Book Review – Tourism in Turbulent Times

I suppose that a sad reflection of the world in which we all live is that instead of the normal and to be expected tourism books extolling the virtues of wonderful places to visit and things to see, we have recently seen the publishing of a spate of books dealing with the effect and impacts on tourism of disasters throughout the world.

Tourism in Turbulent Times – Towards Safe Experiences for Visitors, while clearly one of those books, published by Elsevier and edited by a team of Queensland based academic specialists in this space, Jeff Wilks, Donna Pendergast and Peter Leggatt, is actually a really good must-read for anyone in the tourism business who may be impacted by occurrences of this nature or simply want to learn more.

One of the interesting things about this book is that while it could be considered rather academic or text book-like in its approach, it does make relatively easy reading and the list of contributors from eleven countries includes some the leading specialists in this field from across the industry, including the very well-known and immensely knowledgeable Dr. David Beirman, Director of the Israel Tourist Office in Australia and an acknowledged author, speaker and specialist on this topic in his own right.

The section headings in this compilation of specialist views include Health, Safety and Security, Adventure, Government and Industry Initiatives and the range or topics covered in the sectors include tourist health, safety and security; travel medicine and tourist health; travel insurance and aero-medical evacuation; tourism and SARS; local health impacts of tourism; terrorism and tourism, crime and tourism, tourist injury and a travel industry perspective on Government travel advisories, etc, etc.

These are all critical topics that all travel professionals need to be more authoritatively and better informed about.

The interesting thing about this book is that the topics are all examined by specialists who offer best practice advice and share a common view that tourism can weather turbulent times through adopting appropriate risk management strategies and continuing to provide quality service for customers.

So, for a great book firstly to read, from which gain to massive knowledge and secondly simply to have on the shelf as a reference book, I suggest you either get on line or down to your nearest book store and pick up a copy.

Title: Tourism in Turbulent Times – Towards Safe Experiences for Visitors. 

Publishers: Elsevier Ltd

ISBN-10: 0-08-044666-3

ISBN-13: 978-0-08-044666-0

Review by The Mole