Making a holiday involving an overnight stay away from the normal place of residence. Tourism has grown to become the world’s second largest industry, directly accounting for 3.8% of global GDP (World Travel and Tourism Council, 2005). The mushrooming of international tourism may be explained by high levels of disposable income and longer holidays in more economically developed countries; the development of package holidays, which reduce risk; cheap, mass air transport; and place myths, which persuade the tourist that the local culture they see represents the ‘real thing’. Of critical importance has been the internationalization of finance: credit and debit cards, travellers’ cheques, and hotel vouchers. Creative tourism means allowing visitors to participate in events specific to the city or area visited; see G. Richards and J. Wilson (2007).

Kweka (2004, Conf. Growth, Poverty & Human Dev. Africa) finds that tourism expansion has a substantial impact on the Tanzanian economy, while Mitchell and Ashley (2006, ODI Briefing Paper), point out that the most important pro-poor impact of tourism is local employment: ‘tourism employment relatively favours the marginalized sector as a higher proportion of women workers relative to other similar industries are employed.’ However, the tourism industry generally exhibits a high degree of leakage—whereby part of the foreign exchange earnings generated by tourism is either retained by tourist-generating countries or repatriated to them in the form of profits, income and royalty remittances, repayment of foreign loans, and imports of equipment, materials, capital, and consumer goods (Diaz (2001) Symposium on Tourism Services Paper).

Dixon et al. (2001) World Bank, Env. Dept Paper 80 list some of the environmental impacts of tourism: the generation of substantial amounts of solid and liquid waste, high demand on energy and freshwater resources, and the damage to environmentally sensitive areas. Peeters et al. (2007) J. Transp. Geog. 15, 2 find that climate change generates more than half of the externalities of tourist transport. Lee et al. (2006) Annals Tourist Res. 33, 2 study environmentally friendly practices in the Vietnamese hotel businesses; Singh (2007) Annals Tourist Res. 34, 4 describes environmental management strategies for damage control in India’s mountainous areas; and Holden (2005) Annals Tourist Res. 32, 3 considers the environmental ethics of tourism. Socio-cultural impacts include increased crime rate, higher levels of prostitution, and sex tourism; see Shah and Gupta (2000) Overseas Development Institute, UK. Shepherd (2002) Tourist Studs 2, 2 reflects on commodification, culture, and tourism, and Clarke (2004) TIBG 23, 4 thinks tourism makes the world and its people ‘modern’. For part 1 of a review of geographies of tourism, see Gibson (2008) PHG 32, 3.