This book analyses the role tourism plays for sustainable development in Southeast Asia. It seeks to assesses tourism’s impact on residents and localities across the region by critically debating and offering new understandings of its dynamics on the global and local levels.

Offering a myriad of case studies from a range of different countries in the region, this book is interdisciplinary in nature, thereby presenting a comprehensive overview of tourism’s current and future role in development. Divided into four parts, it discusses the nexus of tourism and development at both the regional and national levels, with a focus on theoretical and methodological foundations, protected areas, local communities, and broader issues of governance. Contributors from within and outside of Southeast Asia raise awareness of the local challenges, including issues of ownership or unequal power relations, and celebrate best-practice examples where tourism can be regarded as making a positive difference to residents’ life.

The first edited volume to examine comprehensive analysis of tourism in Southeast Asia as both an economic and social phenomenon through the lens of development, this book will be useful to students and scholars of tourism, development, Southeast Asian culture and society and Asian Studies more generally.