Making Sense of Tourism de Alan Machin

Making Sense of Tourism

Alan Machin

Making Sense of Tourism: The Beckoning Horizon is the first in a unique series. It takes the style of a series of essays, drawing on the author's remarkable 45 years' experience in tourism and education. Academic journals have praised its level of scholarship and understanding of the wide range of subjects it discusses. General readers noted its readability and insights, backed up by cases and examples from the author's long professional career. Older opinions on tourism are often challenged, new interpretations introduced. Tourism is placed in the closely-integrated context of educational development and the rise of the mass media. New theories are developed.

Tourism is big business. Most people have regarded it as a purely leisure industry. They have called it a self-indulgent way of life replacing the 'real' industrial worlds of farms and factories. Yet tourism was actually used to create the great historic commercial and industrial revolutions. Today, it has the potential to bring about international understanding and peaceful progress.

This book is the first of a planned series of five. The second book. On the Move, about tourism transport in Britain and the USA between 1851 and 1941, is published on 1 September 2021.
Alan Machin brings a wide range of experiences to the task of 'making sense of tourism'. His working life ranged from marketing Shropshire's Ironbridge Gorge Museum to urban regeneration with Calderdale Council, West Yorkshire. He was a Senior Executive for a leading design company in Leeds. His career rounded out by teaching tourism management over 17 years at what is now Leeds Beckett University, inspiring students from all over the world. After retirement in 2009 he began to plan the Making Sense of Tourism series.

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Notă biografică

Alan Machin taught geography and history in a Staffordshire secondary school before taking a degree in the subjects at the University of Swansea. After five years as a member of the University staff he became Head of Interpretation and Marketing at the Ironbridge Gorge Museum, in 1973. From there, he moved (1978) to the post of Tourism Officer for Calderdale Council in West Yorkshire. After seven very successful years Alan joined a public/private sector partnership team. The job was as the Public Relations and Marketing Officer with the Calderdale Inheritance Project. This was an urban regeneration project, working with the national Civic Trust, Business in the Community and local community groups. The Project achieved many built-heritage successes whilst helping revive commercial and social confidence. As a result, the Council of Europe chose Halifax, in Calderdale, as the venue for its prestigious international conference on heritage-driven regeneration in October 1988. His next substantial post was as Senior Executive handling tourism-related work for a graphics design company in Leeds. Between 1976 and 1999 Alan had also taught adult education classes in local history and led 'Leisure Learning' history weekends for Embassy Hotels. The varied educational activities helped him to an appointment as Senior Lecturer in Tourism Management at what is now Leeds Beckett University. It continued for a vigorous and rewarding 17 years. He retired in 2009 and began to write his first book, drawing on the unique mix of practical experience and theoretical approaches.