The structure and role of drive tourism

Although an important component of the tourism industry, researchers have generally shown little interest in undertaking research into drive tourism (Connell and Page 2008). The lack of research into the role of the car in shaping tourism demand and increasing the accessibility of many tourism resources is surprising. As Timothy (this volume) notes, cars carry more tourists in the US than any other mode of transport, a position that is echoed by the use of cars for leisure travel in Europe and other developed nations. Given this gap in the literature, the aim of this book is to present a scholarly and comprehensive review of drive tourism from a variety of perspectives. While the authors make no claim to an exhaustive treatment of every aspect of drive tourism, the book does bring together a range of drive tourism related research that we believe will assist to move the study of drive tourism from its current peripheral position to a more central place in the tourism research agenda. In this book, the term drive tourism is used to describe travel by any form of mechanically powered, passenger-carrying road transport, with the exclusion of coaches and bicycles. Coaches are excluded because they generally operate on a commercial basis and, with the exception of charter buses, on fixed schedules along a predetermined route. Bicycles, while a form of road transport, are not mechanically powered and are sufficiently different to other forms of road transport that they constitute a separate area of study. The range of road-based travel encompassed by the broad description of drive tourism includes day trips and overnight travel in a family car or a rental car, travel in four-wheel-drive vehicles (4WD), caravanning, travel in recreational vehicles (RVs) and motorhomes, and touring by motorcycle.