ABSTRACT
We began this book by calling for a better integration of tourism’s supply-side within the spatial context of the tourism geography and economic geography literature. Unfortunately, geographers have thus far been reluctant to embrace the processes of commodification that have transformed tourism experiences into more marketable commodities. Yet, it is the infrastructure of production and the geographically uneven accumulation of capital that may play the most powerful role in manipulating consumption levels and behavior patterns. Although changes in consumer demand and the evolution of increasingly more sophisticated consumer preferences can play substantive roles in shaping the tourist product, it is the actual ‘machinery of production’ (e.g. tour operators, travel agents, airlines, and hotels) that helps to manipulate and facilitate origindestination tourist flows across the world.
