Tourism Geographies

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Commentary: Tracing the Commodity Chain of

Global Tourism

Dennis R. Judd

To cite this article: Dennis R. Judd (2006) Commentary: Tracing the Commodity Chain of Global
Tourism, Tourism Geographies, 8:4, 323-336, DOI: 10.1080/14616680600921932

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Tourism Geographies
Vol. 8, No. 4, 323–336, November 2006

Commentary: Tracing the Commodity

Chain of Global Tourism
DENNIS R. JUDD
Department of Political Science, University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago, USA

ABSTRACT It is argued that current definitions of tourism are deficient because they define
tourism as a system of consumption rather than production. Because such definitions makes
tourism appear to be unlike any other industry, the study of tourism is virtually absent from
the literatures of economic geography and globalization, and relatively neglected in the social
sciences as well. It is suggested that tourism should be regarded as a production process
involving a distinct product and identifiable inputs. As the first step towards realizing this goal,
the concept of commodity chains is applied to construct a profile of the global tourism industry.

KEY WORDS: Tourism industry, commodity chains, the tourist experience

Introduction
As Dimitri Ioaniddes and Keith Debbage (1998) noted in their book, The Economic
Geography of the Tourist Industry, tourism is virtually absent from the literature of
economic geography. This lacuna exists despite the fact that by all accounts it is
one of the leading industries in the world, with some authors saying it is the leading
industry. Tourism is also missing from the rapidly expanding literature on globaliza-
tion. For example, in the fourth edition of his book, Global Shift: transforming the
world economy, Peter Dicken (2003) does not include a single index reference to
tourism, despite the fact that he intends to treat the most important economic sectors
of globalization. Tourism is mentioned rarely by scholars who study globalization
and cities. For example, in her book The Global City, Saskia Sassen (2002a) does
not mention tourism even once, as the index references reveal. In her book Global
Networks: Linked Cities, there are four index references, but in these cases tourism is
mentioned parenthetically, with no analysis whatever (Sassen 2002b). The first book
dealing with globalized cities that takes tourism seriously was published finally in
2005 (Abrahamson 2005).

Correspondence Address: Dennis R. Judd, Department of Political Science (MC 276), University of Illinois
at Chicago, BSB, 1007 W. Harrison, Chicago, IL 60607, USA. Fax: +312 413-0440; Tel.: +312 996-4421;
Email: djudd@uic.edu

ISSN 1461-6688 Print/1470-1340 Online /06/04/00323–14

C 2006 Taylor & Francis

DOI: 10.1080/14616680600921932
324 D. R. Judd

It is very odd that an interest in tourism has emerged only recently among urban
scholars, especially when one considers how pivotal it has been since the 1970s
(and before) to urban economies and to the regeneration of central cities. In the social
sciences, there was only one published discussion of tourism as a strategy of economic
development in American cities until the early 1990s (Judd and Collins 1979). An
indication of its absence from this literature is that when Susan Fainstein and the
author published the edited book, The Tourist City, in 1999, it was the first book of its
kind to appear in the USA (Judd and Fainstein 1999). It is fair to say that the chapters
in that book are largely descriptive, not theoretical: It was felt crucial to document the
importance of tourism to urban development; theoretical discussions would have to
wait. In 2000, when scholars were recruited into the International Tourism Research
Group, most of the people contacted were urban specialists who had not written
previously about tourism. In that way it was hoped to vitalize the study of tourism
among urban specialists.
Outside the realm of a specialized group of academic experts and practitioners,
tourism has been slow to emerge as a serious topic for study because it does not fit
the usual profile describing an industry or recognizable economic sector. Tourism has
been treated with suspicion, in part, because it is regarded as frivolous consumption
and not as a productive activity (Ioannides and Debbage 1998: 5). In the tradition of
Adam Smith and Karl Marx and the generations of their followers and detractors, work
has long been regarded as the central organizing feature of human society, an activity
essential to the material and spiritual well-being of human beings. Travel and tourism
have been regarded as a break from the routines of daily life, the tiring obligations
of family and work, ‘an experience which contrasts with everyday experience’ (Urry
1991: 132). Posing tourism as a break from such routines entails, inevitably, the idea
that tourism is purely a consumption activity, even an expendable luxury.
This impression has been reinforced by tourism specialists who define it as a
consumption industry, in contrast to other sectors such as autos, apparel and coffee.
Tourism is treated as if ‘it’, whatever ‘it’ is, arises spontaneously, without producers
and a production process. Such a position is untenable. In this article it is argued that
the tourist experience should be understood as a product consciously produced and
marketed, and that its value is determined by the costs of the inputs necessary for
its construction. It is suggested that the concept of commodity chains offers a useful
heuristic for understanding the basic elements that compose the tourism production
system.

