Dean Carson – författare

Since the post World War Two boom in private automobile ownership, Drive Tourism has transformed the tourism landscape by facilitating dispersal and the growth of attractions and tourism related infrastructure beyond the zones that had previously emerged around seaports and railway terminals. The automobile has made regional dispersal possible and created opportunities for many small rural communities to supplement rural economies with a tourism economy. Drive Tourism is a popular form of tourism activity that has significantly contributed to the development of Tourism in many nations, but has received relatively little attention in the literature.

This book is the first attempt to provide a global comprehensive review and scholarly investigation into this popular and growing form of tourism. It draws on a vast range of geographical locations to critically explore the impacts of drive tourism in developed and underdeveloped regions. It evaluates tourism authorities’ response to the Drive Tourism Experience, and offers operational insights into the management of the drive experience as well as providing original empirical research and insights into the field that will contribute to future investigation. In doing so it explores the many forms of drive tourism from caravanning to fly drive touring.

Since the post World War Two boom in private automobile ownership, Drive Tourism has transformed the tourism landscape by facilitating dispersal and the growth of attractions and tourism related infrastructure beyond the zones that had previously emerged around seaports and railway terminals. The automobile has made regional dispersal possible and created opportunities for many small rural communities to supplement rural economies with a tourism economy. Drive Tourism is a popular form of tourism activity that has significantly contributed to the development of Tourism in many nations, but has received relatively little attention in the literature.

This book is the first attempt to provide a global comprehensive review and scholarly investigation into this popular and growing form of tourism. It draws on a vast range of geographical locations to critically explore the impacts of drive tourism in developed and underdeveloped regions. It evaluates tourism authorities’ response to the Drive Tourism Experience, and offers operational insights into the management of the drive experience as well as providing original empirical research and insights into the field that will contribute to future investigation. In doing so it explores the many forms of drive tourism from caravanning to fly drive touring.

Tourism ‘mobilities’ are not restricted to the movement of tourists between places of origin and destinations. Particularly in more peripheral, remote, or sparsely populated destinations, workers and residents are also likely to be frequently moving between locations. Such destinations attract seasonal or temporary residents, sometimes with only loose ties to the tourism industry. These flows of mobile populations are accompanied by flows of other resources – money, knowledge, ideas and innovations – which can be used to help the economic and social development of the destination.

This book examines key aspects of the human mobilities associated with tourism in sparsely populated areas, and investigates how new mobility patterns inspired by technological, economic, political, and social change provide both opportunities and risks for those areas. Examples are drawn from the northern peripheries of Europe and the north of Australia, and the book provides a framework for continuing research into the role that tourism and ‘new mobilities’ can play in regional development in these locations.

This book was originally published as a special issue of the Scandinavian Journal of Hospitality and Tourism.