Abstract

The Mediterranean coastal regions of Southern Europe have long been world leaders in mass tourism. This book examines some key questions for tourism development in these areas, with implications for similar regions across the world. The standardised forms of mass tourism are diversifying – with more specialised forms, notably those based on nature, culture and heritage, and those catering for special interests. There is a growing spectrum of modes of tourism, with an emphasis on variety, flexibility and permeability. Both mass tourism and the more diversified forms substantially impact on sustainable development. Policies promoting sustainable development are often of two main types: developing smaller-scale, alternative tourism products that are intended to be less damaging to the environment and society, and secondly, attempts to make mass tourism coastal resorts more sustainable. But there has been little critical assessment of these policies, either evaluating their basic assumptions or their successes and failures in practice. This edited book critically examines these issues for varied coastal regions in Southern Europe, including case studies from Spain, Croatia, Turkey, and north and south Cyprus.

Bill Bramwell is Reader in Tourism in the Centre for Tourism and Cultural Change at Sheffield Hallam University, UK. He has edited books on tourism in rural areas, tourism partnerships and collaboration, and tourism and sustainability in Europe. In 1993 he co-founded the Journal of Sustainable Tourism, which he continues to co-edit. His research interests in tourism include its relations with community responses, discourses of sustainability, environmental politics and policies, and growth management. He has also examined tourism policies and community responses to the industry in Malta.