Tourism Policy and Sustainability in Italy, Spain and Greece

Abstract

The politics of tourism is hardly developed as an area of academic and specialist concern. In political science, tourism rarely if ever makes its presence felt as a serious scholarly subject even though the role of government in tourism is vital involving coordination, planning, regulation, stimulation and also that of entrepreneur (Hall 1994: chapter 2). A review of major international journals in policy studies as well as politics and public administration only reveals a shortage of material on the political dimensions of tourism. The same goes for the field of tourism studies where political dimensions have been largely neglected for a concern primarily with problem solution and prescriptive models of policy-planning (Hall 1994: 2, 6). This neglect is clearly surprising in view of the fact that tourism is widely regarded as the world's largest industry and is one that shows all signs of growing in the future. In the three countries under review it has become quite vital to their economic development and strategy.