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Image 4.2: The shrinking map of the world. 30
The shrinking map of the world may equally be read as an
illustration of the globalisation of tourism through rounds of “time-space
compression”. Places that once took weeks or days to travel to, by horse or
sailing ships, can now be reached by car or aeroplanes within hours. Of
importance to note in the depiction is that there is a real material
geography also behind the scale of the global. From that follows that a
tourist destination does in a sense not operate on a global market where it
meets its competitors on an equal footing but on its own geographic
position in a wider transportation network. For example, if a tourist
destination does not have an airport, then it is simply not very accessible
by aviation. Likewise, potential tourism generating regions with their
customers are always geographically situated. If Iceland as a tourist
receiving region wants to compete for tourists from China, it will have to
30 Harvey 1989, p. 241, plate 3.1.
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