Defining the Tourism Industry

An overwhelming consensus exists among tourism specialists that tourism is an
industry made up of an assortment of goods and services; in fact, as sometimes
noted, by this standard it should not be regarded as an industry at all. For example,
in their leading textbook on tourism, Clare Gunn and Turgut Var (2002) take care
 Tracing the Commodity Chain of Global Tourism 325

to emphasize that tourism is unique by noting, ‘There is a prevailing misconcep-

tion that tourism is an industry. Instead it is an agglomeration of land development
and programs designed to meet the needs of travellers’. They go on to assert that
tourism reverses the relationship between product and market that is observed in
other industries:

Tourism involves a tremendous diversity of products. Tourism products, loosely

defined as visitor experiences, occur at destinations. The distribution system –
transportation services – moves the markets to the products. This is completely
opposite of industries manufacturing products that are distributed to markets
(Gunn and Var 2002).

In their book Tourism and Economic Development, Williams and Shaw (1994: 2)
echoed the concern that tourism must be defined as an industry with unique features:

[T]he definition of the tourist industry is crucially important. In most countries

tourism is ‘statistically invisible’ and, usually, only the most obvious sectors
or those exclusively devoted to tourists are enumerated in official tourism data.
Inevitably, this tends to be the accommodation sector and, perhaps, cafes and
restaurants. Yet the tourist industry is far larger than this. Tourists also spend
money directly on recreational facilities, tourist attractions, shops and local
services.
In a similar vein, Debbage and Daniels (1998: 23) maintained that,
... tourism is a fundamentally different type of industry from other forms of
commodity production. Tourism is no single product but, rather, a wide range
of products and services that interact to provide an opportunity to fulfil a tourist
experience that comprise both tangible parts (e.g. hotel, restaurant, or air carrier)
and intangible parts (e.g. sunset, scenery, mood).

They noted that as a consequence, ‘it is exceedingly hard for researchers to estimate
with any degree of accuracy the sectors’ magnitude or significance in terms, for
example, of generated revenues or employment’ (Debbage and Daniels 1998: 23).
Commenting on this state of affairs, Stephen Smith (1998: 34) argued that the fact
that tourism statistics are suspect makes the idea of a tourism industry hard to sell.
Despite these very significant drawbacks, the definition of tourism as an industry
composed of a diverse array of goods and services has become firmly established. In
1992 the World Tourism Organization (WTO), a UN agency, devised an accounting
system called Tourism Economic Accounts and, three years later, the Organization
of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) issued guidelines for Tourism
Satellite Accounts (TSAs) as a way to measure the contribution of tourism consump-
tion to national economic accounts. After a series of reports and conferences, in
2000 the UN adopted the TSA framework. Subsequently, the WTO defined tourism
as an industry that included ‘all establishments whose principal productive activity
326 D. R. Judd

is a tourism characteristic productive activity’, and thus the volume of tourism was
estimated as ‘the supply of goods and services to tourists. Tourism would then be
determined by what and how much the tourist establishments produce’ (WTO 2000).
The World Travel and Tourism Council, established in 1990, adopted the WTO’s
TSA model. The Council has said,

[T]he industry does not produce or supply a homogeneous product or service

like traditional industries (agriculture, electronics, steel, etc). Instead, Travel and
Tourism is an industrial activity defined by the diverse collection of products
(durables and non-durables) and services (transportation accommodations, food
and beverage, entertainment, government services, etc) that are delivered to
visitors (WTTC 2004: 9).

