Short description:

This collection focuses on both the interactions between tourists and villagers, and the impacts of tourism at the local level, considering economic, social, cultural and environmental changes.

Long description:

In two regions where tourism is of considerable economic importance, eastern Asia and the Pacific, there have been remarkably few studies of the impacts of tourism in rural areas. Moreover, the shift towards ecotourism, touted as a more environmentally benign form of tourism, has extended the reach of tourism into more remote and fragile environments. This shift has drawn more local people in rural and remote areas into a partly tourism economy, involving them as participants in the tourist industry. Yet little is known about who have been the beneficiaries of these developments.

This new collection focuses on both the interactions between tourists and villagers, and the impacts of tourism at the local level, considering economic, social, cultural and environmental changes. It traces changes in structures of vulnerability as tourism becomes more prominent, the role of tourism in community development (or localized tension) and examines issues of governance, the role of tour operators as intermediaries, cultural change and other local impacts. In short, it examines the changing role of tourism in local development (or its absence).

It includes case studies drawn from a broad geographical area across eastern Asia and the island Pacific. This book will be useful to those researching and studying tourism, geography and development studies.

"Should be useful to tourism researchers and planners in the Asia-Pacific and beyond....Recommended." ? Choice, March 2009

"Connell and Rugendyke's introduction helpfully enumerates the problems with tourism that villagers, and academics, are keeping their eyes on." ? Pacific Affairs

Table of Contents:

1. Introduction: Tourism and Local People in the Asia-Pacific Region  2. Another (Unintended) Legacy of Captain Cook?: The Evolution of Rapanui (Easter Island) Tourism  3. Moderate Expectations and Benign Exploration: Tourism in Papua New Guinea  4. ?Everything is Truthful Here?: Custom Village Tourism in Tanna, Vanuatu  5. The Whole Nine Villages: Local Level Development through Mass Tourism in Tibetan China  6. Weapons of the Workers: Employees in the Fiji Hotel Scene  7. On the Beach: Small-Scale Tourism in Samoa  8. After the Bomb in a Balinese Village  9. Sustainability and Security: Employing Local People in Lombok Hotels, Indonesia  10. Priorities, People and Preservation: Nature-Based Tourism at Cuc Phuong National Park, Vietnam  11. Communities on Edge: Conflicts over Community Tourism in Thailand  12. Community-Based Ecotourism in Thailand  13. Ecotourism and Indigenous Communities: The Lower Kinabatangan Experience in Borneo  14. Adventures, Picnics and Nature Tourism: Ecotourism in Malaysian National Parks  15. Conclusion: Marginal People and Marginal Places?