ABSTRACT
Integration is a term which has a number of meanings in the context of tourism. While it is common now to call for ‘integrated tourism planning’ (Haywood 1988; Innskeep 1991), there has been a well-established pattern of integration with respect to the supply side of tourism since tourism became a popular activity. Tourism in its modern form is perhaps a century and a half old, if the emergence of mass tourism can be taken as being represented by the first use of mass transportation in an organized fashion for leisure travel. The early coordination of rail and coach travel, commercial accommodation and guide services by Thomas Cook, the father of modern tourism, represents the first formal integration of services in tourism (Swinglehurst 1982). While individual tourists made use of a range of tourist services which developed from the period of the Grand Tour onwards, few of these were integrated in a formal sense and most developed in an ad hoc manner over the course of time in response to regular demand by a small but affluent group of travellers (Towner 1985). It is from the early days of mass tourism that we can see the emergence of the idea of integrating facilities and services for tourism. However, such integration was purely on the operational or supply side of tourism and was predominantly the work and responsibility of tour operators such as Cook and those who followed his example. For much of the next century the integration which existed in tourism was related to transportation and accommodation in particular, or, putting it another way, to getting the tourist to and from the destination and accommodating them when they were there.
