Carla Fraga

Tourism, public transport and sustainable mobility

Regularly proposed as one of the pillars to tackle environmental issues, public transport should be an obvious and exhaustive topic in tourism studies. Hence, the relevance of “Tourism, public transport and sustainable mobility”, which, as stated by the authors, results from the convergence of their research interests built up throughout their academic careers globally. In this sense, it is intriguing to think that the mobility of scholars contributes to reflections about mobility itself – a task that goes far beyond delivering 10-minute presentations at symposia in order to keep the wheel of conferences turning worldwide. The book features extremely pertinent challenges in the contemporary world, but whose appraisal is very limited in the tourism literature. For this reason, its relevance comes from the fact of identifying, organising and discussing a set of themes that serve as an initial reference on the relationship between public transport and tourism. The purpose of the book is revealed in the Introduction: “to address the critical role that transport plays in tourism with respect to movement, as well as its part in the tourist experience and its significance for destination and tourism sustainability” (p.1). Thus, following the philosophy of Channel View’s “Tourism Essentials” series, the authors are concerned with introducing concepts and definitions on tourism and public transport. They do this in a thought-provoking way by asking questions! So the question that guides this section but also the book as whole is “why should we be interested in tourism and public transport?” (p.18). Possible answers could be divided into two major fronts:

Railway for Tourism in South America: An Approach on Its Uses

In this paper, the authors focus on the interplay between railways and tourism. Therefore, evidence is provided in order to decipher the manner in which railways are used for tourism purposes in South America. With a view to achieving this goal, an exploratory approach is used, which consists in the analysis of publications on tourism and transportation made by renowned scholars, as well as a descriptive approach, based upon the classification of data obtained from public and private railway organizations. The paper notes that tourism is of paramount importance in the protection of the railway heritage in South America. Following this line of reasoning, it is concluded that there is a wide variety of tourist trains which exploit either the cultural and historical aspects of railways or the bewitching landscapes offered by railway trips and create experiences for tourists.