Book Reviews / Tourism Management 32 (2011) 1484–14901486

for the readers to seek relevant books or articles if the referencescould be categorized according to specific fields such as revenuemanagement, forecasting, et cetera, rather than by the alphabeticorder of authors’ last names. Moreover, more books related tohospitality managerial accounting could be included in the refer-ence list since this book is focusing on hospitality managerialaccounting. For example, “Hospitality Industry ManagerialAccounting” by Raymond Schmidgall and “Accounting and Finan-cial Analysis in the Hospitality Industry” by Jonathan Hales aretwo references that can be included.

There are some typos that require the author’s attention. Forexample, the percentages listed in Exercise 6.4 (p.121) do not corre-spond to the answers provided on p. 232. On p. 161 the variance ofholiday guests should be 200, not 150. Some additional instructionscan also be provided. For instance, on p. 173 the author might wantto inform the readers that using Excel’s “Scenario Manager” canalso solve problems that involve various scenarios.

This book is good at providing immediate learning feedback.Complete “Answers to the Exercises” provided at the end of thebook helps readers to test their understanding of the topics intro-duced and the techniques required in solving these exercises. Thebook is pragmatic and practitioners might find it handy and easyto understand. I also find the exercises quite real, versatile anduseful. They covered airlines, theme parks and cruise liners in addi-tion to hotels and restaurants. Despite the fact that some readersmight not be familiar with British accounting system, by exposingreaders to British accounting and finance concepts and practices,this book actually offers different perspectives and stimulatesreaders to think outside of the box. For example, in calculating stockdays (inventory holding period), the book first calculates cost perday by finding the quotient of cost of sales in a certain period andthe number of days in that period. This quotient is then used asthe divisor for closing stock (ending inventory) and derives thestock days. It has a different logic but producing the same resultas the formula used in inventory holding period.

Another such example of providing different perspectives is thatin American accounting or finance textbooks, it is seldom to findformula that calculates “how long it takes to pay the bills”. It iscommon to calculate “accounts receivable collection period” toevaluate the efficiency in collecting accounts receivable. In thisbook, it introduces a ratio called creditor days (or accounts payablepay off period) that indicates on average in howmany days a buyersettles its accounts payable. If the company keeps a separateaccount of “purchase discounts” (under periodic inventory system),this ratio can provide additional information on a company’s utili-zation of purchasing credit. A well-balanced purchase discount andcredit policy can help improve the efficiency in cash budgeting.

Overall, this book accomplishes its objectives in being pragmaticand a manual. It introduces techniques that can be applied ininternal control, pricing and variance analysis. These techniquescan be perfected by using spreadsheets, to which the authordevoted a whole chapter to explain it. For the academia, the bookis a nice supplement to traditional hospitality managerialaccounting textbooks with its focus on practices. It also stimulatesreaders to think from different perspectives after exposing toBritish accounting system.

Steve PanSchool of Hotel and Tourism Management,

The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong KongE-mail address: hmstcpan@polyu.edu.hk

doi:10.1016/j.tourman.2010.11.005

Global geotourism perspectives, R. Dowling, D. Newsome (Eds.).Goodfellow Publishers, Oxford (2010). £29.99 (paperback),£22.49 (pdf download from publisher’s website. www.goodfellowpublishers.com individual chapters also availableas pdf downloads for £2.50 each), xiv D 250 pages; ISBN 978-1-906844-17-8

Tourists have been visiting geological sites since the Renais-sance and geology, landscape and other forms of natural areatourism were instrumental in the development of tourism withinEurope from the 18th Century. Despite this, the study of thisspecific form of niche tourism until recently has been somewhatneglected. Although this new text is described on the back coveras part of a two volume set (with GEOTOURISM: The Tourism ofGeology and Landscape by Newsome and Dowling, GoodfellowPublishers, 978-1-906884-09-3), it is clearly the companionvolume, and readers who are unfamiliar with either GEOTOUR-ISM: The Tourism of Geology and Landscape, or Dowling andNewsome’s original (2005) book “Geotourism” (Elsevier, 0-7506-662154) may find themselves with ample case studies but limitedunderstanding of the theoretical underpinnings of this new formof niche tourism.

