Issues in Cultural Tourism Studies

The third edition of Issues in Cultural Tourism Studies provides a vital framework for analysing the complexity of cultural tourism and its increasing globalization in existing as well as emergent destinations of the world. It focuses in particular on the need for even more creative tourism strategies to differentiate destinations from each other using a blend of localized cultural products and innovative global attractions.

The book explores many of the most pertinent issues in heritage, arts, festivals, indigenous, ethnic and experiential cultural tourism in urban and rural environments alike. Since the second edition of this book there have been many important developments in this field and this third edition has been completely revised and updated to include:

• New content on: film induced tourism, motivations of cultural tourists, rise of BRIC countries, mobility, embodiment, cultural and digital technologies, impacts of the financial crisis and cultural tourism and imagination.
• New and updated case studies from wide global perspectives, including emerging BRIC countries.
• New pedagogical features within the text to aid understanding and critical thinking including: discussion points, questions at the end of case studies and a further reading section.

At the interface between the global and the local, a people-centred approach to planning and development is advocated to ensure that benefits are maximized for local areas, a sense of place and identity are retained, and the tourist experience is enhanced to the full. The text is unique in that it provides a summary and a synthesis of all of the major issues in global cultural tourism, which are presented in an accessible way using a diverse range of international case studies. It is essential and valuable reading for all tourism students.

Melanie K. Smith is Associate Professor in Tourism Management at the BKF University of Applied Sciences in Budapest, Hungary. In addition to writing the first two editions of this bookIssues in Cultural Tourism Studies (2003, 2009), she has edited four further books on cultural tourism including the Routledge Handbook of Cultural Tourism with Greg Richards (2013) andEthnic and Minority Cultures as Tourist Attractions with Anya Diekmann (2015), and contributed chapters to several other cultural tourism books. She was also Director of an MA in Cultural Tourism Management at the University of Greenwich in London for several years.