It is widely recognized that travel and tourism can have a high environmental
impact and make a major contribution to climate change. It is therefore vital that ways to
reduce these impacts are developed and implemented. 'Slow travel' provides such a concept,
drawing on ideas from the 'slow food' movement with a concern for locality, ecology and
quality of life.
The aim of this book is to define slow travel and to discuss how some underlining
values are likely to pervade new forms of sustainable development. It also aims to provide
insights into the travel experience; these are explored in several chapters which bring
new knowledge about sustainable transport tourism from across the world. In order to do
this the book explores the concept of slow travel and sets out its core ingredients,
comparing it with related frameworks such as low-carbon tourism and sustainable tourism
development. The authors explain slow travel as holiday travel where air and car transport
is rejected in favour of more environmentally benign forms of overland transport, which
generally take much longer and become incorporated as part of the holiday experience. The
book critically examines the key trends in tourism transport and recent climate change
debates, setting out the main issues facing tourism planners. It reviews the potential for
new consumption patterns, as well as current business models that facilitate
hyper-mobility. This provides a cutting edge critique of the 'upstream' drivers to
unsustainable tourism. Finally, the authors illustrate their approach through a series of
case studies from around the world, featuring travel by train, bus, cycling and walking.
Examples are drawn from Europe, Asia, Australia and the Americas. Cases include the
Eurostar train (as an alternative to air travel), walking in the Appalachian Trail (US),
the Euro-Velo network of long-distance cycling routes, canoe tours on the Gudena River in
Denmark, sea kayaking in British Columbia (Canada) and the Oz Bus Europe to Australia.
Janet Dickinson is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Services
Management, Bournemouth University, UK. Her research interests include the social
construction of sustainable tourism and transport.
Les Lumsdon is Professor of Tourism in the School of Sport, Tourism
and the Outdoors, University of Central Lancashire, UK. He is director of the Institute of
Transport and Tourism and co-editor of Tourism and Hospitality Planning & Development.
Table of Contents
1. The Emergence of Slow Travel
2. The Impacts of Transport for Tourism
3. Tourism, Transport and Environment: Theoretical Perspectives
4. Slow Travel - The Ingredients
5. Train Tourism
6. Walking and Tourism
7. Cycling and Tourism
8. Bus and Coach Tourism
9. Water-Based Travel
10. The Future of Slow Travel
References Index
240 pages, Paperback