Guides to a geography of tourism

• Main Author: Bosse Bergman
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Société Royale Belge de Géographie and the Belgian National Committee of Geography 2013-03-01
• Series: Belgeo
• Subjects: tourist cartographies; topography vs. topology; networks; mental maps
• Online Access: http://journals.openedition.org/belgeo/7176

Guidebooks are a part of a branch that is driven by market decisions as well as more unpredictable mental and cultural constructs. One of them is a geography of tourism, to which the guidebooks contribute by affecting both choices of routes and destinations, but also by mediating many types of spatial configurations with relevance for this imagined geography and the decisions it leads to. To describe and understand better how guidebooks work regarding these processes is, as this article could give the impression of, not solely a historical task, since these kinds of books in rather traditional formats and types still fill up substantial parts of the shelves in the bookstores of today.