Tourism research carries with it a subtle power to define: to skew: to objectify: to
foreground some issues leaving others untouched: to legitimize some methods casting others to
the periphery: to privilege some groups whilst excluding others and to tell stories in
particularistic ways. This is not to say that lies are being told about tourism, nor is it sought to
denigrate positivist or applied research: Both make significant contributions to the developing
canon of knowledge. Rather it is concluded that tourism research has the generative power to
construct and to frame tourism.