Perceptions from the periphery : the experience of Wales

This chapter looks critically at some of the key issues that underpin the notion of periphery, in the context of tourism in Wales. Ours is an excellent vantage point from which to examine issues regarding the periphery. Wales is a small country of some 2.8 million people, located on the western edge of Europe next to a larger neighbour. It bears many of the hallmarks of a peripheral area, having been traditionally regarded as one of the most economically disadvantaged parts of the United Kingdom. During the last two decades the economy of Wales has undergone a major transformation, with the old heavy industries of coal, iron and steel being replaced by a more diversified pattern of light manufacturing and service-based industries. Tourism is a major industry which, along with other elements of the economic and social fabric, has been subject to major structural change during recent years. The chapter is in three parts. It begins with two introductory context setting sections dealing respectively with the characteristics of peripheries and the main features of tourism in Wales. Two analytical themes set a framework for the consideration of five case studies in part three, which forms the paper’s substantive core. Over the past five years several research projects have been in progress at the University of Wales Institute, Cardiff, examining different aspects of tourism in Wales. These studies provide recent empirical evidence of the condition of tourism in the periphery. Data from studies of place perception and rural tourism development, urban tourism, seaside holiday resorts, coastal pollution and international tourism to Wales are used to analyse critically tourism in the context of the core-periphery axiom.