Reading through this text is rather like reading a detective story. There are clues and patterns but they are often not clear as the authors attempt to cram vast amounts of complex detail into small spaces. The reader is forced to read between the lines and highlight gems of wisdom often hidden in common description. It is possible to fit the bits and pieces from many pens into some enlightening and important points. Besides the common threads that run through many of the chapters, the differences in the evolution of the programs are also interesting. China, Korea, Israel with strong central control and government involvement contrasts with the less managed approaches of Australia and Canada and the industry lead approaches of Austria and Switzerland. Regardless of the starting point it is interesting to note that the resulting programs seem very similar. The process involves the formalizing of skill training into the poly- technic or private hotel school with various overriding accreditation systems. The Universities seem a little more peripheral in many cases and there is little reference to their role in management training. Most likely, this is the result of the relatively short history of many of the programs. The lack of a concluding chapter is unfortunate. The editor does summarize issues briefly in the preface but so much more could have been done if an analytical final chapter had been added. As a lazy reader, the reviewer would have been much more satisfied if he had not had to work quite so hard to put the puzzle together and been able to spend just a bit more time thinking about the issues and possible solutions based on a good concluding chapter. There is much material here to stimulate discussion and for more than a few follow-up academic papers and such a chapter would have helped set the stage for this work. Many of the writers spend little time discussing outcomes of their countries programs, particularly those dealing with the learner. The reader is left to wonder as to the success of some of the programs. Some chapters do, Horng and Lee in their chapter on Taiwan provide a good example of the issues with their fledgling programs and how the system will change to meet a changing world. Regardless of these issues, the book will provide encouragement and examples to help improve the instruc- tors’ and institutions approaches to the subject of tourism. The continued evolution in approaches discussed in this work will improve the learning of the central figure in all education, the learner. The book offers a fascinating glimpse into the tourism and hospitality educational system of a wide diversity of countries. It shows how each country has developed its programs and is attempting to improve the basic educational value of the system for the tourism industry. The development to ensure value to the student is less clear but is assumed in most chapters. Certainly, it provides the reader with a better under- standing of tourism education in the global village. Keith Dewar Faculty of Business, Hospitality and Tourism, University of New Brunswick—Saint John, P.O. Box 5050, Saint John, New Brunswick, Canada, E2L 4L5 E-mail address: kdewar@unbsj.ca doi:10.1016/j.tourman.2007.07.001 China’s Outbound Tourism, Wolfgang Georg Arlt. Routledge, Abingdon (2006). xv+300pp., US$145, Hardback, ISBN: 0-415-36536-8 Compared to other tourism source areas and destina- tions there is still a dearth of material on many aspects of tourism development in China—inbound, outbound and domestic. There is, of course, a media storm of interest in China’s economic progress and major tourism journals are responding to the perceived importance of China in the worldwide tourism system. But it is difficult to stitch together the overall narrative of events, among the constant helter-skelter of change, since the visits by US President Nixon and other dignitaries in the 1970s through to membership of the World Trade Organisation in 2001, the winning of the Beijing Olympics for 2008 and, as regards outbound tourism, the progressively rapid widen- ing of approved destination status (ADS)—from tentative beginnings in Hong Kong and Macao (1983) through Australia and New Zealand (1999), most of the European Community (2004) and the UK (2005). Arlt outlines three reasons why in China outbound tourists ‘are so under-researched and remain a largely unknown entity’ (p. 82). First, there is not a consumption- orientated view of the source market and consumers; second, the market beyond Asia is very new; and, third, as an example of the very political nature of tourism in China, ‘outbound as well as domestic tourism has long been ignored or hushed up, so that all but superficial research is sparse and furthermore handicapped by strong ideological images’ (p. 82). This calls for a text that both draws together existing knowledge and offers an authoritative commentary. China’s Outbound Tourism manages to achieve this and is a considerable addition to the field. With some very distinctive views it is a recommended read both for new and old China watchers. Arlt is well placed to write such a timely review. He was a practitioner for many years, engaged with outbound tourists from China to Europe, and is now both a visiting professor in China and a professor of leisure and tourism economy in Germany. Unusually, his writing and thoughts offer a melange from both traditions—neither overly ARTICLE IN PRESS Book reviews / Tourism Management 29 (2008) 821–830 824