Tourism Development in Post-Soviet Nations


Book Description

Former communist countries face unique issues in developing and marketing tourism businesses, communities, and attractions because of centralized polices that discouraged international influences. While soviet economies relied on state policies to facilitate community development, the success of capitalism lies in access to a variety of resources, such as the environment, fiscal services, infrastructure, and market knowledge at the local level. Moreover, communal societies potentially possess social capital that can provide unique economic development opportunities. This book incorporates a regional perspective that widens the tourism development debate to include theoretical analyses, applied research, and case studies that document the broader successes and challenges that affect tourism stakeholders and addresses the necessary elements that facilitate a comprehensive tourism development strategy in emerging and transitioning former communist countries.




Tourism in Post-Communist States


Book Description

This book addresses tourism and its development in the post-communist context of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). Although it has been over 30 years since many countries of Central and Eastern Europe embarked on the path of transition from state socialism to capitalism and liberal democracy, the ongoing atrocious events in Ukraine bluntly remind us that the perception of CEE as a ‘transition’ region may have been done away with too early and that the legacies of communism continue to influence the reality of the region. Tourism is no exception here. While on the one hand, tourism has significantly contributed to the post-communist restructuring of CEE, on the other, the communist heritage has played (and still plays) an important role in shaping the tourism geographies of the CEE region. The book consists of 14 chapters (divided into two sections), a new introduction and a reflective concluding section. All 14 main chapters in this book were originally published in the Tourism Geographies journal. The aim of the book is two-fold. First, it summarises, distils and highlights the important and often ground-breaking contributions Tourism Geographies has made over the years to the debate on tourism in CEE. Second, it lays foundations for further research on tourism in the post-communist states of CEE. This book will be of great interest to upper-level students, researchers, and academics in various disciplines – human geography, politics, sociology, and tourism studies in general.




Routledge Handbook of Tourism Cities


Book Description

The Routledge Handbook of Tourism Cities presents an up-to-date, critical and comprehensive overview of established and emerging themes in urban tourism and tourist cities. Offering socio-cultural perspectives and multidisciplinary insights from leading scholars, the book explores contemporary issues, challenges and trends. Organised into four parts, the handbook begins with an introductory section that explores contemporary issues, challenges and trends that tourism cities face today. A range of topics are explored, including sustainable urban tourism, overtourism and urbanisation, the impact of terrorism, visitor–host interactions, as well as reflections on present and future challenges for tourism cities. In Part II the marketing, branding and markets for tourism cities are considered, exploring topics such as destination marketing and branding, business travellers and exhibition hosting. This section combines academic scholarship with real-life practice and case studies from cities. Part III discusses product and technology developments for tourism cities, examining their supply and impact on different travellers, from open-air markets to creative waterfronts, from social media to smart cities. The final Part offers examples of how urban tourism is developing in different parts of the world and how worldwide tourism cities are adapting to the challenges ahead. It also explores emerging forms of specialist tourism, including geology and ecology-based tourism, socialist heritage and post-communist destination tourism. This handbook fills a notable gap by offering a critical and detailed understanding of the diverse elements of the tourist experience today. It contains useful suggestions for practitioners, as well as examples for theoretical frameworks to students in the fields of urban tourism and tourism cities. The handbook will be of interest to scholars and students working in urban tourism, heritage studies, human geography, urban studies and urban planning, sociology, psychology and business studies.







Tourism and Geopolitics


Book Description

With 29 contributors from across Europe and beyond, this work represents a unique and important resource that examines the many relationships between tourism and geopolitics, with a focus on experiences drawn from Central and Eastern Europe. It begins by assessing the changing nature of 'geopolitics', from pejorative associations with Nazism to the more recent critical and feminist geopolitics of social science's 'cultural turn'. The book then addresses the important historical role of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) in geopolitical thinking, before exemplifying a range of contemporary interactions between tourism and geopolitics within this critical region. Pursuing innovative analytical paths, the book demonstrates the interrelated nature of tourism and geopolitics and emphasizes the freshness of this research area. Addressing key principles and ideas which are applicable globally, it is an essential source for researchers, teachers and students of tourism, geography, political science and European studies, as well as for diplomatic, business and consultant practitioners.




