ABSTRACT
Much has been said about the growth and internationalisation of tourist flows, especially by supranational tourism organisations – such as the United Nations World Tourism Organisation (UNWTO) and the World Travel and Tourism Council (WTTC) – intent on promoting tourism development as a principal mode of economic development. While these organisations are keen to underline the quantitative changes (growth and increased internationalisation) experienced in the tourism sector, especially in emergent regions (i.e. the Middle East, the Asia-Pacific and Africa), simultaneous qualitative and
structural changes in the tourism sector (transformative globalisation processes) have by and large been overlooked. The few exceptions (e.g. Britton 1982; Gotham 2002) have taken a destination-based approach, thus neglecting the meso-and macro-level of analysis necessary to understand the functioning of global economic activity and tourism development. However, tourism is best understood as a multiscalar economic activity that spans geographical scales (global, regional, national, local) and defies geo-political boundaries (Timothy 2006). For Milne and Ateljevic (2001: 371-2):
While destination-based analyses provide a detailed examination of local economic activity and interactions between local economic actors, it is crucial to recognise the importance of analysing firm linkages that transcend individual geographical scales. Rather than providing yet another destination-based analysis, this chapter adopts a systems-based approach – by way of explaining and encouraging the use of commodity chain analysis – as a means of unravelling international business behaviours and relationships in the tourism sector. Specifically, the application of commodity chain analysis presents the opportunity to examine globalisation processes in situ, at the site of production, while simultaneously highlighting the connections between distinct places of production and consumption, as well as the actors who participate in the commodity chain. Briefly put, the concept of the commodity chains is used to track a product through the different stages of production, distribution and consumption. Key concerns for this type of analysis are the spatial distribution of production and the transformation processes involved in each step of production and consumption but more detailed objectives of the commodity chain analysis depend on its theoretical approach (the following section distinguishes cultural versus political economy approaches). The simplicity of the concept, but the difficulty of tracing all the connections, is demonstrated in the case-study vignette.
