In the past several decades, it is suggested that geographers have played an important role intourism studies (Hall and Page, 2009). Seminal contributions have been made to the analysisof environmental, regional, spatial, and evolutionary issues in tourism. It is argued that oneof the most well known contributions by a geographer to the tourism field is Butler ’s (1980)Tourism Area Life Cycle (TALC) model (Hall and Page, 2009). Over time, an extensiveliterature has developed on this subject. Although the TALC model is recognized as a usefulframework for the description and interpretation of the evolution of tourism areas, both itsapplicability (Getz, 1992; Hovinen, 2002; Jones, 1998; Prideaux, 2000) and theoreticalapproaches (Wall, 1982; Haywood 1986; Martin and Uysal, 1990; Oppermann, 1998) havebeen criticized. Recently, some studies have employed concepts from other disciplines tomodify the TALC model using a quantitative approach (Cole, 2007, 2009; Lundtorp andWanhill, 2001; Moore and Whitehall, 2005). Moreover, some promising attempts have beenmade to link the model more strongly to evolutionary ideas (see Papatheodorou, 2004).Notably, there is a new paradigm in economic geography, coined evolutionary economicgeography (EEG), focusing on how the spatial economy transform itself through irreversibleand dynamic processes from within over time. In the EEG literature, there are similarconcerning issues about the rise and fall of industrial areas as those of tourism areas. The objective of this chapter is to deepen and explore these links by focusing on some keynotions of evolutionary economic geography (EEG) (Boschma and Martin, 2010), such as -11- path dependence and coevolution. These notions can, in addition to the TALC model, play akey explanatory role in understanding and explaining the development of tourist destinationsthrough time. In the following sections, the critical issues in the TALC model and thetheoretical backgrounds of EEG will be introduced and summarized. Moreover, this chapterwill examine whether the theoretical notions from EEG can compensate for the weaknessesof the TALC model. Thus, this chapter is organized as follows: Section 2.2 presents a reviewof the recent literature on the TALC model, focusing on the key issues discussed in variouscase studies of the model, including the main stages, measurement of the stages,characteristics of the stages, the influential factors, the extension of the TALC model, and theweaknesses of the TALC model. Section 2.3 briefly introduces the conceptual and theoreticalframework of EEG and examines its potential relevance to the TALC model. Section 2.4explores and deepens explicit links to key concepts of EEG by proposing on the one hand analternative path dependence model to explain tourism area evolution, and on the other handthe concept of coevolution of tourism products, tourism sectors and institutions. Section 2.5presents some conclusions about the key research questions addressed in this chapter.
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