This book investigates urban tourism development in Sub-Saharan Africa, highlighting the challenges and risks involved, but also showcasing the potential benefits. Whilst much is written on Africa’s rural environments, little has been written about the tourism potential of the vast natural, cultural and historical resources in the continent’s urban areas. Yet these opportunities also come with considerable environmental, social and political challenges. This book interrogates the interactions between urban risks, tourism and sustainable development in Sub-Saharan African urban spaces. It addresses the underlying issues of governance, power, ownership, collaboration, justice, community empowerment and policies that influence tourism decision-making at local, national and regional levels. Interrogating the intricate relationships between tourism stakeholders, this book ultimately reflects on how urban risk can be mitigated, and how sustainable urban tourism can be harnessed for development. The important insights in this book will be of interest to researchers and practitioners across Tourism, Geography, Urban Development, and African Studies.

Over the past decade, the field of urban tourism has consolidated with the appearance of several books that concentrate upon the Western European and North American experience. Recently, the scope and range of urban research has widened considerably, including the welcome appearance of studies that examine the tourism phenomenon in cities outside the Euro-American heartland.Despite this growing international body of debate and scholarship on tourism and cities, particularly in the developed North, literature that relates to the developing world as a whole, and to Africa in particular, remains sparse. The task of Urban Tourism in the Developing World: The South African Experience is to augment the current international scholarship concerning urban tourism in the developing world. More especially, the contributors draw attention to a range of case studies from South Africa that provide some starting points to address the uneven scholarly coverage of urban tourism the African context has received to date. In addition, the research material presented here seeks to contribute toward raising the South African, and indeed the African profile, within growing international scholarship concerning issues of urban tourism and development.This collection aims to expand an emerging South African and African tourism research "voice" concerning the tourism and development nexus, as well as to stem critiques that this body of research appears to have developed in a theoretical vacuum, divorced from broader international tourism research discourses. This collection of essays not only further develops an independent South African tourism perspective, but also presents research that is closely tied to international urban tourism research debates. In addition, this analysis of urban tourism in the South African context enriches the rather Western-oriented theories of urban tourism discourse through its emphasis on how urban tourism is evolving in urban Africa.

This book examines and addresses the particular character of urban tourism occurring in the global South. It presents research essays on tourism in urban areas of South Africa, a country which is associated with big 5 nature tourism but where urban areas are also major tourism destinations. The book contextualizes urban tourism in South Africa as part of ‘the other half of urban tourism’, an overlooked but energetic scholarship which is emerging on urban places in the global South. The volume moves to present a collection of original material variously on national perspectives on urban tourism following by a cluster of city level perspectives. The last three contributions turn to the role of tourism in small towns, the bottom rung in the urban settlement system. Issues of concern include gastronomic tourism, VFR travel, airportscapes, climate change, AirBnb and creative tourism. Finally, as COVID-19 is potentially a defining historical moment for urban tourism, the volume incorporates historical research perspectives in order to address the overwhelming ‘present-mindedness’ of mainstream urban tourism writings. The book highlights the challenges and opportunities for tourism development in the environment of the urban global South and is relevant to scholars of both tourism and urban studies as well as researchers in development studies.

This book presents new research on the capacity of big cities to generate new tourism areas as visitors discover and help create new urban experiences off the beaten track. It examines similarities and differences in these processes in a group of established world cities located in the global circuits of tourism. The cities featured are Berlin, New York, London, Paris, and Sydney. In these cities experienced city visitors are contributing to the ‘discovery’ of new places to visit. Many neighbourhoods close to the historic centre and to traditional attractions offer the mix of cultural difference and consumption opportunities that can create new experiences for distinctive groups of city users. Each of the cities included in the book offers rich experiences of the re-imagining and re-branding of neighbourhoods off the beaten track, and informative stories of the complex relationships between visitors, residents and others and of the ambitions of public policy to reproduce these new tourism experiences in other parts of the city. World Tourism Cities brings together current research in each of the cities and relates the often separate field of tourism research to some of the mainstream themes of debate in urban studies addressing topics such as consumption, markets and spaces. Drawing on original research in this important group of cities this book has significant messages for public policy. In addition the book engages directly with a range of important current academic debates – about world cities, about cities as sites of consumption and about the smaller scales at which urban neighbourhoods are being transformed. The range of cities and the messages about the making of attractive places provides a timely resource for those focused in this area and the book will also have an appeal among those experienced and sophisticated city users that it focuses on.

World Tourism Cities: A Systematic Approach to Urban Tourism is a unique and contemporary textbook that addresses the particular situation of urban tourism destinations in the 2020s by reviewing key issues, trends, challenges and future opportunities for urban tourism destinations worldwide, as well as city destination management. The book is divided into four parts, with Part I providing background chapters on world tourism cities. It begins by clearly defining world tourism cities and explaining the impacts of globalisation and urbanisation on these cities. The subsequent chapter explains the urban tourism phenomenon and traces its growth. Part II presents city destination management, planning and development and the marketing and branding of cities, offering practical solutions and approaches. Part III discusses major issues and trends in world tourism cities including resident well-being and quality of life, sustainability, smart tourism, crises and the rise of tourism in Asian cities, and the final part identifies the future opportunities for city tourism. Written in a student-friendly tone, the book is richly illustrated and contains several engaging features, including Sweet tweets (snippets of information on cities) and Short breaks (detailed case studies on cities). This will be essential reading for all tourism students.

The Power of New Urban Tourism explores new forms of tourism in urban areas with their social, political, cultural, architectural and economic implications. By investigating various showcases of New Urban Tourism within its social and spatial frames, the book offers insights into power relations and connections between tourism and cityscapes in various socio-spatial settings around the world. Contributors to the volume show how urban space has become a battleground between local residents and visitors, with changing perceptions of tourists as co-users of public and private urban spaces and as influencers of the local economies. This includes different roles of digital platforms as resources for access to the city and touristic opportunities as well as ways to organise and express protest or shifting representations of urban space. With contemporary cases from a wide disciplinary spectrum, the contributors investigate the power of New Urban Tourism in Africa, Asia, the Americas, Europe and Oceania. This focus allows a cross-cultural evaluation of New Urban Tourism and its dynamic, and changing conception transforming and subverting cities and tourism alike. The Power of New Urban Tourism will be of great interest to academics, researchers and students in the fields of cultural studies, sociology, the political sciences, economics, history, human geography, urban design and planning, architecture, ethnology and anthropology.

What is the thruth behind the paradise beaches in travel brocures? What can a developing country do when one exotic holiday seems much like another, when political instability or environmental disaster can deter tourist for years, when the tourism industry slips into foreign control? Tourism and Development in the Third World assess the diverse social, economic, and environmental factors which impact on the Third World. Illustrating the analysis with cases which range across tourism in game parks, sex tours and the after-efects of political turmoil, the book explores ways of managing tourism as a resource and evaluates its long-term contribution towards national development.