Book Review

Publication Summary

Extreme Tourism: Lessons from the World’s Cold Water Islands examines cold water island tourist destinations as an alternative to the more conventional and popular warm water destinations. The text provides new insight and information into tourism in regions that are still researched and discussed in a somewhat limited fashion in the literature. The text is divided into two main sections; the first is on conceptual themes and was noted by the editor as having been written after the compilation of section two which contained the fourteen case studies. In section one, the authors were able to review issues, trends, and themes from the various cold water island examples. The result is four chapters that provide an overview of what was deemed to be the overriding focuses and themes throughout the cold water island examples detailed in the second section of the book. Section two of the book contains fourteen chapters in which the authors detail case studies from cold water islands around the world. The case studies in section two are drawn more heavily from the northern hemisphere (nine of the fourteen), but span the cold water regions of the world from Baffin Island, Nunavut, Canada and the Solovetsky Archipelago, Russia to the southern waters around Macquarie Island, Australia and the Antarctic Peninsula. The least extreme of the cold water island case studies with regard to tourist visitation is Iceland, with its easy access and well developed infrastructure, hundreds of thousands of visitors travel to the island annually. In contrast, Macquarie Island and Banks Island represent the opposite end of the spectrum as each of these destinations may only count for a few hundred visitors each year. Generally, the case studies document an individual cold island destination with specific information that is placed within the context of larger tourism theory or related and contrasted against information from their warm water counterparts. The four introductory chapters of the book present several encompassing themes including promotional issues, sustainability issues, human resource issues, and seasonality issues that link these geographically distant locations. The authors use selected examples from the case studies in section two of the book to highlight and support their discussion of the identified and overriding themes. Although the case studies presented in the book share a number of similar characteristics, each location is very unique. The cold water islands are unique destinations for a variety of reasons, including their isolation, seasonality, harsh climate, spirituality, wildlife, and culture. The book also explores the variety of motivations that surrounds the decision a person makes to travel to one of these locations. The visitors to cold water locations may be one of those identified by Butler (p. 256) as ‘‘cultural and natural history tourists . . . [or] . . . island ‘collectors’ . . . [or] . . . Others may just be curious . . .’’. Whatever reasons that people choose to visit these islands, the local residents and their governments must work to