The TSA methodology is fraught with difficulties. It is extremely ambiguous about

what businesses and services are included; the estimates of the proportion of use by
tourists are suspect; and the surveys needed to obtain the information are expensive
and complex. For this reason reliable statistics are hard to come by. An example of
the various ways people apply the TSA can be seen in a recent article published
in Urban Studies (Jones et al. 2003). The authors cited the OECD’s procedure and
reached the conclusion that, ‘The construction of a fully fledged account is potentially
expensive and methodologically complex’ (Jones et al. 2003: 2778). They followed
the OECD’s suggestion that initial studies map the ‘more straightforward elements’
related to tourism first. Thus, the authors used ‘core sectors’ including ‘hotels and ac-
commodation, restaurants and other eating places, bars and public houses, museums
and visitor gardens, amusement parks, fairs and other tourist attractions, other recre-
ational activities not elsewhere classified’ (Jones et al. 2003: 2778). The results they
reported are necessarily ambiguous, forcing them to apologize for the shortcomings
of the TSA procedures but nevertheless justifying them as ‘the most comprehensive
method available’ (Jones et al. 2003: 2793).
The WTO has recognized the problems with tourism statistics as well: ‘The World
Tourism Organization is aware of the limitations of the available statistical infor-
mation on tourism . . . International tourism statistics are often not uniform, because
definitions and methods of collection tend to differ’ (WTO 2006). It is no wonder that
non-specialists do not regard tourism as a genuine industry, or even as a recognizable
activity. If the specialists who write about tourism assert that it is unlike any other in-
dustry and that it is difficult or impossible to apply its principal statistical procedures
reliably, then how should it be incorporated into broader literatures? If it overlaps
other industry groups, is it an industry at all?
As troublesome as these questions may be, the most serious deficiency of the
conventional definition may be the absence of a singular product that can be placed
into market arbitrage mechanisms for the purpose of determining price and value.
The term ‘product’ is thrown about in a cavalier manner in the literature on tourism.
 Tracing the Commodity Chain of Global Tourism 327

In economics it has meaning only within pricing systems. Unless a tourism product
can be defined in this manner, the concept of a tourist industry will continue to be
regarded with disdain.

Commodity Chains
The concept of commodity chains is useful for identifying the organization structure
of the tourism industry, its spatial characteristics, and the relationship between inputs
and outputs (Clancy 1998). The commodity chains concept is well established among
economists and globalization scholars. Commodity chains (alternatively known as
value chains) reveal complex global networks, a ‘whole range of activities from
primary production to final consumption and [the] linkages binding them’ (Raikes
et al. 2000). They offer a way of showing how networks of supply and demand have
evolved over time. They provide a means of identifying institutions, actors, modes
of production, the movements of materials needed for production, the distribution
of products, and marketing and consumption dynamics. They are especially useful
for revealing the spatiality of production relationships; for example, they have been
employed to show the relationship between sites of corporate management and sites
of production. Schematic representations of commodity chains have become a main-
stay of the literature because they reveal the complicated web of interactions that
characterize most industries, especially on a global scale.
As of 2006, it appears that only two authors have attempted to theorize a commodity
chain of tourism. In a 1998 article published in the Review of International Political
Economy, Michael Clancy observed that the hotel and airlines sectors were situated
at the centre of a tourism commodity chain but it was unclear, he said, what other
goods and services should be incorporated into the chain. He concluded that tourism
has globalized like other industries, but that the commodity chains concept must
be modified to account for the ‘unique organization of the global tourism industry’
(Clancy 1998). The difficulty he encountered in applying the concept was that he
accepted the standard definition of tourism as composed of a complex mix of goods
and services; as a consequence, it was difficult to know which businesses to include
and which to leave out.
Recently, Jan Mosedale has attempted to unravel the structural organization of
package tourism in the UK by tracing the commodity chain that ties tours to St Lucia,
an island in the Caribbean. Mosedale (2006: 2) asserted that ‘It is the relationship
between all the actors within the tourism sector – both at the origin and the destination
– that shapes the general development of tourism’. In answering the question ‘what,
exactly is the commodity of the tourism industry?’, Mosedale observed that ‘it is
the overall experience that is sold to the client’ (Mosedale 2006: 5). He noted that
this experience differs greatly from place to place, and even from tourist to tourist.
However, he then confuses the issue by retreating to conventional definitions: ‘The
tourism sector is . . . producing a product that is constituted of both tangible products
328 D. R. Judd

