ABSTRACT
This chapter begins by defining the terms leisure, recreation and tourism and explaining their interrelationships. It will be seen that leisure has come to be accepted as a measure of free time, while recreation is seen as the activities undertaken during that time. Tourism, as distinguished from other types of mobility, is discussed as a distinctive form of recreation occurring at local and global scales, one involving a stay away from home and usually long distance travel. Tourism can take many forms based on the various components of the tourism system which includes the destination, the market, purpose of visit, the distance travelled and not least the nature of the tourists themselves. The relationship of different types of tourist to the environment is considered in this chapter alongside the importance of scale in explaining patterns of tourism. Further analysis reveals the geography of travel and tourism: a system comprising tourist-generating areas, tourist-receiving areas and transit routes. The push-pull factors which give rise to tourist flows and the methods used to measure them are discussed in this chapter, including a critical examination of the shortcomings of these methods.
