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Chapter 24 Tourism

This document discusses tourism theories and models. It defines tourism as temporary movement to destinations outside the normal home and workplace for activities and facilities catering to tourists' needs. Tourism is a multidisciplinary field that borrows theories from other disciplines like psychology, sociology, economics. While there is no consensus on a definition and shortage of tourism-specific theories, scholars have developed descriptive and explanatory models of tourism systems as well as predictive models based on causal relationships. Some key concepts in tourism include tourism systems, tourist typologies, and Butler's Tourist Area Life Cycle model. Various theories are used to understand tourist behavior, motivations, consumption, and destination choice.

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Ma. Carmela P. Balingit
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53 views2 pages

Chapter 24 Tourism

This document discusses tourism theories and models. It defines tourism as temporary movement to destinations outside the normal home and workplace for activities and facilities catering to tourists' needs. Tourism is a multidisciplinary field that borrows theories from other disciplines like psychology, sociology, economics. While there is no consensus on a definition and shortage of tourism-specific theories, scholars have developed descriptive and explanatory models of tourism systems as well as predictive models based on causal relationships. Some key concepts in tourism include tourism systems, tourist typologies, and Butler's Tourist Area Life Cycle model. Various theories are used to understand tourist behavior, motivations, consumption, and destination choice.

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Ma. Carmela P. Balingit
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© © All Rights Reserved
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Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Tourism Theories

Chapter · January 2015

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Thinaranjeney Thirumoorthi Brian Wong Kee Mun


University of Malaya KDU University College
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To Cite: Thirumoorthy, T., & Wong, K. M. (2015). Tourism, Chapter 24. In: A., Idris, S., Moghavvemi & G., Musa (Eds.),
Selected Theories in Social Science Research. Kuala Lumpur: UM Press.

CHAPTER 24
TOURISM
Thinaranjeney Thirumoorthi and Kee Mun Wong

Introduction
Tourism industry is still blooming in the 21st century as it represents 9.2% of world GDP and 235
million people are employed within this industry (WTTC 2010). This indicates that tourism is
one of the main economic sectors in the world. Tourism does not stand alone and it is highly
integrated. Given the complex nature of tourism industry, it is vital to understand the system and
structure of this industry, the tourists’ needs and behaviour.
Tourism is defined as “the temporary movement to destination outside the normal home and
workplace, the activities undertaken during the stay, and the facilities created to cater for the
needs of tourists” (Mathieson and Wall 1982). Although there is no consensus on the definition
of tourism among the researchers and lack of theories in tourism (Franklin and Crang 2001), the
conceptualization of tourism as a discipline leads to the emergence of conceptual and theoretical
approaches which contributes to the tourism literature. There are few types of theoretical models
of tourism; descriptive models, explanatory models and predictive models (Chorley and Haggett
1967). A descriptive model depicts the tourism system while explanatory model illustrates how
the system and subsystem function. The predictive model is developed based on causal
relationship which allows prediction.
Tourism is a multidisciplinary as the phenomenon within this discipline cannot be studied
using a single disciplinary (Matthews and Ritcher 1991). Tourism scholars adapt theories from
other disciplines such as psychology, sociology, anthropology, economics and etc. (Sheldon
1991). Borrowing theories from other discipline is common in tourism discipline. Even though,
there is short of theory building within this discipline, scholars developed few key concepts in
tourism such as tourism system (Leiper 1979), tourist typology (Plog 1974; Cohen 1972; Smith
1977) and Butler’s Tourist Area Life Cycle (TALC) (Butler, 1980). Various theories are
employed to understand the tourists’ travel behavior, motivation, consumption pattern, and

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