Airlines are cited correctly as an ex- ample of players already reaping signi- ficant benefits through their domi- nance of the CRS industry and the resulting control over the manipula- tion and distribution of the industry’s information - an issue which has already surfaced regularly on the desks of the regulatory authorities.

What competitive strategies, then, should industry players implement in order to take advantage of this new environment? Again, Dr Poon pro- vides valuable analysis in an excellent chapter focusing on the primacy of customer requirements and the need for continuous improvements in quali- ty. Perhaps not radical suggestions in themselves but effectively related to real issues presently being faced by both commercial operators and des- tination marketeers.

The final section, which accepts that tourism is a double edged-sword, argues that the primary issue is not whether to develop tourism but how. ‘No other goods, service or activity can replicate the wealth-creating opportunities that the tourism sector provides.’ The author argues coherently for sustainable and en- vironmentally sound strategies, using technology merely to assist competi- tive product positioning. Destinations are, after all, comparatively modest players in the use of technology and so this section inevitably rather belies the implicit focus of the book’s title.

Her points are illustrated by a de- tailed study of the position of the Caribbean tourism industry, providing an effective and interesting analysis of the relationship between tourism and the rest of the Caribbean economy. It is perhaps a shame though that this concluding section, in comparison with the rest of the book, is so specifi- cally focused on the Caribbean as this does not facilitate easy comparison with many of the arguments made in early chapters.

Notwithstanding these small cavils I found the book, as stated by another reviewer on the back cover, ‘Easy to read, but not lightweight . . . above all interesting and relevant’. It will pro- vide an excellent basis for study in higher education establishments and should certainly be on the compulsory

reading list for all those seeking to advise and direct strategic plans for both old and new tourism destina- tions.

Gilbert Archdale Enmore Green

Dorset SP7 8LP, UK

A Postcard Home Robert Minhinnick Gomer Press Llandysu136 pp f3.95

Robert Minhinnick is a poet and essayist; he also works for the Friends of the Earth (an organization that is concerned with the earth’s environ- ment). In this small book, through a series of essays, he takes a haphazard swing at the demons of the tourism industry, many of his countrymen and at the world in general . . . but mostly at the Wales Tourist Board, which he sees as the cause of many of the ills in Wales today.

I must immediately declare an in- terest, as I worked as an employee of the Wales Tourist Board for over 10 years and continue doing so on several projects on a consultancy basis. I think, therefore, that I can claim a better understanding of its workings than most. In many people’s minds the WTB is some huge, amorphous orga- nization with a budget that would have sent Robert Maxwell salivating over his pension funds. The other fantasy is that it is based in a glamorous building that has all the amenities of a luxury hotel. In fact, there are 103 people working at the WTB, on one and a bit floors of a building that must have been planned by a child with Lego bricks and who then sited it next door to Cardiff Prison. The budget, by the way, in 1993 was E9 471 000 (the cost of a couple of reasonable-sized leisure centres). If the tourism industry was worth only half of the aE1.3 billion a year that is quoted, then the WTB’s budget would seem to pale in compari- son.

I think it thus becomes obvious that the author and others have endowed it with powers and authority way beyond that which is really has. I have never heard anyone in the Wales Tourist Board suggest that employment in

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tourism can be the answer to the many jobs lost in the mining and steel indus- tries. In fact, I know that they would be the first to admit that this is not the case. And, on one hand, he eulogizes about the mining valleys of south Wales, whilst on the other, when he actually comes into contact with some of its inhabitants in a pub in the com- pany of an American friend, he beats a hasty retreat. As one who was born in a mining community and whose family all worked underground, I can advise him that he was lucky that he escaped with only his ego slightly den- ted.

Nobody likes to be patronized and I am afraid that this is what the author does, throughout his unhappy wander- ings in Wales where he, too, was born. He ranges from the local authority people ‘the usual dreary set you meet at such ventures - male, middle-aged, grey suited’ through the regulars at a mining valley pub ‘the type of Welsh& men who fill an empty half-hour with a mooning competition’ to the poet R.S. Thomas, who ‘often appears as though there is a very bad smell hovering under his nose’. In fact, the author seems to have very little time for anyone who is not in total agreement with him, even the literati at the Hay on Wye Literature Festival, whom he presumably writes for: ‘a formidable caste of literary astrologers who could buttonhole a bull elephant and mesmerize it with their ceaseless quacksalver of lore, gossip, predic- tion, complaint and fain praise’.

It is a shame that, working for the Friends of the Earth, Robert Minhin- nick has not grasped that life is more complicated than he may wish to por- tray it. Europe, not only Wales, is losing its heavy industry; and much of the world has a lot more free time than it did 40 years ago. Working under- ground, my grandfather did not have a paid holiday until he reached the end of his life. I hope these are not the halcyon days that the author is harking back to. He is, of course, right to point out tourism may bring problems in its wake and that its development may not be to everybody’s taste. Nobody in their right mind would want a country that was totally dependent on tourism, or on heavy industry for that matter,

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Books

and if we could wave a magic wand I am certain that we would all want a healthy mixed economy but the intri- cacies of the global system are making this very difficult to achieve.

