Although blurred and heavily contested, the concept of ’tourist destination’ still deserves careful attention. Despite its unstable characteristics, ’destination’ is a central and meaningful term in play among all parties in the field of tourism, including tourists, tourism operators, and politicians, as well as students and tourism scholars. This anthology draws on different approaches and discourses of tourism destination development, while focusing on how they are shaped and reshaped and how they should be read and rehearsed. The book reveals dominant as well as alternative approaches to the field. The authors demonstrate how tourism destinations are commercial, but socially embedded; how they are both material and territorial, but at the same time socially constructed; how production of touristic brands and images are vital, but contested. Such tensions are unfolded through paradigmatic discussions and a series of case studies from the northern hemisphere. The chapters in the book investigate how destination development is catalysed through theming, how changing environments lead to reorientations, and how destinations are political. Altogether, the book provides experts and students with an up-to-date theoretical and empirical insight into tourist destinations.

Arvid Viken is Professor in Tourism at UiT - the Arctic University of Norway. He has written extensively within the field of tourism, particular with a focus on northern aspects. Together with Torill Nyseth he edited Place Reinvention. Northern perspectives also published by Ashgate. Dr Brynhild Granås is Associate Professor at UiT - the Arctic University of Norway, Department of Tourism and Northern Studies, since 2012, having worked for nine years at the Department of Sociology, Political Science and Planning at UiT - the Arctic University of Norway. Her research has mainly focused on place development processes and together with Professor Jørgen Ole Bærenholdt, she has previously edited the Ashgate book Mobility and Place. Enacting Northern European Peripheries.