Both books arose out of the Inaugural Global GeotourismConference held in Perth, Western Australia, 17–20 August 2008;the success of the conference proceedings highlighted the demandfor information on the subject from both practitioners andacademics from a range of backgrounds and disciplines: geologists,geographers, policy makers, tourism experts and national parksmanagers among them. And so Dowling and Newsome selectedfrom among the 100 or so abstracts and papers in the conferenceproceedings around 30 papers to represent the diversity, bothgeographical and topical, of research and writing in the field.

The book, according to the back cover “is a collection of casestudies that support this [the creation of a geotourism productthat protects geoheritage, helps build communities. andpromotes geological heritage] by providing examples of actualand developing geotourism from around the world”; it doesthis through 14 chapters (bookended by an introduction andconclusion by the editors setting the context and summarisingthe opportunities for, and significance of, geotourism) whichaddress geotourism from various (primarily, but not exclusively,location-based) perspectives across six continents. Dowlingand Newsome have brought together authors from a variety ofperspectives, both academic and practitioner, and it is refreshingthat the book includes chapters on destinations which may notbe known for natural forms of tourism such as Hong Kong (YoungNg, Lok Wang Fung and David Newsome). Unlike their previousbooks the proportion of Australian examples is lower, and this isto be commended. Case studies examine geotourism in a specificcountry (such as the chapters on Greece (Nickolas Zouros), Brazil(Jasmine Cardozo Moreira and João José Bigarella), Australia (PhilCreaser; and Jay Anderson) and Ireland (Patrick Maher)), ata specific location (such as Grand Canyon National Park (StephenMartin), and Kanawinka Geopark (Ian Lewis)) or from a thematicperspective (such as John Watson’s chapter on Rock Climbers,Scramblers and Hill Walkers, and Patricia Erfurt-Copper’s chapteron Volcano Tourism).

The book is successful in presenting the breadth of types andlocations of geotourism from the well-known iconic destinationsin national parks around the world (such as Grand Canyon andUluru (Ayers Rock)) to the “geoheritage sites [.] located in builtareas such as in cities and along roadsides” (p. 230), and smallsite-specific attractions. In various chapters, specific examples oftourist offerings are given: walking trails are not new in naturalarea tourism but the use of trails to guide visitors to the geological

Book Reviews / Tourism Management 32 (2011) 1484–1490 1487

attractions in urban areas is perhaps less well-known. The urbantrail in Beaumaris for example demonstrates the connectionsbetween geology and environment in a small market town in NorthWales, while roadside trails in North America and regional trails inAustralia are written for the driver, with trails being focussed onfeatures and attractions located alongside, or close to, the road.Thus the book successfully “shows clear evidence of an emergingtype of tourism which is based on the earth’s geological heritage,promotes geoconservation, enhances geological understandingand is locally beneficial” (p. 230). In this respect it builds on theexisting books (by the same authors).

Although geotourism is widely recognised to play an importantrole in geoconservation, the UNESCO Global Geopark Network alsorecognises the role that parks have in promoting sustainable devel-opment, primarily through tourism (McKeever, Zouros, Patzak, &Weber, 2010). Indeed it is a requirement of membership of thenetwork that sites, in addition to their geological value, be suffi-ciently large to allow for true territorial economic development(p. 222). Thus in this text, case studies go beyond descriptions ofthe geological attractions to encompass the broader role that allgeosites play: Dowling and Newsome discuss the Grand CanyonSkywalk operated by the Hualapai Native American Tribe asa means to alleviate the poverty associated with high unemploy-ment in a relatively isolated area; the role geotourism is playingin tourism diversification strategies is discussed by Lawrence(Oman) and Tongkul (Sabah, Malaysia); and Schutte and Booysendraw attention to the significance geology has on the wildlife ofthe Kruger National Park (South Africa), noting that while theKruger is one of the better known national parks, the geology isonly now being seen as an important tourism resource. Johnson,Sheth and Ollier argue that the geology (including volcanic craters,waterfalls and lava caves), scenery (mountains and gorges) andclimate of Mauritius are comparable to Hawaii and propose thedevelopment of these and other geological features as a geoparkas part of the government strategy for diversifying the tourismproduct away from the ubiquitous beach holiday.

