Family Tourism

This cutting-edge international book brings together leading experts’ latest research in the field of family tourism by adding to its underdeveloped knowledge base. It highlights the infancy of academic family tourism research and addresses future implications and theoretical debates about the place of families within tourism.

Heike A. Schänzel is Senior Lecturer and programme leader postgraduate in International Tourism Management at Auckland University of Technology, New Zealand. Her research interests include tourist behaviour and social experiences, children and families in tourism, and femininities and paternal masculinities in tourism research.

Ian Yeoman is a futurologist specializing in travel and tourism. Ian worked at VisitScotland where he established the process of futures thinking using a variety of techniques including economic modelling, trends analysis and scenario construction and now works at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand and the European Tourism Futures Institute, the Netherlands.

Elisa Backer is Associate Professor at Federation University Australia and is on the editorial board of nine journals. Her main research interests are VFR travel, destination marketing, partial industrialisation in tourism, family tourism and social media.

Heike Schänzel is a lecturer in Tourism Studies at AUT University in Auckland, New Zealand. Her doctoral thesis on family holiday experiences won an award and resulted in several academic journal publications.

Ian Yeoman is Associate Professor of Tourism Futures at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand and allegedly the world’s only professional crystal ball gazer or futurologist specialising in travel and tourism.

Elisa Backer is a senior lecturer at The Business School, University of Ballarat, Australia. She is now considered a leading world expert in the field of VFR travel.

Family Tourism: Multidisciplinary Perspectives is a solid starting point in redefining families and family tourism for the 21st century. It provides a workable frame for conducting research into the topic and demonstrates the potential for family tourism studies to inform and influence research in sociology and family studies, thereby improving the status and acceptance of tourism studies in general. It seems well poised to meet its aim of stimulating debate and research into the broad field of family tourism and stands, therefore, as a timely and welcome contribution to the literature.

D’Arcy Dornan, La Rochelle Business School, France:

This book is an essential read for all in the tourism industry, the public and private sectors, as well as NGOs. Family tourism continues to shape and impact our travel behaviours, decisions, and purchasing patterns. Therefore, understanding and appreciating these ever changing dynamics will allow us to better actively engage with, meet, and respond to the needs of family tourism.

Neil Carr, University of Otago, New Zealand:

Family Tourism: Multidisciplinary Perspectives gives a welcome stage on which to examine some of the aspects of the family tourism experience. This is clearly a book that provides a grounding in families and their tourism experiences and highlights a wide array of potential and important future research avenues. As such, the book represents a text that should be read by all those researchers (from Professors to Honours students and everyone in-between) looking at the family in the context of tourism and hospitality. While the book is clearly primarily aimed at the academic research market, the ideas set out within it still represent something that should appeal to the leaders and innovators of the tourism and hospitality industries.

Catheryn S.C. Khoo-Lattimore, Taylor’s University Lakeside Campus, Malaysia:

This is probably the first book dedicated to addressing family tourism issues. As such, it is an appropriate contribution to tourism education and research...this book offers an informative introduction for postgraduates and new researchers who are interested in investigating issues in family and tourism.

Keri A. Schwab, University of Utah, USA:

Family Tourism: Multidisciplinary Perspectives provides a concise look at timely and important topics related largely to tourism studies, but also brings in ideas and research from family leisure, sociology, gender studies, and marketing. Professors, graduate students, and researchers looking to update their knowledge of specific or niche tourism topics, or to better understand the interdisciplinary nature of their field, will find this to be a useful text...Overall, the editors have crafted a book of well-written and sourced, timely, and interesting chapters on topics not often addressed in the tourism literature, but that are important issues and trends in the field.

Jennie Small, University of Technology, Sydney, Australia:

This book on family tourism is a welcome contribution to tourism studies through its discussion of this hitherto forgotten, but significant market. The interesting collection highlights the pleasures and stresses of family travel, the social exclusion of some groups, and the creativity required by the industry to provide for the family whose structure and requirements are ever changing.

Brian Hay, Queen Margaret University, Edinburgh, UK:

This book breaks new ground by bringing together a range of well-respected researchers from around the world to delve into the concept of family tourism from their individual knowledge base, so as to develop a multiple disciplinary focus to the study of family tourism. I am sure in a short time this book will be required reading, not only for students of tourism, but also for those who work in tourism marketing and want to better understand their markets.

Conrad Lashley, Oxford Brookes University, UK:

This book addresses a much under-researched aspect of contemporary life. Family tourism represents a major aspect of all leisure travel, yet little systematic research has, until now, been undertaken on the various forms of the family and their experiences of tourism. This book represents a systematic approach to the subject and is written in an accessible and interesting manner. I heartily recommend it to all those interested in tourism and in the family.

Tom Baum, University of Strathclyde, UK:

The family, in many countries, is in a state of flux and their vacation patterns have changed significantly in recent years. This book provides a comprehensive picture of the family on holiday, past, present and future. The authors fill a gaping hole in the academic and practitioner literature and this book will be an invaluable resource for students and professionals alike.