(transportation, accommodation etc.) as well as intangible products (tourist experi-

ences)’ (Mosedale 2006: 6).
It would be preferable to treat the tourist experience as the singular product of the
industry and to specify the inputs that determine the nature of that experience. As
a concept, the commodity chain of tourism can make sense only if it is organized
around a product priced through market mechanisms, much like, for example, autos,
textiles and coffee beans. Finally, some of the spatial characteristics of the industry
must be theorized. These topics are explored briefly in the next sections of the paper.

The Tourism Product

The product of the industry is the tourist’s experience (as it happens, in their textbook
Gunn and Var seem to agree). It must be understood that this experience is manufac-
tured by institutions and actors and that it is priced within a market system. The three
main inputs to the tourist experience are image, investments in place infrastructure
and labor, as represented through the work of tour operators and some other providers
and workers. By specifying the nature of these inputs in some detail, one can begin
the task of determining their relative contribution.

First Input to the Commodity Chain of Tourism: Marketing and Image

Just as in most other global commodity chains, the highest value-added inputs to the
commodity chain of tourism flow from design, marketing and information technology
and management. It would be strange indeed if the commodity chain of tourism was
exceptional in this regard. In all industries, design, product image and marketing
require a mix of rarified skills that marry media to the work of creative talent. In
autos, advertising comes together with the artists, industrial engineers and computer
design specialists who work for major auto companies and specialized design and
fabrication companies such as Bertone, Giugiaro and Pinanfarina. In the apparels
industry, we are all familiar with the dozens of labels, and we know that nearly all
of the value in designer clothing arises from design and marketing. Raw materials,
fabric and assembly account for a very a small proportion of the final price. As a
substantial literature demonstrates, the imaging and constant re-imaging of products
create consumer desires. Few people buy a car, or a dress, purely for its functional
value. They buy because the product signifies social standing, sophisticated taste and
other values that marketers are adept at exploiting.
The tourist experience is similar. People visit places because they have been exposed
to images transmitted constantly through television, magazines and newspapers;
through brochures and websites prepared by tour operators, airlines and countless
other businesses; by government tourist agencies, convention and visitors bureaux,
and cities and towns; and by travel writers who churn out hundreds of new titles
a year. The Internet has rapidly democratized image-creation and dissemination by
 Tracing the Commodity Chain of Global Tourism 329

