The Future Past of Tourism: Historical Perspectives and Future Evolutions

Citation

Wong, B.K.M. and Ng, C.H. (2020), "The Future Past of Tourism: Historical Perspectives and Future Evolutions", Journal of Tourism Futures, Vol. 6 No. 2, pp. 193-195. https://doi.org/10.1108/JTF-06-2020-150

Tourism is an activity that is well-liked by all walks of life. However, was tourism always as vibrant and easily accessible from the beginning? And how would the tourism industry be in the future? The book The Future Past of Tourism: Historical Perspectives and Future Evolutions by Ian Yeoman and Una McMahon-Beattie explores the turning points that helped shape the tourism industry to what it is today and potential turning points in the future. The book comprises 19 chapters, presented in six parts: globalization, the development of destinations, mobility, the hotel, diversification into niche tourism and evolution. The introductory chapter provides the readers the rationale and the overall structure of the book.

Part 1 on globalization covers two chapters. Chapter 2 provides an insight on the various turning points that led to today’s definition of tourism, such as the Grand Tour of Europe, mass tourism, modern tourism, nature and pilgrimage. The chapter also proposes the factors of future of tourism such as global economy of tourism, cultural capital and family structure. Chapter 3 further examines the development of mass tourism as it is one of the world’s largest industries, comprising 9% of GDP and 6% of world exports. The Industrial Revolution made mass travelling possible through the availability of steam trains and steam ships. While the Western continents have often been the centre of tourism historically, the future of tourism is shifting towards Asia and Africa. The chapter also highlights the risk of over-tourism as travellers continue to visit popular destinations.

Part 2 instils the development of destinations. Chapters 4 and 5 offer case studies on destination development processes in Malta and Ireland. As the Malta tourism industry expanded, issues such as inadequate public infrastructure and over-development of accommodations arose. While a series of proactive policies were in place to improve the overall tourism situation, the digitization of virtual experiences is something the nation is considering for visitation in the future. Ireland is portrayed as a touristic nation through a series of turning points. Its luxurious identity, accommodations that represent the livelihood of the locals, history and culture are among the key tourism development propositions highlighted in Chapter 5. As major cities around the world grew, it began to attract various types of travellers and hence enhanced tourism activities. Thus, Chapter 6 depicts the growth, decline and resurgence of the city-states in the tourism development process. The transition of the city-states into territorial states in the future remains part of the continuous cyclic process of development. As China became a major travel destination, Chapter 7 offers a good glimpse of its coastal tourism development from 1841 to 2017. The future of the Chinese coastal tourism relies on the implementation of controlling bodies with increasing standard setting and personalization through banalization and restrictive access.

Part 3 presents the transportation mobility development in the tourism industry. Chapter 8 discusses the aircraft technology development as one of the significant milestones in shaping the tourism of today, enabling travellers to travel further and faster at a more affordable price, with the potential to exclude stopover(s). Chapter 9 provides another tourism mobility option, cruise ships. As one of the fastest growing sectors, cruise tourism has undergone several innovative changes that have made it into a popular choice. Chapter 10 further elaborates the evolution of energy and transportation options along with its effects on tourism. This is essential as new forms of eco-friendly transportation are required to ensure future tourism sustainability.

Part 4 briefly touches on the hotel sector. Chapter 11 covers the historical and future turning points of the hotel sector. The evolution of hotel as a temporary dwelling for tourists to hotel chains and the current shared-service accommodation concept are articulated. Chapter 12 examines a case study on employment issues and challenges in New Zealand tourism hotel sector. It further elaborates two scenarios of the industry: dystopia and utopia, which perhaps shape the future of the industry.

Part 5 consists of six chapters that dwell into the diversification of niche tourism products. Chapter 13 examines how film influences the travelling behaviour of travellers. Movies such as The Third Man, The Quiet Man, The Lord of the Rings and Game of Thrones boosted the film tourism market. With the advancement of technology, augmented reality or virtual reality is deemed to be the future mode of such tourism portfolios. Chapter 14 provides an overview of the Grand Tour development in Europe. With new digital tools, travellers continue to desire for knowledge enhancement and self-development, and thus the educational travel or study tours are developed. As Chapter 15 focusses on identifying the factors contributing to tourist retail development in heritage villages, Chapter 16 clarifies the role of religion in influencing its past and current patterns and practices in tourism industry. Chapter 17 covers the development of mountaineering tourism. Despite climate change affecting such niche tourism product, it continues to be popular to the extent of being a global sport. Part 5 ends with an examination on the past incidences and issues and future expectations on tourism sustainability in Scotland.

Part 6 on evolution describes in Chapter 19 how the past shapes the future of tourism industry as a recap of previous chapters and uses the cognitive mapping perspective. While the key historical turning points include mindfulness, mobility, step changes determining mass tourism and leisure class of consumption, the future turning points are proposed to be fluid identity, sustainable futures, ubiquitous future and mass maturity.

Overall, the book is recommended for researchers to obtain inspiration in developing new research themes, as the chapters offer substantial turning points in the past and the future of the tourism industry. Most of the content is relevant, and the flow of the chapters is well planned. Critically, Part 4: The Hotel, can be further enhanced by describing the influence of technology advancement and digital-based content on shaping the future of the hotel sector. The use of cognitive mapping in summarizing the chapters is interesting and useful. The ability of the authors to summarize the historical and to propose the future turning points shall be applauded. In the current disruptive business environment, it is essential to adopt technology in developing smart tourism concept (Arenasa et al., 2019). However, moving forward to the Industry Revolution 5.0, the future of the tourism industry relies on not only superior usage of technology but also the re-enactment of human element (Wong, 2016) to establish an emotional connection.