This book investigates and considers the urgent political, social, and economic challenges that confront society and tourism. It attempts to look at what is threatening society, and makes suggestions on what the impact will be and how tourism will be changed to integrate with the new socio-economics of a newly emerging society with its novel peculiar challenges and opportunities in a post-energy era.

The book draws on the views of leading thinkers in tourism and considers a broad range of issues from multidisciplinary perspectives facing the tourism industry for the first time in one volume: dwindling energy, new technology, security (like war and terrorism), political economy, sustainability, and human resources. By critically reviewing these social and economic challenges in a global scale, the book helps to create a comprehensive view of future tourism in the unfolding and challenging society of the third millennium.

This innovative and significant volume will be valuable reading for all current and future tourism professionals.

"a useful contribution to the literature on the nature and direction of tourism and a balance to some of the current simplistic statements often made about tourism, present and future." - Richard Butler, Strathclyde Business School, University of Strathclyde, published in Annals of Leisure research