This text provides comprehensive coverage of a major topic in post-16 geography courses. An introductory section establishes the significance of tourism in the world economy, as an industry generating about one-eighth of global revenues.

Succeeding chapters examine the social, economic, environmental and political aspects. Five areas, exemplifying different types of tourism, are regularly re-visited - Brighton, the Spanish costas, the Gambia, New Zealand and the Disney venues.

Banality is not always avoided (“the length of a business trip is largely dependent upon the nature of the business involved”) and closer proof-reading might have eliminated the “batchelor” (soup-loving?) phase of the tourist life-cycle. There are references to tigers in Africa and the figure for Dutch overseas tourists varies from 7 per cent (page 9) to 66 per cent (page 66).

There are some inventive touches, links are made between Presley’s Graceland and the Diana shrine at Althorp, links that might have been extended back into medieval times when pilgrimages to the sites of holy relics were surely the precursors of this form of tourism.

The cost-benefit approach, productively employed in the discussion of tourism, could be applied to this book, whose colourless format is drab for such a lively topic, but this would undoubtedly have inflated its competitive price.