Abstract

This book investigates the way localities are shaped and negotiated through tourism, and explores the emerging success of local peer-produced hospitality and tourism services which are transforming the tourist experience. Tourists are now being brought into much closer contact with locals and have new opportunities to experience the community at their destination. This book examines these place experiences and travel-sharing arrangements that have now spread globally due to the use of social communication platforms such as Airbnb. It analyses the existence of global communities of ‘place experts’ that are redefining the organisational structures, value systems, market opportunities, affordabilities and geographies in travel and tourism. This volume brings together the work of established tourism scholars as well as early career researchers and is one of the first books to examine the global-local relationship at tourism destinations and the way that the rapidly developing field of peer-to-peer tourism is transforming tourist destinations.

This book is a must read for students and researchers interested in the ways in which tourism co-produces and reshapes new localities and spaces. But, this book also goes beyond these issues and shows that analysis of tourism may provide new key to understanding place and society in general. Thus, it also serves as a valuable resource for other disciplines such as geography, management and economics, planning, sociology, anthropology and cultural studies.

This collection is a hugely valuable contribution to contemporary debates over how we study and ‘position’ tourism enquiry. The contributors raise a number of new questions, particularly about the entanglements of tourism with urban and community development, digital technologies and social media and new hospitality networks. It will be an important resource for students and researchers interested in identities, mobilities, co-creation, place making, and the renegotiation and redefinition of what is frequently understood as ‘the local’.

Antonio Paolo Russo is a tenured Assistant Professor in the Department of Geography at the University Rovira i Virgili, Tarragona, Spain. His research interests include tourism and culture, cities and local development.

Greg Richards is Professor of Placemaking and Events at NHTV Breda University of Applied Sciences, Netherlands and Professor of Leisure Studies at the University of Tilburg, Netherlands. He specialises in cultural and creative tourism.

This book can be a useful reference for those concerned with tourism planning with focus on social-economic impact and community empowerment, also to tourism academics and to students who are interested in understanding new perspectives in tourism management.

The edited book format provides an effective platform for authors (who are based in a variety of research centres and universities across Europe, the USA and New Zealand) to explore emerging phenomenon and has a lot to commend it (...) The book develops knowledge in an emerging area and includes some excellent case studies, which are used to illustrate and interrogate ideas in a variety of localities. In closing, in Chapter 15 the editors identify some clear directions
and thought-provoking questions for future research. The book is recommended on the basis that it provides useful case study material which could be used as a basis for students and researchers to critically engage in this emerging area in other contexts.

This book critically engages with one of the most exciting topics in tourism research today. It is a refreshing, timely and well-researched collection with topics ranging from the phenomena of Airbnb and couchsurfing to radical local peer-to-peer initiatives. Written from a post-disciplinary perspective, the book breaks new grounds in relation to the transformation of places through tourism, and in particular the (re)production of the local.