ABSTRACT
The growth of international and domestic tourism has been matched by a corresponding increase in the numbers of those who study tourism and its impacts. Indeed, it has even been suggested that tourism research was one of the academic growth industries of the late twentieth century (Hall 1995)! The literature on tourism has expanded enormously. Mathieson and Wall’s (1982: 2) suggestion from over 30 years ago that tourism research has become ‘highly fragmented, with researchers following separate and often divergent paths’ remains as true today as when it was written. Nevertheless, one of the major areas of interest for geographers, as well as other tourism researchers, is the impacts of tourism and recreation.
