Mass tourism as a production system: the tourist revolution in the Mediterranean, 1949-2014

Abstract

This work considers different aspects related to the tourist economy and the economic history of tourism. In the first place, the scarcity of study on this important economic sector in the academic world, much more inclined to analysis of agriculture and industry rather than services, activities increasingly essential in economic structures. Secondly, the vision of mass tourism as one more piece in the globalization process, which made a decisive start in the 1950s. And, finally, an empirical focus on the Mediterranean as the epicenter of world tourism development since the late 1940s until practically the present day, based on the study of concrete indicators on the 22 countries that compose, in essence, the coast of the Mare Nostrum.