Archipelago tourism: policies and practices

Abstract

[Excerpt] Archipelago Tourism is an edited book by Godfrey Baldacchino, an internationally recognized researcher with an extensive track record of quality publications on islands. He gathered contributions from 26 people, who in different ways advance the idea of archipelago tourism, or in Baldacchino’s own words, “explore the conceptual insights provided by the archipelagic twist” (p. 7). This ensemble is a blend of established academics, senior researchers and PhD candidates, with varied backgrounds, ranging from geography, sociology and anthropology, to tourism, management, environmental studies, spatial economics, education and music. To this interdisciplinary flavour, the book adds an extremely diverse geographical origin of both authors and case studies. These ingredients make Archipelago Tourism a stimulating and ambitious book, which despite some quality asymmetries (inescapable when gathering such a large number of people), provide different perspectives on the origin, development, growth, branding and current issues of tourism in many islands across the globe, or more accurately, of island or archipelago tourism. [...]