Building Tourism-Based Sustainable Communities in Sparsely Populated Areas

This book provides an overview of emerging activities in the area of tourism-based community development in depopulated and sparsely populated areas in the countries where fertility rate is less than the replacement level. Specifically, we show cases in Japan, the United Kingdom, Germany, New Zealand, Australia, Portugal, Spain, Italy and South Korea. The book covers topics such as how community resilience was demonstrated in response to the pandemic, what are the emerging tourism management practices, host-guest relationships, and organizations during the pandemic, what are the perceptions of local governments that have actively promoted tourism as a development tool, a shift from conventional tourism development that may cause over-tourism to sustainable community development through tourism is occurring, etc.

The topics of this book is important in three ways. First, as fertility rates continue to decline in the majority of countries worldwide, more communities in depopulated and sparsely populated areas rely on community development through tourism as we are moving to the experience economy where tourism takes a significant role. Second, since the period of occurrence of pandemic is shortening due to the global warming, understanding of community resilience become necessary. Third, as the negative side of tourism development such as over-tourism is intensifying, learning cases of tourism-based sustainable community development is important.

This book is targeted for researchers, undergraduate and graduate students in geography, tourism studies, anthropology and sociology, community development and tourism development specialists, and policy makers.