making it possible for would-be tourists to construct their own composite images of
the experience or experiences they seek.
Obviously, more information is needed about how tourist images are produced,
but there is little mystery about the basic process. What goes into tourist images?
The promise of comfort and familiarity – and, ironically, the opposite – uniqueness,
adventure, entertainment and excitement. Tourism providers are preoccupied with the
art of distilling a collage of images into a promised tourist experience. The production
of nature programmes is analogous. On the Nature Channel, every second something
exciting is happening in the natural world; the television viewer is not privy to the
long hours of tedium that have been edited out. A standard repertoire of images is
used over and over again; in fact, such images are bought and sold in a free-wheeling
media marketplace; thus, there is the lioness licking her cubs; the lioness stalking a
gazelle; the pride of lions at the kill. In tourist marketing, there are the palm trees
listing over a white sand beach against a sunset on the far horizon. In the case of
cities, historic architecture, iconic sites and exciting street scenes and night life make
up a typical montage.
Design and image have little, if any, intrinsic value. Instead the value is incorporated
into products as brand names and designer labels, new styles and other signatures of
the designers’ work. Image is an essential component of the product; rarely can it
stand alone. Certainly this characteristic describes the tourist experience. On a daily
basis, potential tourists – which includes just about everyone – are bombarded with the
ubiquitous images of travel contained in television advertisements and programmes,
newspapers, billboards, Internet sites, magazines and books. Considered as a whole
this works as generic marketing for travel of all sorts. When potential tourists begin
the process of winnowing this flood of information to design a particular trip, the
product they seek – the tourist experience – comes into sharp focus.

Second Input to the Commodity Chain of Tourism: Place Infrastructure

However spectacular their natural or cultural attributes may be, all places that hope
to attract tourists must build an infrastructure in which to move and house them.
Even in areas where local residents already support systems of roads and airports,
these systems must be built to larger scale and new services must be provided to
accommodate visitors. In addition, an infrastructure specifically designed to make
visitors comfortable must be built. This process is particularly transparent in the
case of urban tourism. In the past quarter of a century, older industrial cities in
the USA have transformed their built environments by building, at great expense, a
specialized infrastructure of tourism (Judd 2003). In the first phase, older industrial
and port cities built tourist bubbles that were isolated from the crime and physical
decay of surrounding neighbourhoods and downtowns (Judd 1999). Over time, most
of these cities have entered a more mature phase that involves making the city as a
whole more attractive to visitors (Judd 2004). The policies used to make this happen
330 D. R. Judd

were expensive: policing and other strategies to lower crime rates, and high levels
of amenities such as redeveloped waterfronts, parks and other public areas. Without
these overt strategies, these cities could not have entered the national and international
tourism sweepstakes. Likewise, sites of ecotourism can accommodate large numbers
of tourist flows only when an infrastructure has been built to transport, house and
mediate the environmental impacts of tourists.
The infrastructure of place decisively influences and, in some cases, determines
the experiences of tourists. For example, like all Fordist production systems, Fordist
tourism infrastructure is composed of globalized architectural styles and is designed to
serve (or process) efficiently large numbers of consumers with standardized services
at minimum cost. Cruise ships, resorts, festival shopping malls, sports facilities, tourist
bubbles and entertainment complexes provide a highly regimented and predictable
experience for their users (Hiernaux-Nicolas 2004). Frequently, efforts are made to
incorporate a thin veneer of the local into Fordist environments – curry dishes at
McDonald’s in India, for example, or Mexican motifs in the resorts at Puerto Vallarta.
Still, standardization prevails.
Unlike Fordist tourism, which works with small profit margins and large numbers
of tourists, post-Fordist tourism, which emphasizes unique experiences and variety,
adds high value to the tourism commodity chain. Such facilities as boutique hotels,
fishing lodges and ecotourist complexes (which are often built as miniature cities
combining lodging, dining and waste management), normally represent locality and
difference through manipulated images of authenticity. Highly elaborated architec-
tures and design are signatures of locality, ethnicity and culture. Because they tend
to offer a high degree of luxury and exclusiveness, the tourist experiences they offer
are expensive; even so, both Fordist and post-Fordist tourism are corporate nodes in
the production system of global tourism. The capital that flows in and out of them
mostly bypasses local economies.
Artisanal production is a component of the tourist infrastructure in most destina-
tions, but its importance varies. It is virtually absent in Fordist environments and
is still rare in China, where tourist shops are stocked with mass-produced state
goods masquerading as authentic. Of course, this sort of slight-of-hand exists in
any place where large numbers of tourists congregate. The sites of genuine arti-
sanal production are usually (but not always) easy to recognize because of their
vernacular architectural styles and physical environments (such as outdoor mar-
kets) that reflect local social and cultural histories and traditions; Oaxaco, Mex-
ico, and the surrounding villages provide a good example. Here. the inimitable
character and distinctiveness of a place emerges (though it is always changed to
some degree by the presence of tourists and their money). Tourists in such places
can buy from artisanal food producers, hire local guides, stay in small hotels or
B&Bs, eat in local eateries and buy from local artists. As they do so, they contribute
directly to local economies and may help raise the level of amenities available to
local residents.
 Tracing the Commodity Chain of Global Tourism 331

