ARTICLE IN PRESS

doi:10.1016/j.to

Tourism Management 28 (2007) 642

www.elsevier.com/locate/tourman

Book review

Worldwide Destinations: The Geography of Travel and

Tourism, B. Boniface, C. Cooper. Butterworth-Heinemann,

Oxford (2005). (518pp., $36.95(pbk)), ISBN: 0-7506-5997-1.

Boniface and Cooper’s quintessential tourism geographytext, Worldwide Destinations: The Geography of Travel and

Tourism has recently released its fourth edition. Thisedition marks a considerable improvement on an alreadythorough text.

The text is well structured in two parts. Part Oneexplores the Elements of the Geography of Travel and

Tourism. Part Two, comprising the majority of the book,covers the Regional Geography of Travel and Tourism. Thefirst part is an essential introduction to basic tourismconcepts from a geographical perspective. This sectionprovides an overview of concepts of supply and demand,tourism resources, climate, and transportation. Theauthors review several foundational theories such asLeiper’s Model, Cohen’s Classification, and Butler’sTourist Area Lifecycle. In addition, the reader is intro-duced to fundamental geographical concepts such as stagesof economic growth, world climate zones, and the elementsof transport. The first section is condensed over 84pp. Thesecond section, which focuses on a regional survey oftourism geography, covers the next 397pp of the text.

This is an excellent required text for any undergraduatetourism geography course and an essential reference fortourism geographers at the graduate level. The structure ofthe text allows for those new to tourism studies, geographyor tourism geography to quickly survey essential conceptsbefore moving onto the regional tourism geography

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section. The book covers every country in the world andoffers detail from a supply and demand perspective.The text includes an invaluable compendium of world-

wide destination sources, which provides an excellentsupplement to the entire text. The most notable sectionof the compendium lists worldwide web site addresses ofnational tourism organizations. Boniface and Cooper alsotake great care to preface their inclusion of the websites inthe compendium with detailed ‘‘disclaimers’’ that websiteshave different levels of reliability and may be out of date.However, unlike other texts, the websites given areimpressively up to date.Although the text does have an optional companion

book entitled Worldwide Destinations Case Book, the scopeof the regions covered in the parent text may be too broadfor some readers. While the text does an excellent job inthe first section providing many visuals, the regionalgeography section is lacking. Maps and visual illustrationswould assist in putting the destinations in context.However, as noted by the authors, an atlas is an essentialsupplement. While the website compendium provides agood foundation, if adopting this text for the classroom,supplemental materials are needed.Overall, the authors have improved on an essential text

in the field of tourism geography.

Susan RyanDepartment of Earth Sciences, California University of

Pennsylvania, California, Pennsylvania, USA

E-mail address: ryan@cup.edu