ABSTRACT
This chapter investigates the situation of coastal municipalities and districts as compared with their hinterlands, by exploring associations between resort designation, tourism activity and local development variables. As resorts and concentrated tourism also exist in mountain areas, we also compare winter sports and coastal resorts and their neighbouring territories in terms of socio-economic situations. Differences do exist in tourism resources, in the functioning of the tourism economy and spatial spill-over effects. In the authors analysis, they put into perspective tourist areas in contrasted situations and since the issue of local impacts and spill-overs is complex, the aim is to start bridging that gap in an exploratory manner. A major reason lies with the difficulty of delineating the tourism sector and its economic impacts of tourism affects an array of economic dimensions, starting with direct impacts on specific industries and branches, the generation of income for administrations and residents to more indirect impacts on the population and employment through inter-sector spill-over effects.