As in many other globalized industries, the tourist product is composed of a mix-

ture of Fordist, post-Fordist and artisanal modes of production. Tourists have various
tastes, and producers are keen to satisfy any group with enough purchasing power.
Some tourists elevate comfort, security, predictability and cost above all other consid-
erations. Some tourists disdain Fordist environments in favour of boutique pleasures,
a sense of authenticity and local colour. In actuality, in the course of a trip most
tourists are likely to experience all three environments, unless the nature of the local
place infrastructure makes this difficult (in resorts and on cruise ships, for example).
There is, of course, a close interaction between image and place. The marketing that
they have been exposed to ensures that tourists will have rather fixed expectations
about their destinations. To a considerable degree, therefore, marketing drives the
nature of place infrastructure. According to Briavel Holcomb (1993: 134), ‘Place
marketers do not see their task as purely promoting and advertising, but also as
adapting the “product” (that is, the place) to be more desirable to the “market”’.
In its broadest conception, place infrastructure is composed of an almost endless
list of facilities and amenities, everything from convention centres to restaurants
to flowers in parks. Ioannides and Debbage (1998: 211) have said that places are
produced ‘as commodities to be promoted and sold to consumers ...’. But it is more
accurate to regard place as an input; considered in its entirety, place infrastructure is
an input that helps to shape the tourist’s experience. To determine the value of this
input it is not necessary to calculate the value of each component; it is ‘all in the mix’
of amenities and built environment (Terhorst et al. 2003).

Third Input to the Commodity Chain of Tourism: Tourism Providers and Some
Categories of Service Workers
In the age of the Internet a complete account of tourist entrepreneurs is impossible, but
a list of the most important, or at least the best organized, would include tour operators,
airlines, corporations that run hotels and resorts, and government agencies. Ioannides
maintains that tour operators, who are wholesalers of diverse tourist services, are the
‘gatekeepers of tourism’ (Ioannides 1998: 139). According to Ryan and Hoontrakul
(2004: 5), ‘As a rule, the services provided by travel intermediaries have been cen-
tered on three areas – marketing, design and financing’. New reservation systems,
computer technology, international quality standards and co-ordinated investment by
financial institutions and corporations have extended the reach of tourism providers
vastly. The Internet has become extremely important in facilitating the marriage of
these three elements with the desires and decisions of tourists. Tour operators are
middlemen who knit together an astonishing array of institutions and actors. They
market inclusive tour packages; provide information and advice about destinations;
co-ordinate different modes of travel and lodging, dining, sightseeing and cultural
activities. Because they are able to minimize risks, offer convenience and prices far
332 D. R. Judd

