Imaginaries of place, destination, and travel are increasingly produced and consumed by diverse populations through expanding forms of media and opportunities for travel. Defined as the potential power of a place as a tourist destination, these spatial imaginaries are collaboratively produced and are a nexus of social practices through which individuals and groups intersect to establish a place as a credible destination.
Bringing together an international team of scholars, this book provides a unique analysis of current multidisciplinary research on the complex relationships between tourism and the imaginaries of tourist destinations.
Tracing the links between tourism imaginaries and their religious (heaven) and political (utopia) antecedents, the opening of the book follows the growth of the disciplines exploring this concept in tourism up to their present parallels and convergences. The substantive chapters are organised into three main thematic sections, the first explores the touristic production and consumption of place imaginaries, the second analyses the way places are practiced through imaginaries and the role imaginaries play in the tourist experience and the final section explores the way images and the media participate in the creation of tourism imaginaries.
