tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4371919710201150712011-12-20T08:58:28.371-07:00This is an affiliated blog for the journal, 'Tourism Geographies' at <a href="http://TGJournal.com">TGJournal.com</a>, for posting editorial comments, book reviews and preliminary research notes that may also appear in the journal.The Travel Geographerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17374093285849135840noreply@blogger.comBlogger321100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-437191971020115071.post-63487621417044552752011-12-20T08:13:00.001-07:002011-12-20T08:58:28.395-07:00

Topophilia is “the feeling of affection which individuals have for particular places” (Tuan, 1961).  The term was first coined in 1947 by the American poet, W.H. Auden, and became popularized, at least among academic geographers, by Yi-Fu Tuan’s book, Topophilia: a study of environmental perception, attitudes, and values, which was published in 1974 (Prentice-Hall).  Recent work in geography

Alan A. Lewnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-437191971020115071.post-61669758918323555022011-10-24T19:53:00.002-07:002011-10-26T15:46:45.728-07:00

Over the years, tourism scholars have come up with a large number of different ways to segment tourist markets so that different products can be more precisely targeted to potential travelers. Probably the most famous of these is Stanley Plogs division of the both travelers and destinations into “psychocentrics” (associated with security, familiarity and mass products) “allocentrics” (

Alan A. Lewnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-437191971020115071.post-74203163780032544142011-09-28T06:53:00.000-07:002011-09-28T07:52:18.816-07:00

The annual meeting of the Association of American Geographers (AAG) is held every Spring. In 2011 in was held in Seattle, April 12-16. In the previous fall there are a plethora of CFPs (Call for Papers) from people who are organizing paper sessions. I am personally on several geography email lists, including UrbGeog (urban geography), EconomicGeography, CulturalGeog, and LeftGeog, in addition

Alan A. Lewnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-437191971020115071.post-46338445021815516812011-07-27T10:41:00.002-07:002011-07-31T11:37:55.474-07:00

Few things demonstrate the rapid rate of modernization and postmodern tourism consumption in China as does the rise in tourism activity and the country's tourism economy. I just returned from a couple of weeks in China attending a conference, a field trip and giving some guest lectures at a university.   The trip took me to Zhangjiajie National Park in Hunan Province for a tourism conference, and

Alan A. Lewnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-437191971020115071.post-2667341885848163522011-06-10T19:56:00.001-07:002011-06-10T19:57:10.023-07:00

Tourists are humans and tend to behave as any other human social animal.  One human behavioral characteristic is to form social groups that include some (“Us”) and exclude other (“Them”). I saw this recently during my second visit to Taiwan in the past eight months.  I went to Sun Moon Lake in the central Taiwan mountains which is possibly the biggest single tourist attraction in Taiwan for

Alan A. Lewnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-437191971020115071.post-33353259963573269472011-05-04T10:27:00.010-07:002011-05-05T20:30:21.083-07:00

Would you stop traveling to save the planet? That is the challenge of sustainable tourism! #aag2011 I posted that on Twitter on April 13, 2011 while listening to a presentation at the annual meeting of the Association of American Geographers.  It was my most re-tweeted post at the conference, and one of the most re-tweeted of all of the #AAG2011 tagged posts. The comment was written in

Alan A. Lewnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-437191971020115071.post-77793788543354536982011-04-19T14:01:00.003-07:002011-05-09T22:56:32.063-07:00

I just returned from the annual meeting of the Association of American Geographers in Seattle, WA.  This annual geography-love-fest drew some 7000 geographers (mostly university and college teachers and students) and included some 3,500 presentations.  Among those presentations were 107 papers that included the keyword "tourism".  You can search and view the abstracts for those 107

Alan A. Lewnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-437191971020115071.post-13195271241176982712011-04-09T19:03:00.001-07:002011-04-09T19:04:22.456-07:00

