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Summing up
It has often been lamented that “there is a limited theoretical development
in tourism studies” (Holden 2005, p. 5). Although it can be debated
whether or not that is the case, we have identified “tourism as a
geographical phenomenon” as something that tourism theory and tourism
research may well need to consider further.
Boiled down to its geographical essentials tourism entails
topologically complex geographies that takes us far beyond, say, a
descriptive geography of tourism accompanied by tedious mapping
exercises of tourist destinations and travel routes. Geography itself, if there
were to be such a thing, ensures that there is no safe haven for tourism
theory where it could be contemplated at face value. Tourism theory is
always in symbiosis with its earthly conditions of production in specific
places, here, there, and most importantly in-between. These geographical
conditions, as we have tried to illustrate, hold for the tourist and the
tourism researcher alike.
Of crucial importance for the present and future development of
tourism theory and research is the observation that “[t]ourism studies is
coming of age at a time when dramatic change is afoot in the broader
domain of social research philosophy” (Belhassen and Caton 2009, p.
335). It seems, however, that tourism studies are still not afoot with this
“dramatic change” that Belhassen and Caton refer to. When scanning the
tourism literature one gets the impression that much is still written and
done in the frame of old distinctions that all since long have been
problematized in social research philosophy: interpretative–explanatory,
positivism–hermeneutics, qualitative–quantitative, subjective–objective,
theoretical– empirical.
In a similar way as the tourist is stitching together and ordering his
or her behaviours, perceptions and cognitions, the tourism researcher is
also involved in travels from there to here in the construction of scientific
knowledge. Traditional research methodologies were developed when
knowledge travelled much more slowly. Today knowledge is more readily
accessible, circulates more widely and can be quickly transported. What
once was produced and belonged to only learned scholars can be disputed
or corrected on the spot by an audience of Googling students. The Internet,
with its too numerous to mention websites, is now also the place many
tourism researchers and potential tourists will visit during their process of
deciding on a destination or a research topic. They are then, with or
without Google as a gateway, engaging with the contemporary vast pool of
easily accessible tourist imaginationings. To decide and select from this
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