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T O U R I S M F LO W S 13

brings a number of social problems. The majority of money brought into the area by huge numbers of
tourists never benefits the local economy due to outside investment. The clear majority of the tourists it
does attract are also Americans, and of an older age range. Like Las Vegas, Atlantic City is attempting to
target the younger clientele after having little success marketing itself as a family destination.
Source: Various

Discussion questions
1 As it finds itself struggling in this industry yet again, can Atlantic City re-invent its image once more, or
is a third chance too much to ask for?
2 Will the change in UK law with respect to casinos mean that some UK resorts, e.g. Blackpool, will look
to re-inventing themselves as gambling destinations?

Two other influential theorists of this important early era of tourism management’s
development as an academic study need to be introduced at this stage. Miossec (1977), a
French researcher, pointed out that the development of a destination was influenced not
only by the behaviour of tourists but also by the destination’s responses to that
behaviour. The planning of facilities and infrastructure thus plays a significant role in
shaping the eventual outcomes of tourism development. Second, Gray (1970) coined the
expression ‘sunlust’ tourism to describe the motivation of those tourists who had begun
flooding to the Mediterranean from northern Europe for their summer holidays.

Tourism flows
This large-scale flow of tourists from the United Kingdom, Germany and Scandinavia to
Spain and Italy, and subsequently to Greece and Turkey, is one of the most obvious
tourism flows if you are a native of one of those generating countries. The North–South
flow is also prevalent in the United States and Canada. Residents of cities such as New
York and Chicago move in large numbers to the sunlust destinations in Florida, and
more recently to Caribbean island states and Mexico. The similarities to the major
European flow are obvious, but it should be noted that movement from New York or
Chicago to Florida is an example of domestic tourism, that is, tourism movement within
the same country. The recent widespread introduction of the euro as the unit of currency
in most European countries now means that tourism from Germany or The Netherlands
to Spain or Greece has become economically domestic, but tourism from the United
Kingdom or Sweden, who have not joined the European Monetary Union, to Spain or
Greece, who are members, remains economically international tourism.
To identify tourism flows accurately it is essential to draw on accurate data for anal-
ysis. The most widely used data is that collected and published by the World Tourism
Organization. While there are difficulties with all tourism data, an issue we will return
to in the final chapter, most academics use this WTO data as a source, and the data in
the following paragraphs is drawn directly from or derived from the WTO databases.
It is important to recognise which nations are the major tourism generators (i.e.
where the visitors come from) and the major tourism recipients (i.e. where they visit).
The major nations, measured by the parameter of international tourist arrivals, are
listed in Table 1.2.
As we are studying tourism from a business perspective, an alternative parameter to
consider is tourism spend. Table 1.3 gives the ‘Top Ten’ data on tourism spending by
nation and tourism earning by nation.