Slow Travel and Tourism

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

It is widely recognized that travel and tourism can have a high environmental impact and make a major contribution to climate change. It is therefore vital that ways to reduce these impacts are developed and implemented. 'Slow travel' provides such a concept, drawing on ideas from the 'slow food' movement with a concern for locality, ecology and quality of life.The aim of this book is to define slow travel and to discuss how some underlining values are likely to pervade new forms of sustainable development. It also aims to provide insights into the travel experience; these are explored in several chapters which bring new knowledge about sustainable transport tourism from across the world. In order to do this the book explores the concept of slow travel and sets out its core ingredients, comparing it with related frameworks such as low-carbon tourism and sustainable tourism development. The authors explain slow travel as holiday travel where air and car transport is rejected in favour of more environmentally benign forms of overland transport, which generally take much longer and become incorporated as part of the holiday experience. The book critically examines the key trends in tourism transport and recent climate change debates, setting out the main issues facing tourism planners. It reviews the potential for new consumption patterns, as well as current business models that facilitate hyper-mobility. This provides a cutting edge critique of the 'upstream' drivers to unsustainable tourism. Finally, the authors illustrate their approach through a series of case studies from around the world, featuring travel by train, bus, cycling and walking. Examples are drawn from Europe, Asia, Australia and the Americas. Cases include the Eurostar train (as an alternative to air travel), walking in the Appalachian Trail (US), the Euro-Velo network of long-distance cycling routes, canoe tours on the Gudena River in Denmark, sea kayaking in British Columbia (Canada) and the Oz Bus Europe to Australia.

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

• List of Figures and Tables (p. vi)
• Acknowledgements (p. vii)
• List of Acronyms and Abbreviations (p. vii)
• 1 The Emergence of Slow Travel (p. 1)
• 2 The Impacts of Transport for Tourism (p. 17)
• 3 Tourism, Transport and Environment: Theoretical Perspectives (p. 47)
• 4 Slow Travel - the Ingredients (p. 75)
• 5 Train Tourism (p. 105)
• 6 Walking and Tourism (p. 119)
• 7 Cycling and Tourism (p. 135)
• 8 Bus and Coach Tourism (p. 147)
• 9 Water-Based Travel (p. 157)
• 10 The Future of Slow Travel (p. 175)
• References (p. 193)
• Index (p. 227)

Reviews provided by Syndetics

CHOICE Review

Humankind has always had a great fascination for speed: fast horses, fast ships, fast trains, fast cars, fast airplanes. In the context of tourism, this has often meant traveling to a destination as rapidly as possible in the limited time available: "the trip of a lifetime" or "10 countries in 20 days." As the 21st century unfolds, however, many new concerns are changing thinking about both the physical and cultural impacts of tourism. Among these are the growing use of increasingly scarce oil to power cars, planes, and cruise ships and the resulting greenhouse effect on the Earth's environment, as well as how sustainable development can be maintained in many of the world's poorer regions. This exhaustively researched and well-written volume explores these problems and contradictions in depth. Using numerous figures and tables, the authors argue that reducing the hectic pace of travel as a component of the tourism industry would have numerous beneficial effects. Changing tourism's image as a "feel-good" industry into that of a more Earth-friendly activity on a large scale is a challenging task, but the rewards could be great. Although a bit technical in spots, this book should interest many general readers as well as tourism professionals. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Most levels/libraries. J. R. McDonald emeritus, Eastern Michigan University