The concept of quality of life (QoL) is implicit in much of the academic literature on tourism impacts. Tourism academics have explored in some detail the contributions that tourism makes to various aspects of the QoL of destination residents. But these explorations have been limited by the social representations that academics hold of tourism. This paper examines those social representations and argues that a more explicit consideration of QoL can help in the development of a better framework for critically analysing tourism impacts. This framework is explored in a qualitative study of social representations of tourism and its impacts on the individual tourist.
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