Preface and acknowledgements

Preface and AcknowledgementsSurprisingly, despite the fact that coastal tourism resorts are animmensely important tourist space and are dealt with in most post-graduate and undergraduate tourism courses, there are few books whichfocus solely upon them, and there has been limited critical assessment oftheir evolution, planning, development and management. Moreover, themajority of academic research undertaken in this area has beencompleted within Northern and Southern Europe at the expense of awider global consideration, and is overly descriptive in nature, consistingof a collection of theoretically unconnected case studies. This bookaddresses this research vacuum by adopting a thematic framework inwhich to examine coastal tourism resorts in a selected range ofenvironments across the globe.