If you've half an hour to spare, here is my recent talk in Martinique on the topic of Tourism Incognita: Terra incognita and topophilia : the importance of remoteness and the unexpected in the tourist experience Contributeur(s) majeur(s) : Lew, Alan, A. Date : 2011-01-27 Production : Université des Antilles et de la Guyane ; CEREGMIA : Centre d'études et de recherche en économie,

Alan A. Lewnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-437191971020115071.post-43512985975156277102011-03-17T18:18:00.005-07:002011-04-09T19:07:04.419-07:00

My email inbox these days seems to be overflowing with more "all-inclusive" travel deals than I have seen in a long time. All-inclusive experiences are certainly attractive -- no need to think about anything other than getting to your destination resort. They are also very popular -- as evidenced by the continual growth in cruise ships, the ultimate all-inclusive experiences. Unfortunately,

Alan A. Lewnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-437191971020115071.post-42302119982846273252011-01-11T10:35:00.001-07:002011-01-11T10:36:26.721-07:00

Nostalgia for the Family Holiday Vacation by Alan A. Lew, Department of Geography, Planning and Recreation, Northern Arizona University, USA A Literature Review of: Are We There Yet? The Golden Age of American Family Vacations by Susan Sessions Rugh (University of Kansas Press, 2008, ISBN 978-0-7006-1588-9) - and - Theme Park by Scott A. Lukas (Reaktion Books, 2008, ISBN 978-1-86189-394-9)

Alan A. Lewnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-437191971020115071.post-64383550415702409182011-01-11T10:25:00.001-07:002011-01-11T10:25:27.881-07:00

Tourism in the USA: A Spatial and Social Synthesisby Dimitri Ioannides & Dallen J. Timothypublished by Routledge, London and New York, 2010, ISBN 0-415-95685-4 Reviewed by Patrick Brouder, Department of Social & Economic Geography, Ume University, Sweden  This 222-page book sets out to give a comprehensive overview of tourism in the USA. The title hints that the book is not only about tourism

Alan A. Lewnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-437191971020115071.post-62574236413562915722010-10-16T10:31:00.003-07:002010-10-16T10:40:07.339-07:00

Author: Alan A. Lew, Department of Geography, Planning and Recreation, Northern Arizona University, Arizona, USA Published in: Tourism Geographies, Volume 12, Issue 3, August 2010, pages 481 - 483 There are many barriers to sustainable development, including     * just defining what sustainable development is;     * trying to making connections between sustainability issues that exist at

Alan A. Lewnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-437191971020115071.post-65327325948754868262010-10-16T09:54:00.007-07:002010-10-16T10:49:37.505-07:00

Book Review of: Landscape, Tourism and Meaning by Daniel C. Knudsen, Michelle M. Metro-Roland, Anne K. Soper & Charles E. Greer (Eds), Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008, ISBN 978-0-7546-4943-4 Reviewed by : Brian Graham, School of Environmental Sciences, University of Ulster, UK Published in: Tourism Geographies, Volume 12, Issue 3, August 2010, pages 484 - 486  This book, which is a contribution to

Alan A. Lewnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-437191971020115071.post-51136340340985756612010-08-15T13:23:00.011-07:002010-10-16T10:55:16.949-07:00

Author: Deborah Che Published in: Tourism Geographies, Volume 12, Issue 2, May 2010, pages 324 - 328 At the 2009 Annual Meeting of the Association of American Geographers held in Las Vegas, Nevada (22-27 March), geographers shared their experiences as participants in a stimulating and thought-provoking panel on 'Publishing Tourism Geography Research'. I organized this session in order to

Alan A. Lewnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-437191971020115071.post-3819319681178483202009-11-04T15:28:00.001-07:002009-11-04T15:31:08.464-07:00

Shaul Krakover sent the photo above, saying: “I attach here a photo taken at our Tourism Destination Development and Branding Conference, held October 14-15, 2009, at Ben Gurion University of the Negev, Eilat Campus, Israel. The photo presents the 4 best tourism journals!  It was taken in a session on "Publishing in the Academic Hospitality and Tourism Literature: Trends and Challenges"

