ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. Travel and the resulting industry has also been considered an important vehicle for cultural expression. The articles included in this volume reflect the explosion in high quality tourism marketing research. The variety of perspectives is reflected in the issues addressed by the research included in this volume. Qualitative methods in marketing research have grown substantially over the past few years and are now recognized as offering viable alternatives to more traditional quantitative methodologies. Importance-performance analysis, a long standing tool for strategies marketing analysis, has been the focus of much research and now is an even better tool for tourism marketers. This growth also presents a number of new and exciting challenges to tourism researchers that will have broad impacts on our world. We believe they represent well the quality and depth of market research currently being conducted in tourism.