lower than if an individual tourist makes these arrangements separately, they are
taking over a constantly expanding share of the market.
Tourism providers include not only entrepreneurs, but workers who specialize in
providing valuable services essential to the tourist’s experience. Although the jobs
associated with tourism tend to be low-wage, tourism is also labour-intensive and thus
it creates a lot of jobs, especially entry-level opportunities for new immigrants and
people with few skills (Gladstone and Fainstein, 2003). However, the employment
profile of tourism varies enormously from place to place, and there are undoubtedly
good opportunities, especially in web design, place and facility marketing, and in
convention centres and cultural institutions (Fainstein et al. 2003). But more research
on tourism employment is needed to get a fix on how tourism sectors are associated
with varying job structures.
Tourism providers are not merely in the business of discerning what tourists want
and trying to satisfy their desires. On the contrary. Tourist producers attempt to shape
the wants and tastes of consumers. But are some tourists able to escape the confines of
place infrastructure and the clutches of tour operators? It is true that a traveller may stop
off at scenic overview, take a walk in the woods and undertake many other activities
without making contact with tourist entrepreneurs. But these experiences invariably
occur as interludes between commodified experiences. Perhaps, by definition, to be
a tourist means that one is situated within the commodity chain of tourism.

The Sources of Change

The commodity chains for all products have been transformed by new information
technologies. Information management and technology makes it possible for corpora-
tions to expand their reach, but it also allows new players to enter the game. According
to Gary Geriffi (2001), the digital era is ‘melting the informational glue that holds
corporations and global value chains together’. Power has shifted towards ‘Internet
navigators in infomediary-driven chains’.
Centralization and decentralization occur simultaneously. In many industry groups,
products can be sold directly to consumers without the intercession of companies
that previously presided over marketing and distribution, through on-line selling,
catalogues and global delivery services. The tourism industry is being transformed
by these same developments. Airlines, hotel chains, rental car companies and tour
operators have achieved global reach. At the same time, tourist entrepreneurs can enter
almost at will. This is one of the circumstances that forces providers to constantly
market new tourist experiences.
Globalization has intensified the competition between places. Place entrepreneurs
are under constant pressure to improve infrastructure and adopt policies friendly
to visitors. Because they depend so much on repeat business and word-of-mouth
recommendations, tour operators and other non-local tourist entrepreneurs constantly
search for new destinations and abandon those that no longer satisfy their customers.
 Tracing the Commodity Chain of Global Tourism 333

Ioannides (1998: 147) observed that, ‘Tour operators frequently protest about rises in
airport taxes, inefficient infrastructure or environmental pollution in key resorts’.
Tourists’ desires are changing constantly. The experience that was satisfactory
yesterday no longer satisfies. In addition, when new products become available com-
petition induces a copy-cat logic among place-entrepreneurs. Mackun (1998) has
indicated that tourism is particularly prone to rapid transformation. In his account,

The customers are seeking a pleasurable experience that is both different and
more exhilarating than their daily, mundane experiences at home; one that
justifies their expenditure of time and resources as well as their choice of a
certainly locality and a particular establishment within that locality (Mackun
1998: 261).

The producers of image, the builders of place infrastructure and tourism providers
try to tap into that motivation.

Redefining Tourism: The Challenge

The tourism system cannot logically be a system of consumption unless there are
also producers. Producers seek to shape the tourist experience; it does not arise by
accident. It is important to study the demographics of tourists and their desires and
patterns of consumption. But what tourists want or think they want, and the choices
from which they choose, are determined at least as much by those who consciously
produce the tourist experience as they are by the consumers.
Specifying the inputs to the tourist experience is a challenging task and gathering
the data to trace spatial relationships and to estimate pricing is even more daunting. But
these problems characterize all industries and all commodity chains, and there is little
reason to believe that tourism is inherently more complex than many other economic
industries. The only reason that we have a detailed knowledge of commodity chains
in agricultural products, for example, is that a great deal of research has been devoted
to tracing out the linkages and the pricing mechanisms for particular commodities.
Fordist and post-Fordist tourism environments illustrate the strategy for discovering
the linkages and pricing mechanisms for the tourist industry. It is possible to get a
precise fix on the valuation of the tourist experience provided by package tours, cruise
ships and entertainment complexes because one charge covers nearly everything.
Pricing the inputs to such experiences is also straightforward: cost data kept by the
companies running these businesses will yield up the estimated values that have
been added by marketing, the costs of infrastructure and personnel. The task is more
difficult for a more complex tourism environment, but the logic of research is similar.
Tracing the commodity chain for all industries requires the construction of indicators
and sampling studies to estimate the value of inputs, but as previously noted, the
overall mix is as important to discover as the component pieces.
334 D. R. Judd

