The negotiation of expectations in tourism is a complex and dynamic process – one that is central to the imagination of cultural difference. Expectations not only affect the lives and experiences of tourists, but also their hosts, and play an important part in the success or failure of the overall tourism experience. It is for this reason, the authors argue, that special attention should be given to how expectations constitute and sustain tourism. The case studies presented here explore what fuels the desires to visit particular places, to what degree expectations inform the experience of the place, and the frequent disjunctions between tourist expectations and experiences. Careful attention is paid to how the imagination of the visitor inspires the imagination of the host, and vice-versa; how tourists and host communities actively imagine, re-imagine, and shape each other’s lives. This realization, has profound consequences, not solely for academic analysis, but for all those who participate in and work within the tourism industry.

"[This volume offers] a fascinating series of studies of how expectation and anticipation shape tourist practices. Readers will find here rich and impressive studies that range across the globe pausing to cast new light on many classic scenarios and issues - This volume will be a major resource that offers a nuanced account of the complexities of expectations, disappointments and joys of tourism." * Mike Crang, Durham University " - an exciting volume, one that addresses a little understood aspect of tourism: the complex interaction between imagination and reality, and the way in which anticipation and expectation frames the experience of tourism - These issues are often discussed in passing in other works, but here they are brought into sharp relief." * Adam Kaul, Augustana College

Jonathan Skinner is Senior Lecturer in Social Anthropology at Queen’s University Belfast. He is the author of Before the Volcano: Reverberations of Identity on Montserrat (Arawak Publications 2004) and co-editor of Managing Island Life (University of Abertay Press 2006).