Why We Love to Tour

Why We Love to Tour: Gazing from the Serious Leisure Perspective offers a fresh and nuanced exploration of tourism, distinct from traditional industry-focused narratives. Stebbins delves into tourism as a rich tapestry of leisure activities that provide personal satisfaction and self-fulfilment, framed within the social worlds and lifestyles that accompany these pursuits. This book expands and enriches the gaze, tracing leisure experiences across serious pursuits in art, science, sports, and entertainment; casual leisure in activities like sightseeing and nature exploration; and project-based leisure through unique, one-time adventures such as climbing Mount Fuji, visiting Paris, or swimming with dolphins.
Why We Love to Tour thus complements and extends the understanding of the tourist gaze, making it a valuable resource for academics as a monograph, for upper-division undergraduate and graduate students as supplementary reading, and for professionals within the tourism industry seeking deeper insights into the motivations driving modern tourists.

Robert A. Stebbins, FRSC, received his Ph.D. in sociology in 1964 from the University of Minnesota. He taught in the departments of sociology at Presbyterian College (1964-65), Memorial University of Newfoundland (1965-73), University of Texas at Arlington (1973-76), and University of Calgary (1976 to 1999). He is now Professor Emeritus in the Faculty of Social Sciences. He was elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada (1999). Stebbins's research interests in leisure date to late 1973, the year he began his grounded theoretic work on amateurs.