Westwood Start

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Westwood Start

Westwood Start is the indie publisher of the new series Making Sense of Tourism. Alan is the author of The Beckoning Horizon and the forthcoming On The Move.
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It has been set up by Alan Machin after a lifetime in tourism management and education.

Address

33, Ripon Terrace
Halifax
HX36NA

Website

http://www.alan-machin.squarespace.com/

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A life in tourism, education and the media

Westwood Start is a publishing project. After a working life in teaching - secondary, higher and adult - and tourism - development, attractions and commercial design - Alan Machin turned to a new project in his retirement.

Having experienced first-hand the cut and thrust of community politics when it met up with commercial life, he knew that a fresh view about tourism was needed. It has never been merely a ‘tea-shop’ economy as some politicians describe it. Nor is it a product of 19th century get-rich-quick enterprise.

Even prehistoric people enjoyed activities we would recognise as tourism in a simple form. From then until the late Victorian period, tourism as both leisure and entertainment on the one hand and education on the other made steady growth. Then came commercial developments, still driven initially by ideas of learning about the world.

Only in the 20th century did the profit motive begin to overcome the more altruistic aspects of the range of industries making up ‘tourism’. At every stage, tourism interacted with the mass media and formal education in a symbiotic relationship.

The three books, under the series title ‘Making Sense of Tourism’, will challenge existing views of tourism history. They will tell a very practical story, while backing it up extensive bibliographies. There will be discussions of existing theories and radical new ones. Book 1, The Beckoning Horizon, is out now and available on Amazon.

Besides being a uniquely detailed history in three parts, the project is remarkable in another way. It is entirely a work of self-publishing. Alan Machin’s experience in public sector and commercial work gives him a challenge: to write, illustrate and publish the three books himself.

Early reviews of the first book have been very positive. They have commented on the qualities of scholarship, clear writing and professional publication using state-of-the-art technology and a lifetime’s accumulation of knowledge.

“It has been an exciting task linked to a set of very new experiences”, says Alan. “As the books come to publication, there will be many new ideas set out. The most important is that tourism has something school education and the mass media do not have: the ability to see for yourself what the world is about.”

Book 2: Bright Prospect, will be published in early 2019. The title and publication date for book 3 will be annouced in due course.

(Photo above: university students on a residential visit to Malta, led by Alan Machin and colleagues)

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