Current definitions of the tourism industry obscure rather than reveal the link-
ages and relationships that, when taken together, add up to a recognizable system
of production. The main value-added inputs to the tourist experience include im-
age (or marketing, if preferred), place infrastructure and the work of tour operators.
The relationship between image (and how it is produced) and tourists’ use of place
infrastructure; the activities of tour operators and other local tourist entrepreneurs:
how do these components fit together? Surveys can reveal the relative satisfaction
of tourists and the nature of the experience they have had during a trip (or better, at
each destination). What images did tourists have before they arrived? Where did they
get those images from? Did the image fit with their experience? Did they mostly use
standardized facilities (and guided tours or tour packages)? How did they interact
with the overall ‘mix’ of services and amenities?
The deficiencies in the current definition of tourism are sufficient to justify the time
and energy it will take to understand tourism as a system of production. The potential
payoffs are substantial. Only by treating tourism as a system of production can the
walls surrounding the specialized literature on tourism be broken down. Research on
tourism will continue to be compartmentalized and largely ignored by non-specialists
until it becomes accepted as an industry that looks just like other industry groups.

Acknowledgement
The author wishes to thank Peter Billing, Director of the Center for Regional- og
Turismeforskning (Center for Regional and Tourism Research), Nexø, Denmark, for
the invitation to conduct research and writing at the Center in April and May 2004.
This research was catalysed by that wonderful experience. This paper was originally
presented as a plenary presentation to the Recreation, Tourism and Sport Specialty
Group at the annual meeting of the Association of American Geographers, Chicago,
Illinois, 9 March 2006.

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336 D. R. Judd

Notes on Contributor
Dennis R. Judd is a Professor in the Department of Political Science and Fellow in
the Great Cities Institute, University of Illinois at Chicago.

Résumé: Retracer la chaı̂ne de production du tourisme global

On argumente que les définitions actuelles du tourisme sont déficientes car elles décrivent le tourisme
comme système de consommation et non de production. Cette façon de définir le tourisme le rend
différent des autres activités économiques et font que les publications en géographie économique
et sur la globalisation ignorent pratiquement le tourisme qui est aussi relativement négligé par les
sciences sociales. On suggère qu’il faudrait considérer le tourisme comme un processus de production
d’un produit spécifique à partir d’entrants identifiables. Pour atteindre ce but, dans un premier
temps, le concept de chaı̂nes de production est appliqué pour construire un profile de l’activité
globale du tourisme.

Mots-clés: Industrie du tourisme, chaı̂nes de production, expérience des touristes

Zusammenfassung: Kommentar: Auf der Spur der Gebrauchsgüterkette des

globalen Tourismus
Der Autor legt dar, dass die gegenwärtigen touristischen Definitionen unzureichend sind, da diese
den Tourismus eher als ein System des Verbrauchs denn der Herstellung erklären. Da solche Def-
initionen den Tourismus völlig anders erscheinen lassen als andere Gewerbe, fehlen denn auch
Tourismusstudien weitgehend in der Literatur zur Wirtschaftsgeographie und Globalisierung und
sind auch in den Sozialwissenschaften verhältnismäßig vernachlässigt. Der Autor schlägt vor, dass
der Tourismus als ein Herstellungsprozess betrachtet werden sollte, der ein bestimmtes Produkt
und klar benennbare ,Rohstoffe’ beinhaltet. Als einen ersten Schritt hin auf dieses Ziel wendet der
Autor das Konzept der Gebrauchsgüterkette an, um ein Profil der globalen Tourismusindustrie zu
konstruieren.

Stichwörter: Tourismusindustrie, Gebrauchsgüterkette, touristische Erfahrung