Alan A. Lewnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-437191971020115071.post-55973802732240911012009-10-26T22:04:00.001-07:002009-10-26T22:04:18.755-07:00

----------- Can We 'Learn To See?': Study Shows Perception Of Invisible Stimuli Improves With Training ScienceDaily (Oct. 21, 2009) — Although we assume we can see everything in our field of vision, the brain actually picks and chooses the stimuli that come into our consciousness. A new study in the Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology's Journal of Vision reveals that our

Alan A. Lewnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-437191971020115071.post-21414522698532562172009-10-24T10:59:00.000-07:002009-10-24T10:59:47.614-07:00

------ Extremists More Willing To Share Their Opinions, Study Finds - ScienceDaily (Oct. 21, 2009) — People with relatively extreme opinions may be more willing to publicly share their views than those with more moderate views, according to a new study. [Click Here for the full story.] ------- The story linked above is about a study at Stanford University in which students with extreme views on

Alan A. Lewnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-437191971020115071.post-25762717872367606592009-09-02T23:08:00.001-07:002009-09-02T23:08:55.087-07:00

In June 2007 I wrote a blog post titled "Why Don't We Blog? University Faculty Blogging about Travel & Tourism". So two years later I took a look back at that blog post, and to my surprise there were 36 comments! That was strange, because I do not remember receiving any notices to moderate that many comments on any of my blog posts. A quick scan showed that there were three legitimate comments,

Alan A. Lewnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-437191971020115071.post-81085945094841079042009-08-08T20:47:00.004-07:002010-10-16T10:36:05.084-07:00

An UPDATED version of this blog post is available HERE.

Alan A. Lewnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-437191971020115071.post-59399580783992178772009-07-17T21:38:00.005-07:002009-07-21T03:27:04.057-07:00

[Photo: View of the Li River from my conference hotel in Yangshuo, China]I think I just experienced one of the longest travel-related liminal experiences ever (at least for me).Liminal experiences are those that are characterized by transitions from one state of being to another. Tourists experience liminality when they transition from a home-based state of being to a travel-based state.

Alan A. Lewnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-437191971020115071.post-18141790658043835902008-10-08T12:14:00.004-07:002008-10-08T13:23:22.782-07:00

As a member of the American Planning Association, I get their monthly magazine, Planning. I came across a couple of lists in recent issues of Planning that I think has application to those of plan tourism at the community and place level.What Makes a Great Neighborhood?Has a variety of functional attributes that contribute to a resident's day-to-day living (residential, commercial, or mixed uses

Alan A. Lewnoreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-437191971020115071.post-91362308810960150312008-08-22T07:03:00.003-07:002009-10-29T08:13:28.713-07:00

The Daily Show With Jon StewartMon - Thurs 11p / 10cHolistaywww.thedailyshow.comDaily Show Full EpisodesPolitical HumorHealth Care Crisis Another benefit of the staycation trend that I heard recently is that there have been far fewer road deaths in the US these past few months. Now that is something to celebrate!

Alan A. Lewnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-437191971020115071.post-50848711674929779882008-06-15T06:26:00.005-07:002008-06-16T12:52:04.782-07:00

The following is based on a story in TRAVEL IMPACT NEWSWIRE - Edition 48, Friday, June 13, 2008 - by Imtiaz Muqbil, Executive Editor, in Bangkok. Unfortunately, this newsletter is only available by email and it is not possible to view it on a website. The title of this particular story was: India Says Travel Advisories Should Go.However, the story was really excerpts from a speech given by the

Alan A. Lewnoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-437191971020115071.post-32626006667492592382008-05-05T23:41:00.014-07:002008-05-10T03:30:11.506-07:00

I posted a link to my blog post on Tourism is Not the World's Largest Industry! to the TRINET email discussion list, which is the largest email list for tourism academics worldwide. It generated a fair amount of discussion. One of the arguments used to support the importance of tourism as an industry was the Tourism Satellite Accounting system, which estimates the total economic and employment

