fail to provide unity. The diversity of contexts and authors' backgrounds is to be applauded, however; yet a little more editorial discipline could have produced a much stronger book. There is, for example, no editorial introduction to each of the four parts which might have added a sense of continuity.

This editorial weakness is a pity, because there are some very useful chapters in the book which raise ques- tions deserving of elaboration. Bruce Prideaux's piece on the tourism crime cycle and Valene Smith's 'War and its tourist attractions' are two such chap- ters. But the diversity of contributions calls for a stronger editorial guiding hand, and raises questions as to the appropriateness of some of the inclu- sions. As might be expected, John [,ea's interesting chapter on 'Tourism realpolitik and development in the South Pacific' takes a strong develop- ment theme and he concludes 'Neither tourism itself nor violence has figured prominently in this review of the de- velopment picture in the South Pacific in the 1990s' and goes on, in contradis- tinction to the editors' concluding piece, 'It is not the function of this chapter, however, to identify gra- tuitous solutions . . ." (p. 14(/). Chap- ter 2, Chris Ryan and Rachael Kin- der's "The deviant tourist and the cri- mogenic place - the case of the tourist and the New Zealand prostitute', raises a number of empirical and theoretical questions. Yet the authors admit from the outset that the chapter differs from others in the book in seeking to explore "deviant' tourist behaviour and what it might say about society rather than seeking to examine the impact of crime and violence upon tourism.

In summary, therefore, this book provides a wide range of empirical and one or two useful conceptual studies on the varying relationships between tourism, crime, war and security. Ulti- mately it appears to be directed at the industry, but this is not always readily apparent. It could have been a much better book if its terms of reference had been more closely and carefully defined, and if this in its turn could have permitted a stronger conceptual thread to emerge, Nonetheless, the

book provides a useful series of indi- vidual essays which will be employable for undergraduate teaching purposes.

Derek Hall Department of Leisure and

Tourism Management Scottish Agricultural College

Auchincruive KA6 5HW, UK

Managing Quality Cultural Tourism Priscilla Boniface Routledge London (199_5)xii + 128 pp £20. O0

Quality cultural tourism would seem to represent the triumph of optimism over experience, and Priscilla Boni- face has, perhaps, been excessively courageous in attempting to tackle its management in a modest book specifi- cally written for teaching purposes and intended to cover, at one and the same time:

• teaching for the tourism and leisure and heritage professions;

• higher education in universities and technical training colleges over a range of humanities and social sci- ence disciplines and w~cational sub- jeers;

• secondary education at school at National Curriculum Key Stage 4 level,

At this point the reader is best advised to begin with Part 4, rather than Part 1, since the former sets out the current dilemmas with much greater clarity and encourages a healthy scepticism with regard to the current orthodoxies of the tourist industry and the realities of sustainable tourism.

Nevertheless, based as it is on "the perceived needs of teachers, students and practitioners in the general fields of tourism, leisure and cultural re- source management' , this volume is intended to "set out and describe mat- ters and issues concerning the pursuit of achieving happy heritage sites by those managing quality tourism'. More to the point, Priscilla Boniface - in her Preface - reminds all her read- ers that culture is very much the main attraction of tourism, and stripped of their different cultural heritages few venues would remain attractive to

Book reviews

tourists for long. Tourism worldwide continues to grow in scale and econo- mic importance, and threatens to be by the year 2000 the largest single industry in the world, though accom- panied by an inexorable increase in cultural heritage consumption. Recon- ciling the impact of that accelerating consumption with long-term conserva- tion to preserve cultural heritage for future generations is the crucial ques- tion for tourism management, and although there is undoubtedly a boom in cultural tourism, by no means all contemporary observers are prepared to accept unreservedly that it is a boon. Consequently, her message for most of the book is that, whether we like it or not, cultural tourism is set to continue to grow, and that we are best employed in minimizing the damage, by means of management of a very high order and quality, rather than whingeing or looking for alternative strategies.

Heritage tourism is in her analysis the product of a three-way rela- tionship between site, presenter and audience, and Part 1 (qntroduction') outlines the general situation at the time of writing, Part 2 ( 'Components') seeks to identify the various culture needs of these three components, and Part 3 ('Objectives') suggest ways in which those needs ma3 be met, while Part 4 ('Conclusion') changes gear and presents her reflections on these prob- lems. Since this book is so evidently structured as a textbook for teachers and students, the topics covered are ruthlessly fragmented and each chap- ter or section concludes with a brief summary of the main 'Issues and ques- tions" and highly selective 'Further reading'.

Just as there is no single answer to the intractable problems posed by the uncontrolled, opportunist growth of cultural tourism, there can be no single style of management appropriate to all of its manifestations, though Priscilla Boniface consistently claims in Parts 1-3 to favour an orthodox technology- driven modernist approach. For her the 'traditional' and the "green" options have in-built limitations, not least because they both seek to limit mass tourism because of the damage it wreaks on fragile communities, en-

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Book reviews

vironments and cultural property, and she prefers an approach based on lessening the impact rather than add- ressing the driving forces which create the problem in the first place.

Armchair travel, in its various guises including virtual reality, exposes cultural property to little or no addit- ional wear and tear, but second-hand cultural experiences are rarely com- pletely satisfactory and are of limited value in museum contexts. However, within the limits set here, the author addresses 'the user', ' the presenter ' and 'the item', generally without coming to any particularly strong con- clusions. This is frustrating because, in her account of ' the item', she pro- vides all the evidence which points unequivocally to the need to make a stand and reduce the impact of tour- ism, and then avoids coming to any such conclusion at that juncture. The most responsible form of eco-tourism may indeed be represented by a posit- ive decision to stay at home.

Part 3 ( 'Objectives ') reviews the operational issues of 'Attracting' , 'De- tracting', 'Educating and informing',

'Entertaining' and 'Commercialising' with often infuriating superficiality as everything is breathlessly served up in bite-sized pieces, no doubt for the benefit of secondary education at school at National Curriculum Key Stage 4 Level. Vast numbers of exam- ples are briefly cited from all over the world in the same breath as United Kingdom local features, in the belief that ' tourism and leisure' and 'herit- age' professionals can use the same text as a source book. Nevertheless, for museum professionals it has its value in providing something of a tour d'horizon with an unfamiliar view- point and many fresh juxtapositions of information.

Unfortunately 'bet ter ' management of any kind, including of cultural tour- ism, cannot be achieved without a thorough understanding of both pro- cess and product, and it is not until the "Conclusion' (Part 4), when she addresses 'Cultural tourism now and for the future', that she openly enter- tains any serious doubts about the current orthodoxy. In these conclud- ing comments, while still attempting

to remain even-handed, she changes her tune and bemoans the failure of the Earth Summit (held in Rio de Janeiro in 1992) to recognize tourism specifically as a major element in glob- al pollution. The International Insti- tute for Peace through Tourism (IIPT) Global Conference, ~Building a Sus- tainable World Through Tourism', held in Montreal in 1994, demanded that at the very least a rigorous cost benefit analysis be done before any tourist development is allowed to be put in hand, one which gives equal prominence to the down-side of pollu- tion and shattered communities and to the short-term financial benefits promised. Perhaps we must learn to stay at home more often in order to be rewarded with higher quality cultural tourism experiences when we do venture out.

Peter Cannon-Brookes Thrupp Hot~e

Abingdon Oxon 0X14 3NE, UK

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