Global Context, Policies and Practices in Urban Tourism: An Introduction

Tourism is undergoing fundamental changes with regard to market, industry structure and the product itself; changes driven by an even more fundamental transition to ‘post-modern’ patterns of consumption that makes tourism one of the benchmarks of modes of production and consumption in the knowledge economy. Tourism plays, quantitatively and qualitatively, an unprecedented role in shaping economic development, while consolidated tourism models should rapidly adapt themselves to a new and changing reality. This chapter introduces and provides the background for the discussion developed in this book, which addresses multiple interconnections between tourism and the city from a policy-oriented research standpoint. After an overview of trends characterising city tourism in the global context, the chapter focuses on Europe, where city tourism has been the most dynamic tourism segment. However, besides EU engagement with the development of a tourism policy framework, urban tourism seems to play a secondary role in the European tourism vision, in which tourism is interpreted as a potential economic alternative for lagging areas where other economic drivers have been historically weak. Through discussion of possible explanations, the chapter develops an analysis of the EU Urban Portal to outline tourism representation in connection with the urban agenda of the European Union and concludes by presenting this book’s structure.