Our intention in this book is to produce an image of the World’s tourist places¹. This is not in itself totally new, textbooks already exist that deal with tourism in the World, or at least studies that claim to demonstrate a reflexive approach, such as diverse studies based on more or less far-fetched classifications. However they share two major criticisms. On the one hand, they are based on the institutional definition of tourism, which brings together mobility, of very diferent natures, on the pretext that the issue would be to separate that which concerns migration, the intention of which is to settle for a more or less long period, from movement aimed at a scheduled return. This confusing approach, which combines business and leisure travel, defended by the World Tourism Organization (UNWTO), does not allow us to fully understand the real issues of displaced individuals. We have already participated in criticizing this postion on several occasions [MIT 02]. It is now a question of going further by translating, on a planisphere, the reality of actual tourist places, i.e. responding to the challenges of recreation and relaxation relative to individuals and their hierarchy. On the other hand, these same works do not base their proposals for a tourist image of the World on an explicit method. We have therefore sought to implement a scientific approach that breaks with institutional statistics.

Moreover, our ambition is to deal with places, and not only States, from a globalized perspective, one that is interested in the World connectiveness of places, or the density of the links that connect a place to others distinct in the World. For the analysis of tourism, we draw on geographical reflection which considers that the structuring of the World is based on metropolises, communication nodes and axes, and productive spaces. Beyond that, the challenge is to understand how and why, through tourism, societies achieve a better life through sustainable development, which encompasses social, economic and environmental aspects. This project was reinforced by our work on comparative tourism practices between the Chinese and Westerners [TAU 15], but it came to fruition in 2007, when we were confronted with the need to teach tourism in the World. Since then, we have developed a method that has made it possible to achieve this cognitive objective, while mobilizing a pedagogical approach based on placing students in a research situation. In return, their questions and work stimulated our reflection². Furthermore, Denis Retaillé’s book, Les Lieux de la mondialisation [RET 12], was a particular driver, as it reinforced our proposal of a geography of the World by places, but also sharply questioned us, because tourism is absent. More recently, in a conference organized as part of the International Tourism Festival³, Michel Lussault’s statement about his work on hyperplaces [LUS 17] confirmed for us that hyperplaces are “certainly, necessarily, unstoppably touristic”.

Of course, not all tourist places are hyper places. If touristicity is a necessary, but not sufficient, quality of hyperplaces, it must be of high intensity, so that only hypertouristic places are hyperplaces.

Too many works deal with tourism in the World solely through the geopolitical framework of the state, i.e. defined areas, without taking into consideration the places. Research has already been carried out in this regard, but from a historical perspective of analyzing the spread of tourism. Andreea Antonescu has thus garnered tourist guides in her thesis, [STO 14, ANT 16]. Jean-Christophe Gay and Jean-Michel Decroly, for their part, have read through more than 2,000 scientific and professional journals [GAY 18]. These authors rely on a tourist place’s date of appearance. We have opted for an approach that focuses on the present time and aims to produce a hierarchy in a globalized approach. To this end, we have developed a method based on the use of tour operator (TO) catalogs, which were published in 2011 [VIO 11]. The method dealt with the case in China as seen by the French TOs and then generalized to Westerners. There was still a need to systematize the approach for all worlds and the World. For this purpose, we have mobilized the typology of tourist places, developed by the MIT team [MIT 02] and refined by Philippe Duhamel [DUH 18].

The presentation of this method is discussed again at the end of Chapter 1, which opens with a classic overview of tourism in the World, i.e. based on the institutional definition of tourism and within the state framework. For even if we consider that this dimension must be overcome in order to understand how tourists live in the World, it is imposed on tourists through traffic regulations, the geopolitical tensions that affect and guide them and the modalities that implement them, namely stays and tours that continue to be essentially structured according to the States. All you have to do is browse through a TO catalog to see that the summary is always imbued with this reality. Chapter 1 aims to understand, in a global way, the development of tourism in the World by starting from the intentions of tourists and then questioning the obstacles that stand in the way, before mobilizing the means they use to achieve their goals. The chapter then invites you to a World tour organized according to a strictly tourist logic. Indeed, we have not followed the classical order of the continents, a representation constructed by Europeans, nor that of the UNWTO, which distinguishes a group called the Middle East, which runs from Libya to Iran, and a vast region called Asia-Pacific. This ambition to write about tourism in the World is hampered by the heterogeneity and complexity of the worlds, so we, like Christian Grataloup [GRA 10], ask specialists from the various worlds read our proposals with Leniency. We have filled the gaps with publications that are very popular, as long as their authors are authoritative in their respective fields. They are cited when they have helped us to understand the World a little better, a tourist World, as it goes.

We have favored an approach that highlights relationships between large groups and types of practices. Thus, America is characterized by three regions: one central region (Chapter 3) marked by a combination of seaside resorts and discovery practices, which separates, within the world island, the Northern region (Chapter 2) from that of the South (Chapter 4), both clearly dedicated to discovery according to various themes that mobilize biophysical and cultural objects, whether they concern heritage or modernity. The group of Eurasia and Africa can be further subdivided into:

• – Northern and Central Europe, characterized by discovery (Chapter 5);
• – a vast Mediterranean region (Chapter 6) where resort holidays dominate although discovery is not absent;
• – a sub-Saharan group (Chapter 7) divided between discovery clearly oriented toward biophysical objects, through excursions, and seaside resorts for stays, sometimes organized in groups;
• – Asia is divided into Southeast Asia (Chapter 9) where rest and discovery combine again, while the regions of West Asia (Chapter 8) and East Asia (Chapter 10) are much more dominated by discovery;
• – Oceania and the Pacific (Chapter 11), lastly, compares the two major islands, which are more oriented toward discovery, to the more isolated archipelagos where the notion of rest prevails.