Alan A. Lewnoreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-437191971020115071.post-83738439390688635052008-05-01T23:28:00.005-07:002008-05-06T18:28:57.630-07:00

It is the end of the semester and I am marking term papers. Few things drive me more crazy in doing this than coming across quoted and cited claims that tourism is the world's largest industry. Tourism is NOT the world's largest industry.Tourism actually ranks about 6th in international trade, after trade in fossil fuels, telecommunications and computer equipment, automotive products, and

Alan A. Lewnoreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-437191971020115071.post-30177049826068037432007-08-14T10:04:00.000-07:002007-08-14T10:12:40.847-07:00

From the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies (Harvard University)Published in 2002, this free (donations requested) online publication contains some 30 short articles written by well known names among tourism academics. It is sort of a mini-online book. Worth checking out, especially if you are interested in Latin America.

Alan A. Lewnoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-437191971020115071.post-72884990262783297142007-07-21T08:34:00.000-07:002007-07-21T08:52:52.510-07:00

"Lonely" not in the sense of being sad, but rather being the only one.This was probably the strangest airport transit/transfer that I have ever done. It worked, but was really different.It was a strange ticket from the start: PHX (Phoenix) to LAX (Los Angeles) to CAN (Guangzhou, China) to KUL (Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia), and returning by the same routing. AirTreks.com got me a really good price

Alan A. Lewnoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-437191971020115071.post-10922341079044552402007-06-30T07:36:00.000-07:002008-01-29T18:00:15.260-07:00

Last Updated: 30 June 2007I have been somewhat involved, but very interested, in a recent discussion on the podcast, Six Pixels of Separation, on the topic of university faculty blogs.Six Pixels of Separation podcast #50 - blog - mp3 file - 6 May 2007;and #51 - blog - mp3 file - 13 May 2007 One of the "complaints" about academia is that it is very conservative and a late adopter of new

Alan A. Lewnoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-437191971020115071.post-44419356246281955912007-04-10T08:44:00.000-07:002007-04-10T08:44:20.074-07:00

Grand Canyon Skywalk Disappoints Early VisitorsGrand Canyon Skywalk :: Hicks-Wright.net Blog"I was there in 2nd and 6th this month (April 2007). It's funny how they develop new strategies and rules each day, on Monday it was possible to go to the rim behind, so I guess west of the skywalk, on Friday a security guy was staying there and some self written signs telling no trespass allowed..."This

Alan A. Lewnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-437191971020115071.post-34243654327556892462006-11-17T12:39:00.000-07:002006-11-17T12:44:07.816-07:00

From Kingsley Dennis at 'New Mobilies (ce-more) (University of Lancaster)' blog:The New York Times has an interesting piece on the modern use of maps:"THE road map today is mostly virtual — an electronic image on a screen, at home or in the car, provided by Mapquest or a built-in satellite navigation system.""The new digital equipment for mapping provides technical challenges, especially for

Davidnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-437191971020115071.post-2413239140060547212006-11-09T11:38:00.000-07:002006-11-09T12:21:10.295-07:00

The panel session announcement below was in my inbox today.... While Dark Tourism is a concept that I have known about for several years, the idea that there is an annual academic conference on "Evil and Human Wickedness" kind of threw me for a loop.======= PANEL ON REALITY TOURS - Call for papers: To be organized as part of the 8th Global Conference Perspectives on Evil and Human Wickedness.

The Travel Geographerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17374093285849135840noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-437191971020115071.post-1451715977916090862006-10-29T09:41:00.000-07:002006-10-29T09:51:29.609-07:00

This is the start of a new Collaborative Blog on the topic of Tourism and Geography. The focus is on topics and commentaries that are primarily of interest to those who do research on the topic of tourism from a geographic perspective. The geographic perspective provdes a focus on topics that relate to (1) place development and experience, (2) the movement of people, ideas and things through

The Travel Geographerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17374093285849135840noreply@blogger.com5