Finally, he attacks the WTB’s stance towards the culture and en- vironment of Wales. Again, he only sees what he wants to. A great part of the Board’s work is devoted to tour- ism management and for three years the Wales Tourist Board actively promoted its history and culture speci- fically under the banner of ‘Celtica’, which it now incorporates into many of its publications. It is also working to establish a network of off-road cycle tracks which will use the disused rail- way lines that c&s-cross Wales.

It is also a shame that Robert Minhinnick is unable to take a more constructive view of the world, using his experience with the Friends of the Earth to suggest some positive solu- tions to the problems that he high- lights. After all, one of the environ- mentally friendly actions of the WTB was to assist the Centre for Altema- tive Technology at Machynlleth, sure- ly a good cause even for a purist like him. Dylan Thomas, the Welsh poet, once said, ‘An alcoholic is a person who drinks as much as you do but whom you don’t like’. In Robert Minhinnick’s case one could say, ‘A tourist is a person who travels to the same places as you do but whom you don’t like’.

This is a sad postcard home, as distorted as the sea-side pictures of Donald McGill in the early part of this century. But McGill’s postcards man- aged to capture the essence of the life of the working man and they were funnier.

Paul Barrett c/o Wales Tourist Board

2 Fitzalan Road Cardiff 02 I UY, UK

Learning to live with Tourism S Craig-Smith and C N French Pitman Publishing Melbourne (1994) 193 pp AU$19.99 ISBN 0 7299 0294 3

This book is an interesting addition to the literature on sustainable tourism

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and will be appreciated by many tour- ism students looking for a genuinely international range of tourism case studies each presented in a standar- dized and thus comparable format. It does not however deliver what is indi- cated by the title.

The work consists of six chapters: an introduction, a chapter on costs and benefits, three chapters on tour- ism and the environment (entitled natural, built and cultural) and finally a look into the future at sustainable tourism. Chapters 3,4 and 5 consist of an introduction and then a series of case studies under broad headings such as wilderness areas, natural honey-pots and parks and recreational areas (in the case of the natural en- vironment chapter). Each case study incorporates sections on demand, im- pacts and implications. The formula approach will appeal to students and makes the work useful for reference purposes.

The novel aspects of this book are its case studies, which are broad rang- ing, and its final chapter which evalu- ates the future of sustainable tourism and draws concise conclusions from the various case studies. The built environment chapter case studies on Baltimore, Liverpool and other inner- city areas are illuminating. The chap- ter on cultural heritage is also interest- ing. The cultural aspect is frequently downplayed in studies of tourism and the environment. In this case, the relationship between cultural herit- age, sustainable tourism and the en- vironment of tourism is explained con- vincingly. The case studies are truly international in focus, with eight from Australia (where both authors are based), seven from North America, five each from Asia and Europe, and one each from Africa and Antarctica.

Despite the many positives, the book does have a (possibly fatal) flaw. The book’s title, Learning to Live with Tourism, seems to say to the reader ‘by reading this book, I will learn how to live better with tourists’. It is re- miniscent of messages disseminated by government-sponsored tourism aware- ness campaigns during Tourism Aware- ness Weeks.

The audiences for such campaigns are often schoolchildren and villages

(particularly in developing countries). The Fiji Tourism Awareness Program- me published a book targeted at such an audience (Tourism and Fiji, 1993), consisting of 18 pages in comic book form. Other campaigns attempt to communicate with p,oliticians, tourism industry employees, the media and with decision makers in industries which depend to some extent on tour- ism. Documents accompanying the latter type of campaigns often empha- size the economic contribution of tourism.

The readership of Learning to Live with Tourism is more likely to be tertiary students on tourism courses, ie an audience already convinced of the merits of tourism. The various and fairly sophisticated tourism models found in the first two chapters would soon convince the uninitiated that this is not a book for them.

Nor is the book likely to deliver the promises made in the Preface. According to the opening paragraph it is intended as an update of George Young’s Tourkm, Blessing or Blight (first paragraph) and as an update to Mathieson and Wall’s Tourkm: Eco- nomic, Physical and Social Impacts (second paragraph). It cannot be both of these things. Young’s book was a polemic (the term ‘blight’ in the title set the tone) published over 20 years ago and aimed at raising awareness of tourism amongst a lay audience at a time when the phenomenon was far less well known than today. The Mathieson and Wall book examined the theoretical aspects of tourism im- pacts for an audience of (predomi- nantly) academics and students. The artwork on the dustcover of Learning to Live with Tourism - a cartoon de- piction of a stereotypical tourist taking snaps of a winking Sphinx - indicates an almost tongue-in-cheek approach, not a polemic.

The objective of ‘updating’ Mathieson and Wall is met to a limited extend by the range of case study material (the lack of this was a gap in the earlier work) and by the incor- poration of some new material on sustainable tourism in the final chap- ter. Most of the models are, however, not new and the contribution to empirically based research is modest.

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