Some have argued that tourism research has evolved from a commer- cially driven agenda of ‘boosterism’, through adverse criticism of tourism’s social and environmental impacts, towards an informed empirical and theoretical basis and the widespread adoption of rigorous scientific research methods (Jafari, 1990,2003,2005). Such progressive, evolutionary accounts of phenomena may be criticised because of their implicit suggestion that something has become, over time, more sophisticated and better as a result. Nevertheless, a focus on the changes in and diversity of approaches to understanding tourism and, in particular, tourists’ behaviours, seems apposite in a time when the tourism industry is under extraordinary economic pressure.