ABSTRACT
The jingle which envelops you as you drift through one of Disneyland’s favourite attractions repeats insistently that ‘It’s a small world after all’. The intended message is of the ‘oneness’ of humankind. A more cynical interpretation is that it echoes a marketing manager’s credo-‘OK, folks, it’s a small world today, so let’s get out there and enjoy it!’ Technology in the form of high-speed, broad-bodied jet aircraft, computerized information systems and sophisticated media-based marketing, combined with increased affluence and time availability, have made leisure and tourism one of the world’s fastest growing industrial sectors. From the 1960s until the mid-1980s, it was growing at 5 to 10 per cent a year in monetary terms, and despite a recent slow-down it is now the third largest industrial sector in the world (Figure 4.1). Worldwide, at least 10 million people work in tourism and many more millions live off tourism indirectly.
