migration as a phenomenon and a research topic. In Mediterranean African and Near Eastern destinations, international residential tourism is still too limited to attract our attention here, though, as discussed below, some Southern Mediterranean countries have seen relevant phenomena at a limited scale.