The Red Riviera


Book Description

This compelling ethnography of women working in Bulgaria’s popular sea and ski resorts challenges the idea that women have consistently fared worse than men in Eastern Europe’s transition from socialism to a market economy. For decades western European tourists have flocked to Bulgaria’s beautiful beaches and mountains; tourism is today one of the few successful—and expanding—sectors of the country’s economy. Even at the highest levels of management, employment in the tourism industry has long been dominated by women. Kristen Ghodsee explains why this is and how women working in the industry have successfully negotiated their way through Bulgaria’s capitalist transformation while the fortunes of most of the population have plummeted. She highlights how, prior to 1989, the communist planners sought to create full employment for all at the same time that they steered women into the service sector. The women given jobs in tourism obtained higher educations, foreign language skills, and experiences working with Westerners, all of which positioned them to take advantage of the institutional changes eventually brought about by privatization. Interspersed throughout The Red Riviera are vivid examinations of the lives of Bulgarian women, including a waitress, a tour operator, a chef, a maid, a receptionist, and a travel agent. Through these women’s stories, Ghodsee describes their employment prior to 1989 and after. She considers the postsocialist forces that have shaped the tourist industry over the past fifteen years: the emergence of a new democratic state, the small but increasing interest of foreign investors and transnational corporations, and the proliferation of ngos. Ghodsee suggests that many of the ngos, by insisting that Bulgarian women are necessarily disenfranchised, ignore their significant professional successes.




Post-Communist Mafia State


Book Description

Having won a two-third majority in Parliament at the 2010 elections, the Hungarian political party Fidesz removed many of the institutional obstacles of exerting power. Just like the party, the state itself was placed under the control of a single individual, who since then has applied the techniques used within his party to enforce submission and obedience onto society as a whole. In a new approach the author characterizes the system as the ?organized over-world?, the ?state employing mafia methods? and the ?adopted political family', applying these categories not as metaphors but elements of a coherent conceptual framework. The actions of the post-communist mafia state model are closely aligned with the interests of power and wealth concentrated in the hands of a small group of insiders. While the traditional mafia channeled wealth and economic players into its spheres of influence by means of direct coercion, the mafia state does the same by means of parliamentary legislation, legal prosecution, tax authority, police forces and secret service. The innovative conceptual framework of the book is important and timely not only for Hungary, but also for other post-communist countries subjected to autocratic rules. ÿ




Secret Agents and the Memory of Everyday Collaboration in Communist Eastern Europe


Book Description

The collection of essays in Secret Agents and the Memory of Everyday Collaboration in Communist Eastern Europe addresses institutions that develop the concept of collaboration, and examines the function, social representation and history of secret police archives and institutes of national memory that create these histories of collaboration. The essays provide a comparative account of collaboration/participation across differing categories of collaborators and different social milieux throughout East-Central Europe. They also demonstrate how secret police files can be used to produce more subtle social and cultural histories of the socialist dictatorships. By interrogating the ways in which post-socialist cultures produce the idea of, and knowledge about, “collaborators,” the contributing authors provide a nuanced historical conception of “collaboration,” expanding the concept toward broader frameworks of cooperation and political participation to facilitate a better understanding of Eastern European communist regimes.




State and Society in Post-Socialist Economies


Book Description

State and Society in Post-Socialist Economies focuses on the reform economies of post-socialist Europe. It looks at how various projects of communism that emerged in have been and are still being dismantled and recomposed by alternative visions, institutions and practices of capitalist market economies and democratic polities.




Post-communist Nostalgia


Book Description

Although the end of the Cold War was greeted with great enthusiasm by people in the East and the West, the ensuing social and especially economic changes did not always result in the hoped-for improvements in people's lives. This led to widespread disillusionment that can be observed today all across Eastern Europe. Not simply a longing for security, stability, and prosperity, this nostalgia is also a sense of loss regarding a specific form of sociability. Even some of those who opposed communism express a desire to invest their new lives with renewed meaning and dignity. Among the younger generation, it surfaces as a tentative yet growing curiosity about the recent past. In this volume scholars from multiple disciplines explore the various fascinating aspects of this nostalgic turn by analyzing the impact of generational clusters, the rural-urban divide, gender differences, and political orientation. They argue persuasively that this nostalgia should not be seen as a wish to restore the past, as it has otherwise been understood, but instead it should be recognized as part of a more complex healing process and an attempt to come to terms both with the communist era as well as the new inequalities of the post-communist era.