BOTM_C01.

QXD 26/9/05 4:12 pm Page 17

RECOMMENDED WEBSITES 17

If on the other hand you approach this book with a basic understanding of business
principles, you may feel that you come with a flying start. Be careful! While the idea
that tourism management (the application of general management to tourism organisa-
tions) underpins this book (Chapters 4 to 11), it is also clear that the distinctiveness of
tourism business – the ‘industry recipe’ – is also at the core (Chapters 12 to 23).
Tourism management has been widely researched, both from European and North
American perspectives. Often research has focused on less common destinations but
increasingly academics are investigating more popular destinations and the various
dimensions of mass tourism. By developing a range of business skills which you will
have developed in a range of applications, this book should help you not only with
tourism management studies, but with your personal development regarding a career in
tourism management. Large tourism companies, such as the big tour operators and
travel agents, tend to place more emphasis when recruiting on applicants’ management
skills rather than on their knowledge of tourism.

Guided reading
As Jafar Jafari suggests, the study of tourism can be made from a range of academic per-
spectives. For the study of tourism from a business or management perspective, it will
probably come as no surprise that this is the recommended book! You are, however, rec-
ommended to review how tourism can be studied from other perspectives. Peter Burns
and Andrew Holden offer an excellent introduction to the study of tourism from the
perspective of anthropology (Burns and Holden, 1995). For the study of tourism from a
geographical perspective, try Shaw and Williams (2004). There is no better approach to
an understanding of tourism from the sociological perspective than to read the classic
texts such as Urry (1990) and MacCannell (1999).
For an excellent account of the social history of British seaside holidays see Walton
(2000), and also Inglis (2000) who covers a wider theme. Barker (2002) offers a good
insight into how Scarborough was at its zenith during the 1920s and 1930s.

Recommended websites
Two websites have been developed specifically to support this book:

■ The Companion Website – www.pearsoned.co.uk/beechchadwick – which provides

additional internet resources, clickable links to all the websites mentioned in the
book and a link to the lecturers’ resources (password protected – lecturers can
apply for a password online from this website).
■ The BOTM Blog – www.businessoftourismmanagement.blogspot.com – which pro-
vides regularly updated news of developments in tourism management and tourism
businesses.

For a wide-ranging resource for tourism management students, see John Beech’s Tourism
Management Information Gateway – www.stile.coventry.ac.uk/cbs/staff/beech/tourism/
index.htm .
Other large resources designed for students include Altis (www.altis.ac.uk) and
HTSN (www.hlst.heacademy.ac.uk/).
The WTO publishes tourism data regularly (see its website at www.world-tourism.org).
Your university may subscribe to its databases at www.wtoelibrary.org, and a brief sum-
mary is downloadable from www.world-tourism.org/facts/highlights/Highlights.pdf .