Although the introductory chapter (Geotourism: a GlobalActivity, by the editors) summarises their previous books, thereader unfamiliar with geotourism may find that on reading thistext they have a wealth of examples but insufficient context tointegrate them; to the reader well versed in geotourism (or otherforms of natural area tourism) however, the book provides livelyexamples to illustrate the many facets of geotourism. Inevitablyan edited text will contain a variety of styles: the selection ofauthors from both academic and practitioner perspectivesmeans that some chapters contain material from a wide range ofacademic sources, while others focus on experiences from whatmight be termed ‘the rock face’; Dowling and Newsome recognise(p. 10) that those chapters with few references nevertheless“represent the vital experiences of managers and people workingin the geotourism field”. With such a wealth of contributions fromthe perspective of those developing, managing or operating geo-tourism attractions, the book takes an approach too infrequentlyadopted in academic fields and thus offers academic readersa deeper understanding of how to ‘walk the walk’ as well as‘talk the talk’.

The book is illustrated throughout with black and white imagesof geological features in the various locations; I cannot help butthink however, that many of these would be so much more power-ful were they to be in colour. Maps are used in some chapters;again, on occasion, these are too small to be of real use. Perhapspublishers could consider the opportunities offered by currenttechnology in making images from printed books available toreaders via the internet, so that maps may be rescaled, imagesmay be presented in colour and more images made available.

The companion volume, GEOTOURISM: The Tourism ofGeology and Landscape, according to the back cover of thistext, “provides a clear definition of geotourism as well as infor-mation on its characteristics” covering “information on land-scape appreciation, geoheritage, management, interpretation,education and the future of geotourism. The two books propelthe subject to another level and provide an informed platformon which to build the future of geotourism”. These two booksshould be taken together; when read in parallel they achievewhat the authors intend: they are essential reading for all (prac-titioner, student or academic) interested in geotourism: for thepractitioner they provide examples and contacts for implemen-tation of geoparks and other protected areas across the world,while for the student or academic they provide a valuableresource for those interested in this developing form of post-mass or niche tourism.

References

Dowling, R., & Newsome, D. (Eds.). (2005). Geotourism. Oxford: Elsevier.McKeever, P., Zouros, N., Patzak, M., & Weber, J. (2010). The UNESCO global network

of national geoparks. In D. Newsome, & R. Dowling (Eds.), Geotourism: Thetourism of geology and landscape. Oxford: Goodfellow Publishers Limited.

Newsome, D., & Dowling, R. (Eds.), (2010). GEOTOURISM: The Tourism of Geologyand Landscape. Oxford: Goodfellow Publishers Limited.

Chris GrantLiverpool Hope University, Hope Park, Liverpool L16 9JD, UK

E-mail address: grantc@hope.ac.uk

doi:10.1016/j.tourman.2010.11.006

Tourists, tourism and the good life, Philip Pearce,Sebastian Filep, Glenn Ross, Routledge (2011). pp. 223, (hbk)$103, ISBN: 978-0-415-99329-6

Conventionally, the title of a book, particularly an academic textsuch as that reviewed here, provides a clear guide to its content.Indeed, it is not unreasonable to expect to it do so, as it is oftenon the basis of a book’s title that the decision is made to invest valu-able time (if not money) in reading it. This is not the case, however,with Tourists, Tourism and the Good Life. Though (perhaps intention-ally) rather broad and ambiguous and deprived of an accompanyingexplanatory subtitle, the title of this book suggests that it exploresthe relationship between tourism/tourists and what is referred toas the ‘good life’. This it does. However, this tourism–good life rela-tionship is approached from an unexpected and arguably tenuousperspective, partly perhaps because the term ‘the good life’ haslong been used (and understood by this reviewer at least) in thecontext of development studies (Goulet, 1968). In other words,although two of the authors, Philip Pearce and Glenn Ross, arewell known for researching tourism within a psychology frame-work, it nevertheless comes as something of a surprise to discoverthat the focus of the book is not explicitly on the tourism-relatedgood life. Rather, its principal objective is to demonstrate the poten-tial value of applying a relatively new branch of psychology – so-called ‘positive psychology’ – to the analysis of tourism. The linkto the ‘good life’ thus lies in the fact that positive psychology is con-cerned with understanding happiness, or human ‘dimensions,faculties and behaviours that are positive and allow us to reportunder what circumstances life is good’ (p. 83). As such, this is nota book about tourism and the good life, but about the psychology