| Summary: | The aim of this thesis is two-fold. My primary, theoretical aim is to present an alternative
way for geographers to approach the study of tourist resort development. For over twenty
years, resorts have been understood through the framework of evolutionary models, the
most widely-used being Richard Butler's 1981 Tourist Area Life Cycle. I argue that the
time is ripe for a more sophisticated approach which i) identifies the multiplicity of actors
involved in the destination-making process and elucidates the interactions between them;
and ii) situates the resort within a dynamic, capitalist economy, increasingly dominated by
large corporations. I suggest that one way we can do this is to take particular moments in
a resort's trajectory and examine the responses made by key players in the production of
the resort.
My starting point for my investigation into Whistler Resort, British Columbia is the
merger in 1996 of its two ski mountains, Whistler and Blackcomb, under the ownership
of Intrawest Corporation. A recent wave of consolidation in the North American ski
industry has seen increasing numbers of once-independent ski areas coming under the
control of four large corporations, Intrawest being one. My second aim with this thesis,
therefore, is to shed light on the process of ski resort development in light of the recent
industry reorganisation. In particular, I use my case-study of Whistler to interrogate the
corporatisation thesis of historian Hal Rothrnan. Rothman's account of resort
development in the twentieth-century American West leads him to view large
corporations as extractive forces which pay scant respect to local communities and
cultures, treating them instead as marketable commodities. The experience of Whistler,
however, suggests a much greater degree of mterdependence and co-operation between
the ski corporation and local stakeholders in the resort - a situation that arises because of
its unique administrative, political and economic context.
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